US drone strikes inside Pakistan increasingly lethal, study finds [updated]

July 22, 2009 by Leave a comment

Predator drone

Predator drone

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Strikes by CIA or Pentagon unmanned Predator drones in Pakistan have increased in frequency and lethality, according to a study published yesterday. Some may question the study, which was conducted on behalf of The Long War Journal, a news and analysis outlet edited by retired US Navy Intelligence Specialist D.J. Elliott, who maintains strong ties to the US Department of Defense [*] Bill Roggio, who also contributes to Bill Kristol’s neoconservative Weekly Standard. Despite its limitations, the report provides an almost unique public record of the frequency and tactical outcomes of the US airstrikes in Pakistan. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Why were CIA assassination squads canceled?

July 17, 2009 by 3 Comments

CIA HQ

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Despite all the razzmatazz surrounding the rumored secret CIA plan to set up assassination squads, several questions remain unanswered. IntelNews is among a number of websites that believe that something in the entire controversy doesn’t add up. The fact is, as I have mentioned before, the ongoing strikes by US unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan effectively amount to

deliberate assassinations of suspected terrorists, which are planned and implemented outside the framework of even elementary judicial oversight. Regardless of one’s feelings about terrorism, the democratic process […] explicitly forbids the circumvention of longstanding legal norms, which specify concrete judicial means of arrest, detention, trial and punishment of accused criminals.

So, if it is the case that the CIA is already following a policy of targeted assassinations –which often result in indiscriminate murder of civilians– then why all the fuss about the CIA assassination squad revelations? Moreover, why was the project reportedly canceled? Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Greg Miller provides a possible explanation. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0025

July 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

  • BREAKING NEWS: Several news outlets are reporting this morning that it was former US vice-President Dick Cheney who ordered the CIA to conceal from Congress key information about a covert action intelligence program of an undisclosed nature. See here for more.
  • New book claims Ernest Hemingway was KGB agent. The new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, alleges that the Nobel prize-winning novelist was on the KGB’s list of agents in America from 1941, when he was given the codename “Argo” by the Soviets.
  • Thousands of former Stasi spies still working in German civil service. A report in the German edition of The Financial Times claims that over 17,000 former members of East Germany’s Stasi remain employed as civil servants in reunified Germany. Stasi is the name commonly used for the Ministry for State Security, communist East Germany’s secret police.
  • NSA director’s secret visit to New Zealand revealed. A reporter accidentally spotted Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, director of the US National Security Agency, entering a Wellington building accompanied by security personnel. The revelation prompted a spokesperson at the US embassy in Wellington to admit that Alexander was indeed in New Zealand “for consultations with government officials”. The close signals intelligence relationship between the US and New Zealand have been known since 1996.
  • Chinese national caught trying to purchase crypto hardware. Chi Tong Kuok was arrested by the FBI at the Atlanta International Airport en route from Paris to Panama, where he allegedly planned to purchase US military radios. The US government claims Kuok has admitted he was “acting at the direction of officials for the People’s Republic of China”.
  • Taliban say cell phone SIM cards guide US drone strikes. A Taliban circular says SIM cards planted by informants in cell phones used by militants are used to signal American drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As IntelNews recently explained, there are suspicions that this and similar discoveries are gradually prompting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to stop using cell phones altogether.

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CIA Director acknowledges, defends drone strikes in Pakistan

May 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
CIA Director Leon Panetta made an extremely rare public acknowledgement of the CIA unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan, while speaking recently before the Pacific Council on International Policy. Panetta was speaking in reaction to a May 17 article in The New York Times by David Kilcullen, former counterinsurgency adviser to US Army General David Petraeus, and Center for a New American Security fellow Andrew Exum. Kilcullen and Exum joined intelNews in its March 15 condemnation of the illegal and counterproductive CIA airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months. Read more of this post

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Comment: CIA operations in Pakistan will continue despite DoD involvement

May 21, 2009 by 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last week, when news emerged that the US will be expanding its unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan, I received several reader emails arguing that the CIA air operations inside Pakistan will soon be over. These expectations are unrealistic. Washington has decided to deploy a separate fleet of drones under military command, which will be deployed alongside, not in replacement of, CIA Predator drones. There appear to be at least three reasons –perhaps as many as four– for this development. Read more of this post

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Advisors tell Obama to expand covert war inside Pakistan

March 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Baluchistan

Baluchistan

By I. ALLEN and J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Reports are emerging today that the Obama White House is considering intensifying US covert operations and CIA drone airstrikes deep inside Pakistan. If carried out, these operations will be taking place in Pakistan’s vast Baluchistan province, and would represent a major escalation in the so-called “war on terrorism”. Until now, strikes by US unmanned drones, operated by the CIA, have been strictly limited to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border. But The New York Times report that “at least two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area” to include Baluchistan. Additionally, the paper reports that several of the President’s advisors favor “conduct[ing] cross-border ground actions [deep inside Pakistan], using CIA and Special Operations commandos”. Read more of this post

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Feinstein causes furor as CIA assassinations continue

February 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Thirty more people were killed this past weekend in Pakistan by US missiles fired from unmanned CIA drone planes, in the second such strike on Barack Obama’s watch. In late January, two more missiles killed at least 20 people, according to international news agencies. That these drone attacks by the CIA are authorized by the US and Pakistani governments has been well known and well reported for some time. IntelNews is among several news outlets that have reported on a high-level US-Pakistani agreement by which “the US government refuses to publicly acknowledge the [US missile] attacks [on Pakistani soil] while Pakistan’s government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes”. This website has repeatedly questioned the legality of these extrajudicial assassinations, which apparently is an issue that does not concern the Obama administration or most US intelligence experts. The more important question in the minds of intelligence observers appears to be why the US is unable to hold its side of their bargain. Read more of this post

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Comment: Obama Should Address CIA Assassinations

January 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Just hours after issuing executive orders for the abolition of the use of torture against terrorism detainees and the closure of the Guantánamo detention facility, US President Barack Obama was already being praised as acting “in a manner consistent with our nation’s values, consistent with our Constitution and consistent with the rule of law”. One jubilant pundit publicly opined that the US has now “reclaimed its place among nations that respect the rule of law and human dignity”. Not so fast. Blinded by the glare of triumphant statements about reclaiming America’s lost moral ground, observers overlooked two US missile strikes that hit Pakistan on Friday afternoon, killing at least 20 people, according to international news agencies. Keep Reading–>

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