CIA conducting ‘unprecedented’ operations in Britain
January 4, 2009 Leave a comment
British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has published an article (reprinted in Australia’s The Age) discussing what it describes as CIA’s “unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain”. The paper cites “security sources in Washington and London” in revealing that the US spy agency is “recruiting and handling a record number of informers within the British Pakistani community”. Security circles in Washington have been known to express concerns about militant tendencies in that community, which is nearly one-million-strong. Bruce Reidel, a 26-year CIA veteran and al-Qaeda expert, who now advises US President Elect Barack Obama’s transition team, says that Britain’s Muslim community (whose members can travel to the US without visas) is “regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single-biggest threat environment.” Read more of this post
intelNews.org 
Analysis: Panetta’s CIA Nomination Part of Broader Obama Plan
January 6, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
America’s largest newspapers describe US President Elect Barack Obama’s choice of Leon E. Panetta as CIA’s next Director as “a surpris[ing] and unusual choice” that has “stunned the national intelligence community“. These descriptions are not far from the truth. More importantly, however, the selection of the former Bill Clinton aide to head the nation’s most powerful intelligence agency reveals the continuing rift between the incoming Democratic Administration and many conservative hawks at the CIA. The latter openly warned the President Elect last month that he “may have difficulty finding a candidate who can be embraced by both veteran officials at the agency and the left flank of the Democratic Party”. Keep reading →
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, CIA, Joseph Fitsanakis, Leon Panetta, United States