News you may have missed #0140

  • CIA Intellipedia gurus get Homeland Security Medal. Don Burke and Sean Dennehy, the CIA agents behind Intellipedia, have been awarded a medal for “promoting and expanding information-sharing in the Intelligence Community”. As intelNews noted last August, Intellipedia, the intelligence community’s version of Wikipedia, has grown markedly since its formal launch in 2006. It now averages more than 15,000 edits per day and is home to 900,000 pages and 100,000 user accounts.
  • Cuban Five resentencing delayed. A US federal judge has accepted requests from the lawyers of Antonio Guerrero, a member of the Cuban Five spy ring, to delay their resentencing, after the US government refused to turn over any national security damage assessments in the case. Washington accuses the Five of spying on the US for Cuba. But an appeals court ruled earlier this year that the sentences they received (ranging from 19 years to life) were too long. It appears that Guerrero’s sentence will be reduced from life to 20 years behind bars.
  • Was Christopher Columbus a spy? An independent researcher is raising eyebrows by suggesting that Columbus was a Portuguese spy who knew exactly what he was doing when he supposedly “got lost” in the Atlantic in 1492.

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Analysis: Bush focus on Daily Brief skewed policy decisions

Lieberthal

Lieberthal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A study by a Brookings Institution analyst says the “unprecedented” level of importance given to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) by George W. Bush skewed his administration’s policy decisions after 9/11 and had negative consequences for the US intelligence community. The PDB arrives at the US President’s desk every morning with highly classified summaries of the latest findings from America’s intelligence community. The importance given to the PDB, whose contents are often highly speculative or unprocessed, varies with Presidents. But Kenneth Lieberthal, former National Security Council staffer in the Bill Clinton administration and senior fellow at Brookings, says the Bush cabinet overwhelmingly relied on the PDB to make policy decisions, which were often based on information that lacked substantial analysis. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0046

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News you may have missed #0030

  • 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.

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