Has US Pentagon revived Bush-era domestic spy program?
June 25, 2010 2 Comments
US Pentagon
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A little-known US Department of Defense counterintelligence is suspected to have resuscitated a notorious Bush-era domestic surveillance program, which was banned by Congress for being too obtrusive. In 2002, the then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz authorized the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON), a US Air Force intelligence collection program aimed to gather data on potential threats to American armed forces personnel in the US and abroad. But the initiative was allegedly shelved by the Bush administration, after it emerged that TALON intelligence collection focused largely on political policing against lawful antiwar groups. But now new reports suggest that an obscure unit under the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), called the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC), is creating a new system of consolidated databases whose focus closely resembles that of TALON. Read more of this post
CIA slowly opens up about botched 1952 mission in China
June 28, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments
CIA HQ
By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The CIA has produced an hour-long documentary about a failed 1952 covert mission inside China, which resulted in the death of two American pilots and the capture of two CIA paramilitary officers, who spent a total of 40 years in Chinese prisons. The documentary, which premiered last week on a restricted basis at the Agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters, is based on internal CIA accounts of the operation, some of which were released in 2006. The premiere was reportedly attended by John Downey and Richard Fecteau, two CIA paramilitary officers on their first mission, who were captured by Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units inside Chinese territory, after the CIA-operated C-47 Skytrain airplane that was carrying them deep inside Chinese airspace was shot down in a Chinese ambush. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with C-47 Skytrain, Changbai mountains (China), China, Chinese People's Liberation Army, CIA, Civil Air Transport, Cold War, covert operations, declassification, history, John Downey, Mao Zedong, News, Norman Schwartz, Richard Fecteau, Richard Nixon, Robert Snoddy, United States