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CIA, still bitter about Cheney, rejects application to release memos

May 16, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On April 20, former US Vice-President Dick Cheney urged the CIA to declassify several internal documents that “showed the success” of the Agency’s torture program against captured members of al-Qaeda. Several weeks earlier Cheney had actually applied to the US National Archives and Records Administration for the release of two internal documents pertaining to the torture controversy. But on Thursday, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano issued an official letter rejecting Cheney’s application, because “the two memos […] were relevant to pending litigation” against the Agency. The CIA official assured reporters that the decision to reject Cheney’s application was made “[f]or that reason –and that reason only”. But insiders tell intelNews that Cheney’s clout with the CIA has been severely diminished, following his failure to come to the Agency’s rescue after a departing President Bush blamed the CIA for producing “false intelligence” on Iraq. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bush Administration, CIA, declassification, Dick Cheney, Iraq weapons of mass destruction, News, Paul Gimigliano, torture, United States, US National Archives and Records Administration

Psychologists behind CIA torture named

May 5, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two American psychologists behind the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, which the President of the United States has described as torture, have been named by ABC News. They are Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, former military officers and partners in Mitchell, Jessen and Associates, a company based in Spokane, WA. The two psychologists were hired by the CIA to design an elaborate ten-stage interrogation program, which culminated in waterboarding. Interestingly, the Agency hired the two scientists, offering them a lucrative $1000-a-day contract, without checking whether they had any experience in interrogation techniques. Agency officials later discovered that Mitchell and Jessen has significantly less professional experience in the psychology of interrogation than they had led the CIA to believe. The two psychologists were contacted by ABC News, but declined to comment, citing non-disclosure contracts with the CIA.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bruce Jessen, CIA, interrogation techniques, Jim Mitchell, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, News, psychology, Spokane, torture, United States, waterboarding

Analysis: CIA now operates on its own inside Pakistan

April 16, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Border region

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Pakistani newspaper The Daily Times has published what is probably the most significant report from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in recent months. The paper quotes senior Pakistani government officials in arguing that intelligence cooperation and coordination between Washington and Islamabad is now “at its lowest level”. One senior intelligence source describes the present situation as the latest stage in a gradual process of deterioration in relations between the two countries, beginning in 2001-2003, when “relations were good” and intelligence sharing was considerable in scale. As intelNews readers have known since November 16, 2008, these sharing arrangements included CIA-orchestrated airstrikes on Pakistani soil by unmanned drones, which the Pakistani leadership then secretly approved. However, The Daily Times reports that eventually Washington began notifying Islamabad just “minutes before carrying out strikes”. In recent weeks “[t]he level of cooperation has gone so low that the US now even does not intimate Pakistan after a drone strike” (emphasis added,) according to one senior Pakistani security official. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, covert operations, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Pakistan), intelligence cooperation, Pakistan, Taliban, Tariq Khan, United States, unmanned aerial vehicles, War on Terrorism

CIA terminates secret prisons but rejects prosecutions

April 12, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In a statement issued on Thursday morning, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it will terminate its secret prison network and would “decommission” all of its overseas prison sites. The news was undoubtedly welcomed by many intelligence professionals who took issue with the use of techniques that President Barack Obama has described as “torture [that] betrayed American values, alienated allies and became a recruiting tool for al Qaeda”. Speaking to The New York Times, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program, Joanne Mariner, said the news was “incredibly heartening and important”. But she called for initiating criminal investigations against those at the CIA who implemented the institutionalization of torture. This is highly unlikely, however. In an email to CIA staff, the Agency’s new Director, Leon E. Panetta, repeated last week the standard CIA position that those responsible for implementing and carrying out torture during the Bush Administration “should not be investigated, let alone punished”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, CIA, Human Rights Watch, Joanne Mariner, Leon Panetta, News, secret prisons, torture, United States

Ex-CIA historian claims Soviet asset was double agent

March 30, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Adolf Tolkachev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In official historical accounts of the CIA, Adolf Tolkachev is described as the Agency’s greatest Soviet asset in the 1980s, whose impact was “limitless” and of “immense value”. Tolkachev, codenamed GTVANQUISH in internal CIA documents, was a Soviet electronics engineer who conducted research for the Soviet armed forces. From 1979 until his capture in 1985, he secretly collaborated with the CIA and give the Agency countless documents on Soviet avionics and radar systems. But Benjamin Fischer, a former CIA clandestine operative and retired CIA historian, now claims that Tolkachev was actually a KGB double agent tasked by Soviet intelligence with providing US military strategists with false information. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Adolf Tolkachev, Benjamin Fischer, book news and reviews, CIA, Cold War, double agents, espionage, GTVANQUISH, history, KGB, News, United States, USSR

CIA expert claims Chávez rigged 2004 Venezuela vote

March 28, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Hugo Chávez

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In a development that will undoubtedly worsen relations between Washington and Caracas, a CIA expert has accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez of rigging the 2004 recall referendum. Speaking before the US Election Assistance Commission in Orlando, Florida, CIA cybersecurity specialist Steve Stigall said that all networked election systems are inherently insecure, and gave the 2004 Venezuelan referendum as an example. Stigall claimed that president Chávez fixed the referendum results through the Venezuelan government’s control of the electronic ballot systems firm that oversaw the voting. He also pointed to a programming analysis of the voting systems by a group of anti-Chávez mathematicians, who allegedly discovered “a very subtle algorithm that appeared to adjust the vote in Chavez’s favor”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum, CIA, cybersecurity, electronic voting, Hugo Chávez, News, Steve Stigall, United States, US Election Assistance Commission

Analysis: Interesting interview with a CIA psychiatrist

March 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

David Charney

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Veteran national security correspondent Jeff Stein has published some interesting highlights of an interview with psychiatrist Dr. David L. Charney, who has worked for the US intelligence community for over 20 years. Charney is one of several medical professionals whom the CIA has appointed to assist its personnel in dealing with a variety of emotional issues. Additionally, he has previously been appointed to supervise the psychiatric assessment of a number of American double spies, including Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union and Russia for over two decades. In the interview, Charney identifies a number of psychological disorders that tend to burden CIA officers, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which often plagues agents who have survived “death-defying escapes after their covers were blown”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, attention deficit disorder, CIA, David L. Charney, ethics, FBI, interviews, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychiatry, Robert Hanssen

Advisors tell Obama to expand covert war inside Pakistan

March 18, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Baluchistan

By I. ALLEN and J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Reports are emerging today that the Obama White House is considering intensifying US covert operations and CIA drone airstrikes deep inside Pakistan. If carried out, these operations will be taking place in Pakistan’s vast Baluchistan province, and would represent a major escalation in the so-called “war on terrorism”. Until now, strikes by US unmanned drones, operated by the CIA, have been strictly limited to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border. But The New York Times report that “at least two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area” to include Baluchistan. Additionally, the paper reports that several of the President’s advisors favor “conduct[ing] cross-border ground actions [deep inside Pakistan], using CIA and Special Operations commandos”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, assassinations, Baluchistan (Pakistan), Barack Obama, CIA, covert operations, Mullah Mohammad Omar, News, Pakistan, Predator drones, Supreme Council of Afghanistan, Taliban, United States, War on Terrorism

CIA assassinations in Pakistan now almost routine

March 15, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The targeted assassinations by the CIA in Pakistan have become routine to the extent that the US media have now stopped covering them. Last Thursday, four more missiles fired by a CIA-operated unmanned aircraft hit an alleged “militant hideout and training camp” in Kurram Valley, a tribally administered Pakistani region on the border with Afghanistan. A Reuters news agency correspondent in Islamabad quotes an unnamed senior Pakistani government official in Kuram who alleges that the missiles “hit a militant hideout and training camp in the Barjo area”. Also cited in the Reuters report is Noor Islam, a villager from the Barjo area, who stated that “[t]he training camp was completely destroyed” and that “at least 14 people were killed”. After a similar strike in Afghanistan last month, the US Pentagon was eventually forced to admit that it killed “13 Afghan civilians and only three militants”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, assassinations, Barjo (Pakistan), CIA, Kurram Valley (Pakistan), News, Pakistan, Taliban, United States, War on Terrorism

CIA veteran reveals agency’s operations in Tibet

March 14, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Gyalo Thondup

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who supervised the Agency’s covert operations in the Chinese region of Tibet, says he is working on a new book on the subject. John Kenneth Klaus, who, while stationed in India in the 1960s, directed the CIA’s support of Tibetan independence paramilitaries, has given a rare interview to Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star. In it, he admits that the CIA supplied weapons to Tibetan monks, who are widely known for their non-violent philosophy. According to 85-year-old Klaus, the origins of the CIA’s covert assistance to Tibetan monks date back to at least 1957, when Gyalo Thondup, older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits, whom the Agency trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas. Shortly afterwards the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance”. In the process, they recruited another 300 Tibetans who were secretly transported to Colorado and trained by Klaus and other US intelligence and military officers. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, CIA, Cold War, Dalai Lama, Gyalo Thondup, history, India, John Kenneth Klaus, News, Northern Mariana Islands, Saipan, Tibet, United States

Bolivia expels second US diplomat for having CIA links

March 11, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

Evo Morales

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two weeks ago, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the CIA was actively conspiring to subvert his government’s energy policy. On Monday, the President announced the expulsion of a US diplomat, whom he accused of working for the CIA. The diplomat, Francisco Martinez, Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Bolivian capital La Paz, has been given 72 hours to leave the country. The Bolivian government says Martinez “was in permanent contact with opposition groups” in the country, and helped facilitate the separatist protests of September 2008. Martinez’s alleged actions were reportedly exposed by a Bolivian police officer who was recently arrested for participating in an alleged CIA-led effort to infiltrate Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), Bolivia’s nationalized oil company. The scandal led to several layoffs at YPFB and to the subsequent arrest of the company’s former Director, Santos Ramirez, on corruption charges. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bolivia, CIA, coup plots, diplomatic expulsions, energy resources, Evo Morales, Francisco Martinez, News, Philip Goldberg, Santos Ramirez, United States, US Department of State, Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos

CIA destroyed 92 torture tapes, US government says

March 4, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Rodriguez

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
United States government lawyers said on Monday that the CIA incinerated 92 videotapes containing footage of torture applied on several “war on terrorism” detainees. The decision to destroy the tapes was taken in November 2005 by CIA official Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time headed the Agency’s National Clandestine Service. Interestingly, Rodriguez took the decision to destroy the videotapes just as the public concern over alleged torture of CIA detainees increased, causing considerable anxiety at Langley. Moreover, Rodriguez had the videotapes destroyed even though CIA lawyers advised him that “getting rid of the recordings was sloppy and unwise”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, CIA NCS, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., News, torture, United States, War on Terrorism

Comment: Former Serb head spy was CIA collaborator

March 2, 2009 by intelNews 5 Comments

Jovica Stanišić

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
From 1990 until 1998, Jovica Stanišić was the Director of Serbia’s State Security Service, a notorious intelligence unit operating within Serbia’s Interior Ministry. As intelligence chief for Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, Stanišić was responsible for thousands of agents, who were seen as forming the core of Milošević’s security state. In 2003, following the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, who had extradited Milošević to The Hague, Stanišić was arrested and delivered to The Hague. He is currently being tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for his role in war crimes during the Yugoslav Wars. Jovica Stanišić has denied any wrongdoing and, remarkably, his defense rests on his claim that he was in fact “the CIA’s man in Belgrade” from 1991 until 1998.

US Special Forces already stationed in Pakistan, article reveals

February 26, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
American and Pakistani military officials have disclosed to The New York Times what defense and intelligence analysts have suspected for quite some time: namely that US military forces are already secretly operating in Pakistan. The officials, who spoke “on condition of anonymity”, confirmed [article reprinted in The International Herald Tribune] that more than 70 US “military advisers […] and technical specialists” are helping Pakistan’s armed forces fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the remote areas bordering Afghanistan. Predictably, the US advisers, who have been stationed in Pakistan since the summer of 2008, include “communications experts and other specialists”. The latter allegedly do not participate in ground combat, but routinely provide Pakistani commandos and specialist units with intelligence data. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, assassinations, CIA, News, Owais Ahmed Ghani, Pakistan, Taliban, US Special Forces, War on Terrorism, Zabi al-Taifi

Analysis: Ex-CIA Agent Involved in Arms Scandal

February 23, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Imants Liepiņš

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has heard allegations that a retired agent of the CIA was instrumental in facilitating a vast diamonds-for-arms smuggling operation on behalf of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor. Taylor, who headed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), became the country’s President in 1997. He is currently held by the United Nations in The Hague, pending trial for crimes against humanity. Roger D’Onofrio Ruggiero, an Italian-American 40-year veteran of the CIA, worked with Charles Taylor and others to channel diamonds into Europe through a number of front-companies. According to the allegations, D’Onofrio helped organize the smuggling operation with Ibrahim Bah, a Senegalese with Libyan connections, who was connected with D’Onofrio in the 1970s, when the former was funded by the CIA to join the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the war against the Soviet Red Army. In the early 1990s, Bah, who by then had established al-Qaeda connections, became Charles Taylor’s “Minister for Mineral Resources”, a post that enabled him to handle the majority of NPFL’s diamonds-for-arms deals. Read article →