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News you may have missed #0035

July 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ex-Peruvian president sentenced for bribing spy chief. Peru’s former President, Alberto Fujimori, has been given a 7.5 years prison sentence for giving his right-hand man, spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, $15 million from government coffers.
Was there ever a CIA interrogation facility in Thailand? CIA records indicate that waterboarding was practiced by US government agents in secret detention facilities in Thailand. Thailand’s Prime Minister says there is no secret CIA detention center for suspected terrorists under his government. But could a facility have been there under the previous government?
“Adoptive father” of Israeli intelligence pioneered the “honey trap”. Meir Amit, who revolutionized Israeli intelligence in the 1960s, and has died at the age of 88, pioneered the use of female agents to gain access to classified information, says an Israeli intelligence history author.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Alberto Fujimori, CIA, honey traps, Israel, Meir Amit, News, news you may have missed, Peru, Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (Peru), Thailand, torture, Vladimiro Montesinos, waterboarding

Judge accuses CIA of fraud in 15-year court case

July 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Judge Lamberth

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A 15-year old lawsuit against the CIA unexpectedly resurfaced yesterday, after a US federal judge accused the CIA attorneys of fraud and warned the former and current CIA leadership of serious legal sanctions. US District Judge Royce Lamberth said the CIA misled him on several occasions by falsely claiming that the “state secrets” clause applied to the case, which three consecutive US administrations have tried to bury. The case was filed in 1994 by retired Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer Richard A. Horn, who claimed that CIA agents illegally wiretapped his conversations while he was stationed in Burma. It appears that, at the time, the US diplomatic representation in Burma and the CIA station in Rangoon were at loggerheads with the DEA. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Arthur Brown, Bill Clinton, Burma, Bush Administration, CIA, corruption, DEA, Franklin Hurdle Jr., George Tenet, Jeffrey Yeates, John A. Rizzo, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, lawsuits, Leon Panetta, News, Obama Administration, Rangoon (Burma), Richard A. Horn, Robert T. Eatinger, State Secrets clause, United States, war on drugs, wiretapping

News you may have missed #0034

July 21, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

Busting of Israeli spy ring in Lebanon continues. Lebanese authorities have announced the arrest of yet another suspected member of Mossad’s alleged spy ring in southern Lebanon.
Secret space shuttles. Excellent primer on the longstanding secret collaboration between NASA and the super-clandestine National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in the United States.
Israelis jail man accused of joining Palestinian intelligence. An Israeli court has jailed Muhammad Jayusi for 42 months for being a member of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence (GI), for “tailing Israeli citizens and [for] transmitting information on them” to GI.
Will Obama administration end the over-classification of US defense information? Pentagon classification authorities are treating classified historical documents as if they contain today’s secrets, rather than decades-old information that has not been secret for years, says the National Security Archive.
What did CIA director Panetta tell Philippine President Arroyo? Writing from the Philippines, Ramon Farolan says Leon Panetta did not go to Manila on a “social visit. CIA directors don’t make social visits to any place, and frankly, I can’t recall any CIA director ever visiting the Philippines”, he says. IntelNews has covered Panetta’s recent trip to the Philippines here.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, declassification, General Intelligence (Palestinian National Authority), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, informants, Israel, Leon Panetta, Muhammad Jayusi, NASA, News, news you may have missed, NRO, Obama Administration, Palestinian National Authority, Pentagon, Philippines, United States

Post-9/11 torture sparked internal dissent, rift between FBI and CIA

July 20, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Abu Zubaida

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Citing interviews with almost “two dozen [anonymous] current and former US officials” The Washington Post has revealed crucial new background information on the CIA’s torture methodology after 9/11. The exposé, by reporters Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, helps piece together some of the complex puzzle of internal decisions that led US interrogators to resort to waterboarding and other forms of torture against “war on terrorism” detainees. The article focuses on Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two psychologists who were hired by the CIA to design an elaborate ten-stage harsh interrogation program (see previous intelNews report). According to The Washington Post, Mitchell, who was the program’s mastermind, told associates he had modeled it on the theory of “learned helplessness”, used by professional psychologists “to describe people or animals reduced to a state of complete helplessness by some form of coercion or pain, such as electric shock”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Zubaida, al-Qaeda, Bruce Jessen, CIA, FBI, Jim Mitchell, learned helplessness, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, News, psychology, torture, United States, War on Terrorism, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn

News you may have missed #0032

July 19, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Russian spy devices found on Norwegian shores. A Russian spy buoy used for monitoring ship traffic in international waters has been discovered on a shore in Arctic Norway. Apparently, it’s the third of its kind found on Norwegian shores this year.
Analysis: Who is the CIA allowed to kill? Some aspects in the recent CIA assassination squad controversy point to the possibility that the plan “imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions”. This raises the likelihood that the program would have violated national sovereignty.
Revisiting ECHELON: The NSA’s clandestine data mining program. Jason Leopold speculates that the NSA’s ECHELON program may have helped facilitate the Bush Administration’s domestic spying efforts after 9/11.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 9/11, Arctic circle, assassinations, Bush Administration, CIA, covert operations, domestic intelligence, ECHELON, maritime intelligence, maritime surveillance, News, news you may have missed, Norway, NSA, Russia, United States, warrantless communications interception

News you may have missed #0031

July 18, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ex-Boeing engineer convicted of spying for China. A US court has convicted Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a Chinese-born Boeing engineer, of multiple counts of espionage and of passing critical trade secrets on the US space program to China.
Second US Marine charged with leaking documents to police. Another US Marine at Camp Pendleton has been charged in a bizarre intelligence leaking case, in which secret military and CIA documents were leaked to an anti-terrorism task force formed by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Spy watchdog urges major changes at CSIS. Canadian intelligence is in urgent need of “major changes” to meet legal and public demands in the post-9/11 world, according to a new report by the Security Intelligence Review Committee of the Canadian government.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Camp Pendleton, Canada, China, CIA, corporate espionage, CSIS (Canada), Dongfan Chung, espionage, Greg Chung, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, News, news you may have missed, United States, US Marine Core, US space program

News you may have missed #0030

July 17, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

German intelligence denies Iran nuclear estimate. The BND has denied reports in the German press that it believes Iran is capable of producing and testing an atomic bomb within six months. A BND spokesperson said that the agency’s view is that Iran would not be able to produce an atomic bomb for “several years”.
Ex-CIA Director Woolsey defends CIA assassination plan. James Woolsey, the Director of the CIA during the Clinton administration has defended the principle, as well as secrecy, behind the rumored post-9/11 CIA plan to set up assassination squads and unleash them after al-Qaeda’s leadership.
India and Pakistan to share more intelligence. India and Pakistan said yesterday that they agreed to increase communication- and information-sharing. But soon afterwards India announced there would be no resumption of formal normalization talks with Pakistan until Islamabad brings those behind last year’s Mumbai attacks to justice.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2008 Mumbai attacks, assassinations, BND, CIA, Germany, India, intelligence estimates, intelligence sharing, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, James Woolsey, News, news you may have missed, nuclear proliferation, Pakistan, United States

Analysis: Why were CIA assassination squads canceled?

July 17, 2009 by intelNews 3 Comments

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Despite all the razzmatazz surrounding the rumored secret CIA plan to set up assassination squads, several questions remain unanswered. IntelNews is among a number of websites that believe that something in the entire controversy doesn’t add up. The fact is, as I have mentioned before, the ongoing strikes by US unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan effectively amount to

deliberate assassinations of suspected terrorists, which are planned and implemented outside the framework of even elementary judicial oversight. Regardless of one’s feelings about terrorism, the democratic process […] explicitly forbids the circumvention of longstanding legal norms, which specify concrete judicial means of arrest, detention, trial and punishment of accused criminals.

So, if it is the case that the CIA is already following a policy of targeted assassinations –which often result in indiscriminate murder of civilians– then why all the fuss about the CIA assassination squad revelations? Moreover, why was the project reportedly canceled? Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Greg Miller provides a possible explanation. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, assassinations, CIA, paramilitary units, Predator drones, United States, War on Terrorism

FROM OUR ARCHIVES: Charles Taylor was not acting alone

July 16, 2009 by intelNews 6 Comments

Charles Taylor

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As former Liberian President Charles Taylor becomes the first African leader to stand trial for war crimes, it is worth remembering that the 61-year old father of 14 was not acting alone. Taylor, who headed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), became the country’s President in 1997. He is currently being tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accused of indescribable violations of human rights, which he allegedly committed during his 14-year rule. He is also accused of conspiring to foment the brutal civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, which he allegedly funded through the Liberian diamond trade. But as I explained last February, Taylor’s diamond smuggling was facilitated by Roger D’Onofrio Ruggiero, an Italian-American 40-year veteran of the CIA, who worked with Taylor and others to channel diamonds into Europe through a number of front-companies. Taylor was also assisted by Ibrahim Bah, a Senegalese who in the 1970s and 1980s was funded by the CIA to join the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the war against the Soviet Red Army. It is unlikely, however, that Charles Taylor’s prosecutors at The Hague will be calling on these two witnesses during the trial. Witnesses aside, however, Charles Taylor’s trial may prove to be interesting on numerous levels. Yesterday, for instance, he told the court that his 1985 “escape” from the US maximum security Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts, which allowed him to return to Liberia and take over the country through a military coup, took place with US government assistance.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Africa, Charles Taylor, CIA, diamonds smuggling, First Liberian Civil War, from our archives, Ibrahim Bah, International Criminal Court, Liberia, NPFL (Liberia), Roger D’Onofrio Ruggiero, Sierra Leone, The Hague

The CIA in Iran Today: A Realistic Assessment

July 13, 2009 by intelNews 4 Comments

Iran protestors

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is hardly surprising to witness the sudden cessation of the US media frenzy that placed Iran under the microspore last month. And yet I believe that now, as the regime in Tehran is redeploying its machinery of social control, is the perfect time to calmly and sensibly provide a rational assessment of what really took place in Iran in June, as well as the US involvement, if any. The CIA’s past shenanigans in Iran are by now widely known and understood –particularly by the Iranians themselves, who, regardless of their feelings toward the present regime in Tehran, are suspicious of collaborating with US agencies. But what is the US involvement in fomenting unrest in Tehran today? More importantly, to what extent can the CIA’s ongoing covert activities in the Middle East be said to have played a role in last June’s seemingly spontaneous popular uprising in Tehran? With this question in mind, I wrote The CIA in Iran Today: A Realistic Assessment, which you can now read in Jeremy Hammond’s Foreign Policy Journal. Here’s a tip: for the CIA’s intelligence directorate analysts, the recent unrest in Iran was more like 1979 than 1953. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, covert operations, espionage, intelligence failures, Iran, Joseph Fitsanakis

News you may have missed #0026

July 13, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

US Attorney General considers torture probe. The Associated Press is among several news outlets reporting that Eric Holder is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the use of torture by US intelligence agencies after September of 2001.
Iran’s invisible Nicaraguan embassy. The US State Department has been raising alarm bells about the Iranians supposedly “building a huge embassy in Managua”. But nobody in Nicaragua can find any super-embassy, The Washington Post reports.
Kim Jonh Il likely to die soon, CIA tells S. Korean spy agency. According to South Korean sources, the CIA now believes that Kim Jong-Il’s chances of surviving the next five years are less than 30%. Last June, intelNews relayed reports that Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s third son, appears to be his father’s most likely successor.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, diplomacy, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Kim Jong Il, News, news you may have missed, Nicaragua, North Korea, South Korea, torture, United States, US Department of Justice, US Department of State

Secret CIA program involved assassinations of suspects

July 13, 2009 by intelNews 3 Comments

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Quoting “three former intelligence officials” The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the secret CIA program, which recently alarmed Congress, involved summary killings and assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives. Although the plan’s details remain highly classified, it appears that the CIA sought to set up specialized assassination squads, staffed with US Special Forces personnel, in an attempt to copy the Israeli Mossad Operation Wrath of God (also known as Operation Bayonet) of the 1970s. Wrath of God, which involved targeted assassinations of individuals allegedly behind the 1972 Munich massacre, was described by Canadian journalist George Jonas in his 1984 book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, which also formed the basis for Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich. The Wall Street Journal quotes an anonymous former US intelligence official who describes the CIA plan as coming “straight out of the movies […]. It was like: Let’s kill them all”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 1972 Munich massacre, Afghanistan, assassinations, CIA, Dick Cheney, George Jonas, intelligence oversight, Israel, Joint Special Operations Command, Leon Panetta, Mossad, Munich (Germany), News, Operation BAYONET, Operation Wrath of God, Pete Hoekstra, Seymour Hersh, US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

News you may have missed #0025

July 12, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

BREAKING NEWS: Several news outlets are reporting this morning that it was former US vice-President Dick Cheney who ordered the CIA to conceal from Congress key information about a covert action intelligence program of an undisclosed nature. See here for more.
New book claims Ernest Hemingway was KGB agent. The new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, alleges that the Nobel prize-winning novelist was on the KGB’s list of agents in America from 1941, when he was given the codename “Argo” by the Soviets.
Thousands of former Stasi spies still working in German civil service. A report in the German edition of The Financial Times claims that over 17,000 former members of East Germany’s Stasi remain employed as civil servants in reunified Germany. Stasi is the name commonly used for the Ministry for State Security, communist East Germany’s secret police.
NSA director’s secret visit to New Zealand revealed. A reporter accidentally spotted Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, director of the US National Security Agency, entering a Wellington building accompanied by security personnel. The revelation prompted a spokesperson at the US embassy in Wellington to admit that Alexander was indeed in New Zealand “for consultations with government officials”. The close signals intelligence relationship between the US and New Zealand have been known since 1996.
Chinese national caught trying to purchase crypto hardware. Chi Tong Kuok was arrested by the FBI at the Atlanta International Airport en route from Paris to Panama, where he allegedly planned to purchase US military radios. The US government claims Kuok has admitted he was “acting at the direction of officials for the People’s Republic of China”.
Taliban say cell phone SIM cards guide US drone strikes. A Taliban circular says SIM cards planted by informants in cell phones used by militants are used to signal American drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As IntelNews recently explained, there are suspicions that this and similar discoveries are gradually prompting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to stop using cell phones altogether.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, AUSCANZUKUS, book news and reviews, Chi Tong Kuok, China, CIA, Cold War, cryptology, Dick Cheney, ECHELON, Ernest Hemingway, FBI, German Democratic Republic, Germany, Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, intelligence oversight, Keith Alexander, KGB, Ministry for State Security (GDR), New Zealand, News, news you may have missed, NSA, Pakistan, Predator drones, SIGINT, Stasi (GDR), Taliban, telephony, UK-USA Security Agreement, UKUSA

Revelation of secret program prompted CIA spat with Congress [updated]

July 11, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
More information has emerged about the background to an ongoing dispute between the US House Intelligence Committee and the CIA, which intelNews has been covering since late last month. The Washington Post has now revealed that on June 24, CIA director Leon Panetta informed the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of his decision to terminate a CIA project, which the Agency had kept hidden from Congress since 2001. Nobody will publicly state what the secret project involved, except to say that it “was planned and never executed” and that it “never quite achieved its original concept” (whatever this means). Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, CIA, intelligence oversight, Leon Panetta, News, Operational Preparation of the Environment, US House of Representatives, US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

News you may have missed #0023

July 10, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Spies target Swiss banks for the secrets they hold. Jürg Bühler, acting director of Switzerland’s counter-intelligence agency, says foreign services are increasingly interested in the financial data locked in Swiss banks, especially as the global hunt for undeclared assets stiffens.
South Korea says North was behind cyberattacks on S. Korean, US web sites. South Korean intelligence officials say they believe North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces committed cyberattacks that paralyzed major South Korean and US government websites last weekend.
British MP accuses government of outsourcing torture. Britain’s former shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has accused British intelligence services of “outsourcing torture”. He was commenting in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, who claimed he was offered bribes to drop allegations that he was tortured in Pakistan, while on British custody.
Philippines President to meet CIA chief. Leon Panetta will be meeting Glorya Arroyo next week in Manila, “to discuss security concerns and to map out ways to further strengthen the bilateral partnership between the Philippines and United States”.
Former Turkey intelligence head questioned over alleged coup. The court case concerns Ergenekon, a shadowy ultranationalist network with strong links to the Turkish armed forces, which has reportedly been trying to stage a coup in Ankara.