News you may have missed #337

  • Another Iranian nuclear researcher reportedly defects. An academic linked with Iran’s nuclear program has defected to Israel, according to Ayoub Kara, Israel’s deputy minister for development in the Negev and Galilee. Kara said it “is too soon to provide further details”, adding that the defector is “now in a friendly country”.
  • Dutch spies to become more active abroad. The Dutch secret service, the AIVD, has announced a shift in strategy, deployed increasingly more officers abroad: “in Yemen, Somalia, and the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
  • Why did the CIA destroy waterboarding evidence? It has been established that Porter J. Goss, the former director of the CIA, in 2005 approved the destruction of dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two terrorism detainees. But why did he do it? Former CIA officer Robert Baer examines the question.

Bookmark and Share

News you may have missed #312

Bookmark and Share

News you may have missed #310

  • Analysis: Outsourcing Intelligence. David Ignatius points out that the latest rogue operation of the US Defense Department, revealed last weekend by The New York Times, points to the increasing irrelevance of the CIA in the so-called “global war on terrorism”: “by using contractors who operate ‘outside the wire’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the [US] military has gotten information that is sometimes better than what the CIA is offering”, says Ignatius.
  • White House threatens veto on intelligence bill. The White House has renewed its threat to veto the fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill over a provision that would force the administration to widen the circle of US lawmakers who are informed about covert operations and other sensitive activities.
  • CIA’s Kiriakou authors new book. John Kiriakou, who spent 14 years working for the CIA, and has made headlines in the past for defending the practice of waterboarding in interrogations, while recognizing it is torture, has a new book out, entitled The Reluctant Spy.

News you may have missed #295

  • US spies want super-sensitive human lie detectors. IARPA, the research unit of the US intelligence community is soliciting proposals for a five-year, three-phased overhaul of current deception-detection technology, which will include research on what is called “pre-conscious human assessment of trustworthiness”.
  • UK may purchase IP monitoring system from CIA-linked company. A security startup with close links to the CIA is touting a system to the UK government that monitors every IP address on the internet for malware, as part of its declared aim of improving cyber war capabilities. The firm has built a massive database of security breaches across the globe and is currently monitoring about 250 million compromised machines.
  • No Americans on CIA’s assassination list. The Washington Post has corrected an earlier report, flagged by intelNews earlier this month, which claimed that the US President has authorized the CIA to kill Americans abroad. According to new information, there are no Americans currently on the CIA hit list, but there are four on the list of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). It is worth noting that JSOC, which some say is gradually taking over the CIA’s paramilitary mission, lacks the CIA’s mandatory Congressional oversight and has a history of being run directly out of the White House.

Bookmark and Share

Analysis: US spy turf-war flares up on Capitol Hill

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Wednesday’s testimony by US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, received plenty of media coverage. But few have examined the ongoing public hearings by three separate Senate committees on the Christmas Day bomb plot in light of the turf battles taking place between US intelligence agencies. An excellent article by Politico’s Kassie Hunt does just that, by pointing out that the hearing proceedings should be viewed in light of the “three-way turf war among Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter”. Capitol Hill lawmakers appear to be aware of this: Hunt’s article quotes Peter King, the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s senior Republican member, who warns that US intelligence agencies will use the public hearings to place blame about the Christmas Day bomber fiasco on each other. Read more of this post

Released cable reveals CIA decision to destroy torture tapes

CIA HQ

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The US Justice Department’s investigation into the destruction of videotapes by the CIA, which reportedly showed acts of torture committed during interrogations of terrorism detainees, began in 2007, but has stalled. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is spearheading what appears to be the only organized attempt to discover when and why those tapes were destroyed. Last year the ACLU uncovered that the CIA destroyed the videotapes in question after –not before, as the Agency had originally claimed– a spring 2004 report by the Agency’s inspector general, which described the interrogation methods employed on CIA prisoners as “constitut[ing] cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”. Thanks to the ACLU, we have also known for quite some time that the decision to destroy the incriminating tapes was taken sometime in November of 2005. But now, with the release of a new batch of documents in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, we have the exact date that decision was taken: Read more of this post

Comment: Is CIA Lying About its Blackwater Contacts?

Blackwater logo

Blackwater logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
After CIA director Leon Panetta revealed last summer that private contractor Blackwater was part of a covert CIA hit squad, tasked with summary killings and assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives, the CIA vowed to sever its contacts with the trigger-happy security firm. But did it do so? It doesn’t look like it. Last November, it became known that the company, (recently renamed Xe Services) remains part of a covert CIA program in Pakistan that includes planned assassinations and kidnappings of Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects. More recently, it was revealed that two of the seven Americans who died in the December 30 bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, were actually Blackwater employees subcontracted by the CIA.

Read more of this post

Lithuania’s spy chief resigns over secret CIA prison probe

Malakauskas

Malakauskas

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of Lithuania’s intelligence service unexpectedly resigned on Monday, reportedly in connection with a parliamentary investigation into a reputed CIA secret prison site in the country. IntelNews regulars will remember that last November ABC News cited CIA officials in alleging that the Lithuanian government provided the CIA with an unmarked building located in Lithuanian capital Vilnius, with the understanding that it would be used as a so-called black site for secretly detaining high-value al-Qaeda suspects. Lithuanian government officials denied the allegation, but promised to set up a high-level probe into the matter. But the members of the parliamentary committee that was established to examine the ABC News revelations soon found themselves shunned by Lithuanian intelligence officials. According to the committee head, Arvydas Anusauskas, the parliamentarians were offered ambiguous answers or no answers at all by Lithuanian secret service agencies. Read more of this post

Obama’s Afghan plan includes expanding CIA ops in Pakistan

Predator drone

Predator drone

By I. ALLEN & J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Obama Administration’s plan to increase US military presence in Afghanistan includes expanding the CIA’s work in neighboring Pakistan, a country with which the US is officially not at war. An article published yesterday in The New York Times notes that the President has authorized the CIA to expand its Predator drone assassination program to include strikes in places like Baluchistan, which are outside Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas and far from the Afghan-Pakistani border. This development represents a major policy victory for the hawkish wing in the Pentagon’s senior leadership, which has been pressing Obama’s advisors to expand CIA assassination operations deeper into Pakistan since November of 2008. It also further reveals the Obama Administration’s policy preference toward undercover operations with a strong deniability proponent. Read more of this post

Analysis: Is an obscure US military unit replacing the CIA?

Joint Special Operations Command logo

JSOC logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An obscure US military unit established in 1980 is gaining prominence in America’s “war on terrorism” and may be slowly replacing the CIA’s functions, according to a well-researched piece in The Atlantic magazine. The US Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was created soon after the fiasco of the attempted rescue of the hostages held at the US embassy in Tehran. Since 9/11, the unit has emerged from its relative obscurity to join the forefront of America’s so-called “global war on terrorism”. Gathering evidence from a variety of sources investigating the use of paramilitary operations in America’s post-9/11 wars, Max Fisher argues that, even under the Obama Administration, JSOC may in fact be “taking on greater responsibility, especially in areas traditionally covered by the CIA”. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0196

  • Legal problems facing CIA are no laughing matter. They include two criminal investigations by the US Justice Department, persistent inquiries by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as legal challenges from “war on terrorism” detainees.
  • Aussie computer networks “most certainly” spied on. The Australian federal government’s computer network has “almost certainly” been targeted by cyber-spies from other countries, according to attorney general Robert McClelland. “In some incidents nation states [are responsible]”, he told reporters.
  • US still considering extraditing Philippine spy. A judge has yet to rule on whether Michael Ray Aquino, a former Philippine National Police intelligence officer who served prison time for passing classified US government documents to the Philippine opposition, will be extradited to face murder charges back home. See here for more on this strange case.

Bookmark and Share

News you may have missed #0179

  • Iran charges three US citizens with espionage. If convicted, the three Americans, who claim they accidentally crossed into Iran while hiking, could be sentenced to death. Meanwhile, relatives of the three have angrily rejected the espionage charges in a joint statement.
  • Findings of spy reform committee ignored in South Africa. South Africa’s statutory bodies that oversee the work of spy agencies are ignoring the warnings of a ministerial-level Review Commission on Intelligence, which last summer warned that a steadily declining culture of accountability in South African spy services is threatening the country’s constitutional order. So much for the government’s heralded “major restructuring” of South African security services.
  • Colombia paid Ecuador informant to infiltrate FARC. The informant that Colombia was said last week to have handled in Ecuador (see previous intelNews coverage) was reportedly paid around US$2.5 million by the Colombian government to supply information on the whereabouts of Raul Reyes, former leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The informant, allegedly known in Colombian intelligence files as “JCRF” or “Pirata”, managed to infiltrate FARC, and may have been instrumental in Reyes’ killing by the Colombian military in Ecuador last March.

Bookmark and Share

Obama reestablishes critical intelligence oversight board (finally!)

Exec. Order 13516

Exec. Order 13516

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On June 19, I alerted intelNews readers to the fact that US President Barack Obama had yet to appoint any members to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB). First established in 1956 by President Eisenhower, the PIAB, is a critical oversight group tasked with alerting the White House about US intelligence activities that may be illegal or may in any way go beyond Presidential authorization. Now, after months of inexcusable delays, not only has US President Barack Obama restored PIAB, but has also restored its original oversight role, which had been curtailed by the Bush administration since 2008. Specifically, on October 28, the President appointed former Senators David Boren and Chuck Hagel as co-chairs of PIAB, a move that effectively ended the Board’s hiatus. Read more of this post

CIA misled, lied to Congress several times since 2001, say lawmakers

Jan Schakowsky

Jan Schakowsky

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The two Democrats chairing the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have accused the CIA of misleading Congress on at least five instances during the last eight years. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Representatives Jan Schakowsky (CA, photo) and Anna Eshoo (IL.) said an investigation by the Committee had uncovered several examples “where the committee actually has been lied to” by the CIA. The two chairwomen described the investigation findings as “symptom[s] of a larger disease” involving the routine practice of “incomplete and often misleading intelligence briefings”. However, commenting on Schakowsky and Eshoo’s allegations, Robert Litt, the senior attorney in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the conduct of all 16 US intelligence agencies, said Congress was not adequately briefed on “a small number of intelligence activities”, but “has since been brought up to date”. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0150

  • Israel’s inside intelligence. If only Israeli security services were as open as the CIA and other US spy agencies, lament Israelis.
  • Nozette and nuclear rocketry. Here are some of the reasons why the case of scientist Stewart D. Nozette, who was arrested and charged earlier this week under the US Espionage Act, is distressing on several levels.
  • Perle calls DoD spying whistleblower “a nutcase”. Richard Perle, chairperson of the US Defense Advisory Board under the Bush administration, has called Sibel Edmonds “a nutcase; certifiable”. Last August, Edmonds, a former FBI translator, alleged that Turkish spies had bugged, blackmailed and bribed US politicians, her FBI unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress.

Bookmark and Share