US silent about CIA asset’s cover-up of Afghan massacre

December 12, 2008 by Leave a comment

During the US invasion of Afghanistan, local warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum was among the CIA’s most valuable assets. With the close cooperation of CIA agents and members of the US Special Forces, General Dostum and his army supported countless American operations in northern Afghanistan. In the process, Dostum and his men participated in a considerable number of documented war crimes. In one of those instances around 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war were locked in large metal containers and allowed to suffocate to death, or were massacred by bullets fired into the containers by Dostum’s troops. Their remains were buried in large mass graves in a desert north of Mazar-e-Sharif. Recently, large bulldozers and backhoes were used to exhume the remains of the murdered men and move them to an unknown location. Local authorities say this was the job of General Dostum, who has become alarmed by the impending change of guard in Washington. Read more of this post

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Interesting questions about the Cyber Security Committee’s report

December 8, 2008 by Leave a comment

After the recent stir caused by purported cyber-attacks that struck the US Pentagon’s computers in October, news has emerged that the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency has finally revealed its findings about the future of online governmental security. The Commission, whose panel “includes executives, high-ranking military officers and intelligence officials, leading specialists in computer security, and two members of Congress”, spent the last few months visiting computer labs at the National Security Agency as well as being briefed “in closed-door sessions by top officials from Pentagon, CIA, and British spy agency MI5”. Read more of this post

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Russians deny cyber-attacks, accuse US of hypocrisy

December 5, 2008 by Leave a comment

On November 28 we reported on conflicting and muddled reports in the US media about a purported cyber-attack that had struck the Pentagon’s computers during the previous month. According to The Los Angeles Times, the attack “raised potential implications for national security” that were considered important enough to brief the President. The paper further claimed that the attack originated in Russia and appeared “designed specifically to target military networks”. Yesterday the Russian Foreign Ministry struck back at the allegation, calling it “a fabrication”. It also reminded observers that the Russian delegation initiated a formal resolution on international IT security at the 63rd UN Assembly, back in September of 2008. Interestingly, the resolution was almost unanimously approved by Assembly members. The only vote against it? You guessed it: the US of A. Could it be that the US, which has been building its own advanced cyber-attack arsenal since the mid-1990s, has more to gain from international IT insecurity than do its adversaries? [JF]
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Analysis: German intelligence in Kosovo

November 29, 2008 by Leave a comment

The epicenter of the latest round of intelligence positioning in the Balkans is the tiny Albanian-dominated region of Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008. In the early hours of November 14, Kosovo Police arrested three individuals suspected of detonating an explosive device at the International Civilian Office, an urban landmark in capital Pristina that houses the office of the European Union’s (EU) special envoy to Kosovo. The three turned out to be German Federal Intelligence Service agents, employees of Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. What is more, all of them appeared to be working in deep cover (“in private capacity”, as the Kosovo Police spokesperson put it), having no affiliation with the German Embassy in Pristina, no diplomatic passports and no diplomatic immunity. Would the BND really instruct its agents to place a bomb at the EU mission in Pristina? And what is the BND doing in Kosovo anyway? Joseph Fitsanakis explains. [JF]

 

REFERENCES CITED IN THIS REPORT:

Fitsanakis, J. (2008) “German Intelligence Active in Kosovo”, intelNews, November 29

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