News you may have missed #0095

September 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New revelations about Bulgarian domestic spying case. It appears that Operation GALLERY (a.k.a. Operation GALERIA), by the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS), was primarily aimed at the Bulgarian tabloid newspaper Weekend and journalist Dimitar Zlatkov. Journalist Ognyan Stefanov, who was nearly beaten to death after authoring an article implicating DANS officials in illicit trafficking activities (see previous intelNews coverage), appears to have been simply collateral damage.
  • Taliban use CIA-supplied mines against US-led forces in Afghanistan. Evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban itself suggest that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the US to the jihadi movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
  • Massive domestic spying revealed in Russia. From January to June this year, Russian intelligence agents surreptitiously opened 115,000 letters, listened in on 64,000 personal phone conversations, and broke into 11,000 private homes according to information from Russia’s Supreme Court.

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News you may have missed #0091

September 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • McCain denies private agreement with CIA torture tactic. A recently released memo suggests that Republican US Senator John McCain, famous for his stance against torture, privately agreed with a CIA six-day sleep-deprivation technique.
  • CIA rejects further declassifications on torture-related material. The CIA said on Monday that it would release no more documents related to the Bush administration’s torture and detention policies, because disclosing the information “will threaten national security”. The ACLU called this an affront to the Obama Administration’s policies.
  • Taliban kill Afghan intelligence chief. Abdullah Laghmani, who headed the National Directorate for Security (NDS) was among at least 23 people, including a number of senior officials, killed in the suicide attack. This was one of the few times that the Taliban specifically targeted intelligence officials.

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Taliban execute Mehsud’s family members on espionage charges

August 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Baitullah Mehsud

Baitullah Mehsud

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Four relatives of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were reportedly arrested last week by Taliban militants, who suspect them of having informed Pakistani and US intelligence about Mehsud’s whereabouts. Pakistani and US officials say they are almost certain that Mehsud was killed in an unmanned drone air strike (probably remotely operated by the CIA) earlier this month. Mehsud’s family members arrested by the Taliban include his father-in-law, Ikramuddin Mehsud, his son, Ziauddin Mehsud, his brother, Saeedullah Mehsud, and his nephew, Iqbal Mehsud. Earlier today, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, told reporters that the Taliban have executed Mehsud’s family members, listed above, after “confirming” their espionage activities. Read more of this post

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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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Intelligence sources speak of clashes between rival Pakistani militias

August 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

Baitullah Mehsud

Mehsud

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Exactly one week after Pakistani officials announced the assassination of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, there are unconfirmed reports of serious clashes between rival armed factions in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Canadian sources are quoting unnamed intelligence officials who claim that Mehsud’s Taliban fighters are engaged in an all-out offensive against militia followers of Turkistan Bitani, a tribal warlord backed by the Pakistani government. Bitani spoke to the Associated Press saying that 90 fighters have so far died in the offensive and that at least 40 houses have been destroyed. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0065

August 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Is Mehsud dead, and if so, who or what killed him?

August 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Baitullah Mehsud

Baitullah Mehsud

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
There is confusion about the fate of Pakistan’s senior Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud. On August 7, the Pakistani military told the world’s media that an unmanned drone air strike (probably operated by the CIA) had killed Mehsud. The Associated Press reported that a Taliban commander in Pakistan, Kafayat Ullah, had confirmed that “Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan”. Pakistani military officials said they were “reasonably sure” of the accuracy of these reports, but that they did not possess irrefutable “forensic evidence” of Mehsud’s death. Over the weekend, however, other Taliban leaders came forward to contest Ullah’s account. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0041

July 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

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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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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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Foreign spy services active in Pakistani army’s war with the Taliban

June 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Fazlullah

Fazlullah

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Pakistani military and security officials alleged earlier this week that foreign intelligence services are helping pro-Taliban warlords fight the Pakistani army in Swat and in other tribal areas in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. According to news reports from Islamabad, the officials have presented the Pakistani government with an extensive report alleging covert assistance to pro-Taliban forces from Indian and Israeli agents. The classified report alleges that Israel supplies tribal warlords “with modern technology”, including radio equipment, while Indian agents, operating out of Indian consulates in the region, are providing the Taliban with weapons and probably training. Pakistani military officials claim they have proof of visits by Indian operatives to Taliban training camps and of meetings between Indian operatives and leading pro-Taliban military leaders and propagandists, such as Maulana Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud. Read more of this post

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Analysis: CIA now operates on its own inside Pakistan

April 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

Border region

Border region

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Pakistani newspaper The Daily Times has published what is probably the most significant report from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in recent months. The paper quotes senior Pakistani government officials in arguing that intelligence cooperation and coordination between Washington and Islamabad is now “at its lowest level”. One senior intelligence source describes the present situation as the latest stage in a gradual process of deterioration in relations between the two countries, beginning in 2001-2003, when “relations were good” and intelligence sharing was considerable in scale. As intelNews readers have known since November 16, 2008, these sharing arrangements included CIA-orchestrated airstrikes on Pakistani soil by unmanned drones, which the Pakistani leadership then secretly approved. However, The Daily Times reports that eventually Washington began notifying Islamabad just “minutes before carrying out strikes”. In recent weeks “[t]he level of cooperation has gone so low that the US now even does not intimate Pakistan after a drone strike” (emphasis added,) according to one senior Pakistani security official. 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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CIA assassinations in Pakistan now almost routine

March 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The targeted assassinations by the CIA in Pakistan have become routine to the extent that the US media have now stopped covering them. Last Thursday, four more missiles fired by a CIA-operated unmanned aircraft hit an alleged “militant hideout and training camp” in Kurram Valley, a tribally administered Pakistani region on the border with Afghanistan. A Reuters news agency correspondent in Islamabad quotes an unnamed senior Pakistani government official in Kuram who alleges that the missiles “hit a militant hideout and training camp in the Barjo area”. Also cited in the Reuters report is Noor Islam, a villager from the Barjo area, who stated that “[t]he training camp was completely destroyed” and that “at least 14 people were killed”. After a similar strike in Afghanistan last month, the US Pentagon was eventually forced to admit  that it killed “13 Afghan civilians and only three militants”. Read more of this post

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US Special Forces already stationed in Pakistan, article reveals

February 26, 2009 by 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
American and Pakistani military officials have disclosed to The New York Times what defense and intelligence analysts have suspected for quite some time: namely that US military forces are already secretly operating in Pakistan. The officials, who spoke “on condition of anonymity”, confirmed [article reprinted in The International Herald Tribune] that more than 70 US “military advisers […] and technical specialists” are helping Pakistan’s armed forces fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the remote areas bordering Afghanistan. Predictably, the US advisers, who have been stationed in Pakistan since the summer of 2008, include “communications experts and other specialists”. The latter allegedly do not participate in ground combat, but routinely provide Pakistani commandos and specialist units with intelligence data. Read more of this post

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