News you may have missed #512

May 25, 2011 by Leave a comment

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Comment: Five Surprising Truths About the Killing of Bin Laden

May 5, 2011 by 10 Comments

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS* | intelNews.org |
For intelligence and terrorism experts, the frustrating part of Osama bin Laden’s assassination is not the lack of details on the operation, nor the diplomatic ping-pong currently taking place between America and Pakistan. Rather it is the media spectacle that has unfolded around the story ever since it first made headlines. The cacophony of conjecture that has hijacked the global news agenda is maintained by an army of talking heads, who rely on rumor and speculation to satisfy sensationalist media editors. The outcome is a sterile media circus, devoid of substance, which leaves news consumers confused and uninformed. To counter this trend, intelNews lists here five truths of critical importance about Osama bin Laden’s assassination. In summary: One, America does not have to prove it killed bin Laden. Two, bin Laden’s assassination is not a victory against terrorism. Three, it likely will not reduce —and may even increase— terrorism. Four, it will not have the slightest effect on the Taliban or the war in Afghanistan. Five, even if the Pakistani government consciously shielded bin Laden, there is not much the US can do about it. More specifically:

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News you may have missed #498

April 16, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • US claims Iran helping Syria crackdown. Iran is secretly helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad put down pro-democracy demonstrations, according to US officials, who say Tehran is providing gear to suppress crowds and assistance blocking and monitoring protesters’ use of the Internet, cellphones and text-messaging.
  • Frenchmen arrested in Pakistan. One of the French citizens is of Pakistani origin and the other is a Caucasian convert to Islam; the two had apparently intended to travel to Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, where al-Qaida’s top command is based, for terrorist training, according to a US official.
  • Did US blow up its old spy satellite? The US military’s huge reconnaissance satellite Lacrosse 2, which was launched 20 years ago, has been reported by amateur satellite observers as missing in action –a sign that the classified spacecraft may have been purposely destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere.

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News you may have missed #496

April 12, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • US secretly collaborating with Chinese spies on North Korea. Leaked records of highly sensitive US-China defense consultations reveal that the CIA, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the US Defense Department, have all held secret discussions on North Korea with Chinese military intelligence.
  • Cuba denounces acquittal of ex-CIA agent. Cuba has denounced as a ‘farce’ the acquittal in the United States of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent who Havana says participated in terrorist attacks against the island. Carriles was accused of lying to US immigration officials.
  • Analysis: US spy agencies struggling to adjust to Middle East changes. With popular protests toppling rulers in Tunisia and Egypt and threatening leaders in Yemen and elsewhere, US intelligence agencies are struggling to adjust to a radically changed landscape, US officials, former intelligence officers and experts say.

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Revelations continue in ex-CIA agent’s trial in Texas

January 26, 2011 by Leave a comment

Luis Posada Carriles

Carriles

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A United States government informant testifying at the immigration trial of a former CIA agent has described how he was smuggled into the US from Mexico onboard a luxury boat. It was believed that the former agent, Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles, had arrived in the US from Honduras in 2005 using a forged Guatemalan passport. But Gilberto Abascal, an anti-Castro Cuban exile who has been an informant for the FBI since 1999, has told a court in Texas that Carriles was smuggled into Miami on a 90-foot luxury yacht, which carried him from Mexico’s Isla Mujeres to a waterfront Cuban restaurant. Abascal told the court that Carriles disembarked the yacht using a small speedboat, before the yacht’s owner, Santiago Alvarez, reported to US Customs in Miami. Remarkably, Carriles’ smuggling went according to plan, despite the fact that the Miami Chief of Police was among the restaurant’s patrons at the time of the speedboat’s arrival. Carriles is a militant anticommunist who is idolized by America’s anti-Castro Cubans, but is considered a terrorist in parts of Latin America due to his self-confessed participation in a string of bombings of hotels in Havana, Cuba, in 1997. Read more of this post

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Ex-CIA agent and anti-Castro militant on trial in Texas

January 18, 2011 by 2 Comments

Carriles in 1962

Carriles in 1962

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A former CIA agent and militant anticommunist, who is idolized by America’s anti-Castro Cubans, but is considered a terrorist in parts of Latin America, has gone on trial in Texas. Luís Posada Carriles, 82, known as “the bin Laden of the Americas” by his detractors, gained notoriety for his self-confessed participation in a string of bombings of hotels in Havana, Cuba, in 1997. He is wanted by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela for his alleged role in the dramatic 1976 midair bombing of Cubana flight 455, which killed all 73 crew and passengers onboard. The United States government has placed Carriles on trial for lying about his militant activities to US immigration officials, after arriving here in 2005. Specifically, Carriles faces 11 charges of perjury, obstruction and naturalization fraud, which he is said to have committed at a 2007 immigration hearing in El Paso. At that hearing, he allegedly denied under oath his participation in the 1997 Havana bombings, and failed to report being in possession of a fake Guatemalan passport, which he had used to enter the United States two years earlier. Read more of this post

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Even more underreported WikiLeaks revelations

December 9, 2010 by Leave a comment

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It appears increasingly likely that Sweden will extradite Julian Assange to the United States, where the WikiLeaks founder will face espionage charges. But the WikiLeaks revelations keep coming, although not all of them receive the worldwide media attention that they deserve. Take for instance the disclosure that at least three senior Australian Labour Party (ALP) politicians have operated as “protected sources” (diplomatic parlance for secret informants), providing regular updates on internal ALP politics to US embassy operatives in Canberra. According to internal US diplomatic cables released on Thursday, ALP politicians Bob McMullan, Michael Danby and Mark Arbib, who currently serves as the Australian federal government’s Minister for Sport, regularly held secret meetings with US embassy officials after 2004.  All three deny accusations that they acted as spies for the US. Another underreported WikiLeaks revelation concerns a 2008 proposal by the Saudi government to create an US- and NATO-backed Arab military force to invade Lebanon, seeking to obliterate Shiite paramilitary group Hezbollah, which controls large sections of the country. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #432

September 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • French spy agency chief warns of high terror risk. Bernard Squarcini, director of France’s Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) counterintelligence agency, has warned that the country’s military presence in Afghanistan is among the reasons that have made France a prime target for radical Islamist groups.
  • Iran frees one of three Americans held on spy charges. American Sarah Shourd, who has been held in Iran for more than a year on suspicion of spying, has been released by authorities in the Islamic Republic.
  • American civil rights photographer was FBI informant. New information shows that celebrated civil rights-era photographer Ernest Withers had been a paid informant for the FBI, reporting on the whereabouts and activities of the movement’s leaders, many of whom considered him a personal friend.

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News you may have missed #406

August 4, 2010 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #405

August 3, 2010 by 2 Comments

  • Democracy Now on Google-CIA partnership. Democracy Now has aired an interview with John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Inside Google project, and Noah Shachtman, of Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, who broke the story of the Google-CIA investment partnership.
  • Ex-CIA chief downplays cyberwar with China. Retired CIA chief Michael Hayden downplayed the notion that the US is in a raging “cyberwar” with China during a speech on Thursday at the Black Hat Technical Security Conference in Las Vegas.
  • Men held over parcel bomb sent to MI6. Two men have been arrested in north Wales, after parcel bombs were sent to the offices of the British government executive at 10 Downing Street, and the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency. The two men, aged 52 and 21, are believed to be related and of Pakistani origin.

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Analysis: Europe Offers Different Counterterrorism Approach

May 13, 2010 by Leave a comment

Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
I have in the past posed the intriguing question of whether US intelligence agencies should learn from the French approach to counterterrorism. This issue has now come up again in an interesting Washington Post essay, which examines the different approaches to Islamic militancy by American and European intelligence organizations. Some of these differences are undoubtedly contextual: there are no First Amendment rights in Europe, and European law enforcement and intelligence organizations enjoy a somewhat wider legal latitude in which to operate domestically. Moreover, the Europeans, especially the French and the British, have a longer experience than the Americans in dealing with armed insurgencies. But there are also critical differences in tactics. Importantly, the European approach to Islamic militancy has not only been more pro-active than the American, but also a lot more discreet and clandestine. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #321 (CIA edition)

April 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Uruguay ex-president sent to prison for 1973 coup. Declassified documents show that, at the time of the coup, Juan María Bordaberry told the US ambassador that “Uruguay’s democratic traditions and institutions […] were themselves the real threat to democracy”.
  • FSB ‘dropped the ball’ in Moscow metro bombings. Two Russian intelligence observers argue that Russia’s new strategy has shifted toward preventing coordinated actions by large groups of militants, which has come at the expense of taking measures to prevent individual suicide attacks, such as those of last Monday in Moscow.
  • Calls for expanded DoJ probe of FBI killing of Detroit imam. The US Justice Department is probing the killing of Detroit-area Islamic cleric Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was shot dead during an FBI raid shortly after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. The FBI said Abdullah was shot after he opened fire, but critics say he may have been targeted for assassination.

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Declassified MI5 files offer wealth of new information

March 11, 2010 by Leave a comment

Sophie Kukralova

Sophie Kukralova

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Britain’s National Archives have authorized the release of nearly 200 files from the vaults of MI5, the country’s domestic intelligence service. The release of the documents, which range from 1937 to 1955, has given rise to numerous interesting historical revelations, including an apparent effort by German Hitler Youth groups to establish personal and institutional links with Lord Baden-Powell, founder and leader of the Boy Scouts. The relevant MI5 file notes that Baden-Powell, who was “wined and dined by senior Hitler Youth figures”, responded enthusiastically to the Nazi charm offensive. Other revelations include the Soviet sympathies of Sidney Bernstein, later Baron Bernstein, who founded Britain’s Granada Theatres (later Granada Television) in 1926. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Should US spy agencies learn from France?

January 16, 2010 by 3 Comments

Jean-Louis Bruguiere

J.L. Bruguiere

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
What precisely is wrong with the US intelligence system? I have read several good analyses lately, all sparked by the disastrous Christmas holiday week, which included the Christmas Day bomber fiasco and the killing of seven CIA personnel in Afghanistan. One is written by ex-CIA operations officer Charles Faddis, who argues that the Agency’s central deficiency is that it places emphasis on process, rather than on mission accomplishment. Another, broader, analysis is authored by Ron Capps, the US Pentagon’s former director of human intelligence/counterintelligence operations in Afghanistan, who suggests that the way to break down bureaucratic walls between US intelligence agencies is to publish more unclassified reports. The most interesting commentary, however, is written by Paris-based Jean-Louis Bruguière, a French former Magistrate who led counterterrorism investigations from 1981 to 2007. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0236

December 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Airline bomb plotter’s father warned CIA about his son. Dr. Umaru AbdulMutallab, the father of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect, visited the US embassy in Nigeria in November, where he told a CIA agent that he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen.
  • New book details Stasi spying on Günter Grass. A new book, entitled Guenter Grass im Visier: Die Stasi-Akte (Günter Grass in the Crosshairs: The Stasi Files), is to be published in March in Germany. Among other things, it will detail spying operations against the Nobel Prize-winning author by the East German secret police, the Stasi.
  • Former Albanian spymaster claiming benefits in Britain. Ilir Kumbaro, Albania’s former spymaster, is wanted by authorities for having kidnapped and tortured three men in his homeland. But after falling out with officials there, he fled to Britain in 1996, where he has lived for 13 years using the alias Shaqa Shatri.

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