News you may have missed #0059

  • Torture report says UK government ministers shielded MI5, MI6. A new report from Britain’s parliamentary human rights committee accuses senior cabinet ministers of “hiding behind a wall of secrecy” to avoid being held to account over allegations of British intelligence agents’ collusion in torture.
  • US cyber czar resigns. Senior intelligence official Melissa Hathaway, who was US President Barack Obama’s choice to monitor America’s online security, said in an interview that she is leaving “for personal reasons”.
  • South Korean opposition skeptical of request for new intelligence powers. Opposition parties in South Korea are critical of the National Intelligence Service’s (NIS) recent request to gain access to information on financial transactions amounting to 20 million won or more without a warrant.

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CIA whistleblower’s memo on Peru declassified after eight years

V.L. Montesinos

V.L. Montesinos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A memorandum drafted in 2001 by a CIA officer, detailing assistance illegally provided by the CIA to the former chief of Peruvian intelligence, has been declassified following an eight-year court battle. In the memorandum, CIA employee Franz Boening argued that the Agency violated US law by providing material and political assistance to Vladimiro Ilich Montesinos Torres, a graduate of the US Army’s School of the Americas and longtime CIA operative, who headed Peru’s Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN) under the corrupt administration of President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori is now in prison, as is Montesinos himself. But in 2001, the CIA Inspector General, to whom Boening’s memorandum was addressed, took no action in response to the officer’s allegations. What is more, the CIA proceeded to classify Boening’s memorandum, claiming that its disclosure “reasonably could be expected to cause damage to national security”. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0058

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Mysterious “CIA spy in Iran” calls for stronger US policy

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A mysterious CIA informant, who claims he worked for the CIA inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, has called for “a strong Western hand” against the Iranian government. In an article published earlier today in The Christian Science Monitor, the informant, who uses the pseudonym “Reza Kahlili”, says that defending “what remains of democracy and freedom in Iran” is one of the West’s “most important decisions of our era”. “Kahlili” makes vague mentions of working “for years alongside” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, “as a CIA spy working undercover […], starting in the 1980s”. In arguing for a stronger Western stance against Iran, “Kahlili” alleges that, in the 1980s, unnamed European governments made secret pacts with the Iranian government, allowing them “to assassinate opposition members abroad without interference, as long as European citizens were not at risk”, in exchange for steady supplies of Iranian oil. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0057

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NSA looking to build 5.8 million square feet by 2029

NSA HQ

NSA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The US National Security Agency filed a notice in last month’s Federal Register, laying out a 20-year plan to construct 5.8 million square feet of new working and storage space on its Fort George G. Meade headquarters, and staff it with 11,000 people. The Baltimore Business Journal and The Baltimore Sun, which first spotted the notice, said the NSA will not say how many of the 11,000 jobs will be new. The Sun asked the gigantic agency, which already employs over 25,000 people around Baltimore alone, for more details on its plans. But the NSA, which is tasked by the US government with worldwide communications surveillance as well as communications security, merely repeated the information contained in the Federal Register, saying it needs new buildings to “meet mission growth requirements” and to “consolidate” its output. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0055

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CIA director says Congress should let go of CIA’s past actions

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
CIA director Leon Panetta has criticized Congress for its “focus on the past” that “threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions”. In an editorial published last weekend in The Washington Post, Panetta says he is becoming “increasingly concerned” that “wrong judgments” made by the Bush Administration after 9/11 have damaged the broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches of the US government about the CIA’s role and activities. But the CIA director says the “sincerity or the patriotism” of Bush Administration officials should not be questioned, as they “were trying to respond as best they could” in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead, Panetta argues for learning “lessons from the past without getting stuck there”, and warns that “classified information that shapes […] conversations” between the CIA and Congress must be protected. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0052

  • Expert says US Army’s spying on activists was illegal. Eugene R. Fidell, a military law expert at Yale Law School, says the spying by the US Army against two activist groups in Washington state, which was revealed earlier this week, appears to violate the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of the US Army for conventional law enforcement activities against civilians.
  • German court rules spy services withheld information –again. Germany’s highest court has concluded that the government illegally withheld information from investigators probing into alleged spying on parliamentarians by Germany’s intelligence services (BND). Last week the BND was found to have withheld information from a parliamentary inquiry into the BND’s role in the detention of two Muslims from Germany at a US prison in Afghanistan.
  • Nearly 2.5 million have US government security clearances. The US Government Accountability Office estimates that 2.4 persons currently hold security clearances for authorized access to classified information. This number does not include those “with clearances who work in areas of national intelligence”.

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News you may have missed #0051

  • Instigator of Church committee hearings speaks about domestic intelligence. Christopher Pyle, the American whistleblower who in the 1970s sparked the Church Committee hearings on intelligence activities, has spoken about the recent revelations of US Army personnel spying on activist groups in Washington state. Pyle provided interesting historical context linking domestic espionage in the 1960s and 1970s with current developments in the so-called “war on terrorism”.
  • Declassified US President’s Daily Brief is reclassified. The CIA says that extracts of the President’s Daily Briefing (PDB) that were declassified in 2006, during the prosecution of former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, are “currently and properly classified”. PDB declassifications occur extremely rarely.
  • Australian intelligence to focus on cybersecurity. David Irvine, the recently appointed director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, has identified cyberespionage as “a growing national security risk”.

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News you may have missed #0050

  • Cuban Five to be given new sentences in October. Washington accuses the Five of spying on the US for Cuba. But an appeals court has ruled that the sentences they received (ranging from life to 19 years) were too long. New sentences will be imposed on October 13. The Cuban government has said that it would be willing to swap jailed political dissidents for the Five.
  • CIA invests in web-based software company –again. The CIA’s venture-capital investment arm, In-Q-Tel, appears to be really fond of Lingotek, a tiny software company in Draper, Utah. Last month, In-Q-Tel funded another software start-up, Lucid Imagination.
  • Canada to investigate spy service’s role in Abdelrazik’s torture. Canada’s Security Intelligence Review Committee has agreed to probe the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, who was renditioned to Sudan by Canada’s Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). He says he was severely tortured by Sudanese guards and interrogators.

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Hillary Clinton pressured UK government to conceal torture information

Binyam Mohamed

B. Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally threatened the British government that Washington would stop collaborating with London on intelligence matters if the latter allowed the release of evidence on an alleged torture case. This has been revealed in London’s high court during the ongoing trial of Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is was until recently imprisoned by US authorities at the Guantánamo Bay camp. Mr. Mohamed was abducted in 2002 by Pakistani authorities, who delivered him to US intelligence agents. The latter employed the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition and had Mr. Mohamed secretly imprisoned in Morocco and Afghanistan before taking him to Guantánamo. Read more of this post

Ex-DoD analyst accused of spying says he was FBI double spy

Larry Franklin

Larry Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lawrence Anthony Franklin, the former US Defense Department analyst whose 12-year prison sentence was suspended last month, now claims he was an FBI informant in a case of alleged spying by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. Franklin was accused by the US government of handing classified military information to Uzi Arad, Naor Gilon, an Israeli Embassy official in Washington, as well as to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Besides Franklin, Rosen and Weissman were also taken to court by the FBI. Last May, however, US Justice Department prosecutors dropped all charges against the two former AIPAC members. It was just a matter of time before Franklin’s sentence was also suspended. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0049

  • Return to court for ex-CIA station chief accused of rape. Andrew M. Warren has been free on bail since February of 2009, when he was unceremoniously recalled to the US from the CIA’s Algiers station. He is accused of having drugged and raped two Algerian women at his official residence. On Tuesday he was back at a federal courtroom in Washington for a status hearing.
  • Swedish spy threat at Cold War levels, claims report. A study by the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), says spying on Sweden by “several countries, including those in our immediate surroundings” is “at the same level […] as during the Cold War”.
  • Former CIA station chief doubts Daniel Boyd story. Milt Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, doubts that Boyd, who was arrested along with seven others in North Carolina on domestic terrorism charges, ever saw action in Afghanistan, as stated by his prosecutors.

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Obama administration opposes release of Cheney records in Valerie Plame case

Valerie Plame

Valerie Plame

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Obama administration officials are pressuring a US judge to stop the release of former US Vice President Dick Cheney’s records in the case of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame sought compensation after she was publicly named as a secret CIA operative. Along with her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, she has fought a legal campaign, arguing that several Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, and even President George W. Bush himself, were behind the leak of her CIA role. Cheney had a lengthy interview with prosecutors pursuing the leak case, but the transcripts of the exchange have so far remained secret, on national security grounds. Read more of this post