News you may have missed #0078

August 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Indian police claims busting of Pakistani spy ring. Punjab Police claims to have arrested a member of a spy ring allegedly handled by Pakistani intelligence (ISI). The arrestee was reportedly trying to leave India for Pakistan at the time of his arrest.
  • Iraq intelligence chief retired before major blasts. Mohammed al-Shehwani, the head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, went into retirement days before huge bombings in Baghdad killed almost 100 people in the deadliest day of violence this year.
  • Backlash over plan to spy on Indonesian mosques. Indonesian religious leaders are warning that the Indonesian National Police’s plan to monitor religious sermons during Ramadan will offend and anger Muslims, and be viewed as a repeat of tactics employed during the hated Suharto regime.

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Comment: Blackwater’s role in CIA ops runs deep

August 21, 2009 by 3 Comments

Blackwater/Xe HQ

Blackwater/Xe

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
North Carolina-based military and intelligence contractor Xe had a major role in the CIA’s rumored post-9/11 assassination program and is active today in the Agency’s Predator drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The New York Times and The Washington Post cited “government officials and current and former [Xe] employees” in revealing that the CIA worked briefly with Xe –formerly known as Blackwater– in the context of a top-secret program to locate and murder senior al-Qaeda leaders. According to The Washington Post, Blackwater’s role in the operation was far from consultative, and included “operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders [and awards worth] millions of dollars for training and weaponry”.  The New York Times alleges that Blackwater’s central role in the operation was “a major reason” in CIA director Leon Panetta’s decision last June to inform Congress about the program, which CIA had kept hidden from Congressional oversight for seven years. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0057

August 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Secret meetings reported between CIA and Saddam loyalists

July 6, 2009 by 2 Comments

Al-Douri

Al-Douri

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The CIA is reportedly participating in a series of secret meetings with the two main leaders of the Ba’athist insurgency in Iraq. According to Intelligence Online and United Press International, CIA agents have entered truce negotiations with Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (photo) and Mohammed Yunis al-Ahmad, who head most of the armed Sunni groups in Iraq. Until the 2003 US invasion, Al-Ahmad was an army general during the latter part of Saddam’s reign, while al-Douri was vice-president and deputy chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council. The US has put out a reward of $1 million for Al-Ahmad, who is reportedly operating out of Syria. Al-Douri, who is said to be in Syria as well, is also wanted by the US in exchange for a $10 million reward. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0017

July 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Spain’s chief spy resigns in financial scandal. Alberto Saiz, who headed Spain’s National Intelligence Center, was accused by the daily newspaper El Mundo of using public money for diving and hunting trips in Mexico, Senegal, Mali and Morocco. He denied the accusations, but on July 2, he resigned “to prevent further damage to the reputation of the intelligence agency and the government”. 
  • FBI declassifies reports on agents’ interviews with Saddam. Just-declassified FBI reports reveal that FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by US troops in December 2003. Interestingly, the declassified reports include nothing about “Iraq’s complicated relationship with the US”, especially the alleged role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power in the 1960s. 
  • Release of CIA report on detention, interrogation, delayed (again). Like many others, we at intelNews were eagerly expecting this previously classified CIA report on detention and interrogation under the Bush administration to be released last Wednesday. It was initially going to be released in mid-June, but was then delayed until July 1. Now the CIA says it won’t be able to release the report until the end of August. The ACLU says it will wait for as long as it has to.

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Wikileaks publishes major RAND intelligence study

March 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Wikileaks, the public website that anonymously publishes leaks of sensitive documents, has aired a major US government study on intelligence and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study, titled Intelligence Operations and Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan, was initially published on a confidential basis in November of 2008 by the Research and Development (RAND) Corporation, the research arm of the US Pentagon. Originally prepared for the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command, the 318-page study is described by Wikileaks as the “Pentagon Papers” of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The RAND Corporation report findings are reportedly not as interesting as the “candid and revealing interview quotes” scattered throughout the document, which represent the views on the wars of nearly 300 intelligence officers and diplomats from the US, Britain and the Netherlands. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Are CIA Agents out of Control (Again)?

February 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
What’s going on at the CIA? As the corruption trial of Kyle “Dysty” Foggo, the Agency’s no. 3 under former CIA Director Porter Goss, continues this week, news has emerged that the Agency’s station chief in Algeria has been unceremoniously recalled back to Washington after being accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women at his residence. Meanwhile, an unidentified “former CIA station chief in Baghdad, allegedly ‘notorious’ for womanizing and the licentious behavior of his aides, is in line to become chief of the spy agency’s powerful Counterterrorism Center”. One might be excused for wondering what’s next for the troubled agency. Read article→

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Analysis: Iranian Terrorist Group Enjoys US, EU Protection

January 29, 2009 by 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), also known as the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, is one of several armed groups deemed terrorist by Washington and the European Union (EU). On January 26, however, the EU decided to remove MEK from its official list of terrorist organizations, a move that some observers believe was secretly supported by the US. This is because, despite MEK’s terrorist designation, Washington has routinely collaborated with it since 2003, prompted by the group’s fierce opposition to the regime in Tehran. In 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, American forces entered Camp Ashraf, MEK’s main military base in Iraq, to find “armored personnel carriers, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and vehicles […] along with more than 2,000 well-maintained tanks”. However, even though the group if officially classified by the US as terrorist, US troops were ordered by the Pentagon to give military protection to MEK armed groups in Iraq. Since then, Western correspondents in Iraq have frequently reported that US military personnel “regularly escort MEK supply runs between Baghdad and […] Camp Ashraf”. Read article →

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FBI continues arrests of Iraqi intelligence operatives in US

December 31, 2008 by 1 Comment

Using Iraqi intelligence documents recovered during the 2003 US invasion, the FBI is continuing its arrests of Iraqi agents on US soil. On December 23, Saubhe Jassim Al-Dellemy, an American citizen of Iraqi origin, pleaded guilty to having “served for more than a decade as an agent of the regime of Saddam Hussein”. FBI documents state that Al-Dellemy exploited the proximity of his Maryland restaurant to the National Security Agency to “gather information about the US government”. On December 24, Mouyad Mahmoud Darwish, a Canadian citizen of Iraqi origin, was arrested while entering the United States from Canada, and charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Iraqi government before, during, and shortly after the US invasion of Iraq. Read more of this post

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Alleged Iranian intelligence agent arrested in Iraq

December 21, 2008 by Leave a comment

The US Pentagon-controlled American Forces Press Agency has reported the arrest of an alleged Iranian intelligence agent in Qastin, approximately 30 km north of Baghdad. The unnamed arrestee, who was captured after an intelligence tip, is allegedly a “commander of Iranian special operations” forces stationed covertly on Iraq’s soil. The US information claims he helped facilitate training of Iraqi resistance fighters at clandestine camps operated by Quds Force (Jerusalem Force), a paramilitary unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Coprs, whose mission is to organize, train, equip, and finance foreign Islamist revolutionary movements. The US has long ago accused Quds Force and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps of providing direct assistance to Iraqi resistance groups, including providing them with weapons. [IA]

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Waxman sides with CIA on Iraq intelligence dispute

December 21, 2008 by Leave a comment

For several years, disgraced former US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, have maintained that the CIA approved the routine use in Presidential speeches of dubious intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Recently, George W. Bush upheld to these claims by blaming the US intelligence community for the false information on Iraqi WMD. Now the chair of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), has written a memo [pdf] containing the results of his investigation on the matter. In it, Rep. Waxman explains that “the CIA had warned at least four National Security Council officials not to allow Bush, in three speeches in 2002, to cite questionable intelligence that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium”. Read more of this post

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Iraq Interior Ministry ‘coup plotters’ ordered released

December 21, 2008 by Leave a comment

On December 18, The New York Times reported that dozens of pro-Ba’ath officials in Iraq’s Interior Ministry had been arrested while “in the early stages of planning a coup”. The arrestees, four of whom have the rank of General, had been detained by “an elite counterterrorism force” controlled directly by the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. A day later, however, Iraq’s Minister of the Interior, Jawad al-Bolani, told the Associated Press that a judge had ordered the arrestees to be released, reportedly “after determining there was no evidence that they conspired to bring back Saddam Hussein’s banned Baath party”. Read more of this post

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Reports of arrests of purported ‘coup plotters’ in Iraq

December 18, 2008 by Leave a comment

The New York Times is reporting that dozens of officials in Iraq’s Interior Ministry have been arrested while “in the early stages of planning a coup”. The arrestees, four of whom have the rank of General, have been detained during the past three days by “an elite counterterrorism force” controlled directly by the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. The paper cites “senior security officials in Baghdad” in claiming that many of those arrested were affiliated with Al Awda (The Return) an underground secular paramilitary group composed mostly of former Ba’ath members. This might explain why the arrested officials were “a mix of Sunnis and Shiites”, according to several sources, who also claimed that “huge amounts of money” had been confiscated during the raids. [IA]

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Comment: Bush blaming intelligence for Iraq debacle is cowardice

December 10, 2008 by Leave a comment

US President George W. Bush commented on ABC News last week that the biggest regret of his Presidency is “the intelligence failure in Iraq” and that he “wish[es] the intelligence had been different, I guess”. This response by the President to a question concerning his Presidency’s “do-overs” represents the ultimate political cowardice. In blaming the intelligence services for the Iraq invasion debacle, George Bush knows that, as a matter of standard policy, the intelligence community is unable to respond to these allegations. Read Article →

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USAF interrogator says torture caused thousands of US troops’ deaths in Iraq

December 3, 2008 by Leave a comment

Matthew Alexander is the pseudonym used by a former US Air Force interrogator. He served for fourteen years, undertook special missions in over 30 countries and conducted or supervised over 1,300 interrogations. He was awarded a Bronze Star for his tour in Iraq, which he completed in 2006. Alexander has authored an editorial in The Washington Post, titled “I’m Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq”. The article is deeply critical of what Alexander describes as “the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the US military conducts interrogations in Iraq”. Read more of this post

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