News you may have missed #321 (CIA edition)

April 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Uruguay ex-president sent to prison for 1973 coup. Declassified documents show that, at the time of the coup, Juan María Bordaberry told the US ambassador that “Uruguay’s democratic traditions and institutions […] were themselves the real threat to democracy”.
  • FSB ‘dropped the ball’ in Moscow metro bombings. Two Russian intelligence observers argue that Russia’s new strategy has shifted toward preventing coordinated actions by large groups of militants, which has come at the expense of taking measures to prevent individual suicide attacks, such as those of last Monday in Moscow.
  • Calls for expanded DoJ probe of FBI killing of Detroit imam. The US Justice Department is probing the killing of Detroit-area Islamic cleric Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was shot dead during an FBI raid shortly after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. The FBI said Abdullah was shot after he opened fire, but critics say he may have been targeted for assassination.

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News you may have missed #308

March 13, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • CIA boss warns of al-Qaeda changing tactics. CIA director Leon Panetta has said that the Agency’s counterterrorism operations are actively disrupting al-Qaeda’s command and control structures. But the group is now changing its tactics by deploying people inside the US who have no history of terrorist activity or documented connection to the organization, he told a conference.
  • New US TSA boss is a counter-intel specialist. Robert A. Harding, the fifth person in nine years to head the beleaguered US Transportation Security Administration, served 33 years as a counterintelligence specialist in the US Army. TSA has been operating under an acting administrator for months.

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FBI still lacks translators, eight years after 9/11, says report

October 29, 2009 by 1 Comment

Report cover

Report cover

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An internal audit by the US Justice Department’s inspector general has found that the FBI faces a critical shortage of foreign-language specialists, eight years after 9/11. The audit report (redacted version available in .pdf here) issued last Monday by inspector general Glenn Fine, reveals that the lack of translators prevented the FBI from accessing 31 per cent of the foreign-language material it collected in counter-terrorism operations from 2006 to 2008. This means the Bureau, which serves as America’s primary counterintelligence and counterterrorism force, has been unable to read tens of thousands of pages and listen to or review 1.2 million hours of audio intercepts in the last two years alone. Remarkably, despite the well-understood need for foreign-language specialists in the post-9/11 security environment, the audit found that the total number of FBI translators dropped from 1,338 in March 2005 to 1,298 in September last year. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0146

October 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • RAND wants the US to abstain from cyberattacks. A new report by the US Pentagon’s research arm, RAND Corporation, suggests the US may be better off playing cyber-defense instead of resorting to cyberattacks. On offense, cyberwar might be better relegated to support roles, and then only “sparingly and precisely”, according to the report. The study comes as the US military fires up its new unified Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) program this month.
  • Turkey says it foiled al-Qaida plot against Israeli, US targets. Turkish security forces detained on Thursday 32 suspected members of al-Qaeda, believed to have been planning attacks on Israeli, US and NATO targets. The suspects, some of whom are said to have been trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, were detained in simultaneous raids across eight provinces.
  • South Korea arrests alleged Swedish-handled spy. A former South Korean air force major general, identified only as Kim, was arrested last Friday on charges of leaking classified military information to Swedish defense and aviation company Saab, between August 2008 and May this year.

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Analysis: Is Afghanistan really important in the “war on terrorism”?

September 22, 2009 by 1 Comment

Paul P. Pillar

Paul P. Pillar

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Deputy Chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 1997 to 1999, Paul Pillar, has authored an interesting editorial in which he asks “how important are physical havens to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda?”. The answer: not very. Writing in The Washington Post, Pillar points out that the main unstated assumption behind the US invasion of Afghanistan, namely that the country must not be allowed to again become a haven for terrorist groups, is incompatible with what we know about how such groups organize. If they are offered a haven, groups such as al-Qaeda will use it for basic training of recruits, says Pillar. But operations planning and training does not require such a base, nor is such a center crucial for successful execution of operations. Read more of this post

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UK report concludes security services not to blame for 7/7 attacks

May 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The second installment of an extensive evaluation of the intelligence background to the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, has been published by Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). The parliamentary committee, whose cabinet-appointed members have access to highly classified material, have concluded that Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, MI5, which is also known as the Security Service, as well as the Special Branch, lacked the resources necessary to detect and foil the 7/7 attacks. The report, which is publicly available online in a heavily censored version, reveals that MI5’s resources enabled it to provide “reasonable” intelligence coverage of no more than one in every 20 militant suspects . Read more of this post

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MI5 looking for new chief scientific adviser

April 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The MI5 is openly advertising for a chief scientific adviser for the first time. Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, which is also known as the Security Service, has posted the job advertisement on its website, and is asking interested individuals to submit applications by April 24. It also urges them to exercise discretion by discussing the application “only with [their] partner and/or immediate family”. The brief advertisement describes the “unique and challenging” mission of the new position as “lead[ing] and co-ordinat[ing] the scientific work of the Security Service”. Read more of this post

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US military group sees Canada Muslims as potential security threat

February 22, 2009 by 4 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
For the past two months, I have been reporting that the US intelligence community sees the radical fringe in Britain’s Muslim community as “the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on US soil”. It turns out that the US Pentagon’s Joint Task Force-North, a group that provides military support to federal agencies in domestic security operations, has a different opinion. For it, Muslims residing in Canada present the “greatest potential for foreign terrorists’ access to the homeland”. This is according to a briefing document that the group inadvertently published on the reading room section of its website a couple of weeks ago, only to abruptly remove it last Wednesday. According to InsideDefense, which noticed the report before it was withdrawn, the internal document blames Canadian immigration policies for “creating a favorable environment” for “foreign terrorist opportunities”. Read more of this post

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