Intelligence sources speak of clashes between rival Pakistani militias

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

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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  • Hacking, Lock-Picking, Booze and Bacon. Excellent illustrated review of some of the highlights of DefCon 17, the world’s largest hacking convention, which took place in Las Vegas, Nevada.
  • Were NC terror suspect’s stories an exaggeration? There are more doubts over the genuineness of the Afghan exploits of Daniel Boyd, who was recently arrested along with seven others in North Carolina on domestic terrorism charges.
  • Ex-DHS boss comes out in support of controversial NSA project. Michael Chertoff, who directed the US Department of Homeland Security under the Bush Administration, has come out in support of EINSTEIN 3, a rumored joint project between the NSA and US telecommunication service providers, which requires the latter to route government data carried through their networks to the NSA, via secret rooms installed in exchange sites. Critics have condemned the project as “antithetical to basic civil liberties and privacy protections” in the United States.

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  • Finland police identify body of WWII Soviet spy. Police believe a body found near Kouvola, Finland, to be the World War II remnants of a Soviet spy. The man apparently parachuted to his death. The body will be offered to the Russian Embassy for repatriation –an offer that is expected to be refused.
  • Hacker conferences attract spies, thieves. Interesting account of Defcon conference anecdotes by CNET correspondent Elinor Mills, who has been attending Defcon since 1995.
  • Interesting interview with lawyer behind CIA lawsuit. McClatchy news agency has published a rare interview with Brian Leighton, the lawyer representing retired Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer Richard A. Horn, who in 1994 claimed that CIA agents illegally wiretapped his conversations while he was stationed in Burma.

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DNI responses to Senate questions declassified

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Don’t bother reading through the 40 pages (.pdf) of responses given last February by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to questions by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There’s not that much new information in it, and it turns out DNI Dennis C. Blair even resorted to plagiarizing part of an article on an alleged Russian attack on US satellites originally printed in Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, with no attribution. Instead, you can save time by taking a look at the observations made on the 40-page document by Steven Aftergood, editor of the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News bulletin. It was, in fact, a Freedom of Information Act request by Aftergood that prompted the release of the document in the first place. Read more of this post

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  • Ex-FBI translator tests US Justice Department again. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has spent seven years trying to get a court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents had penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. This weekend she’s going to try again.
  • Bulgaria appoints new National Security Agency director. Tsvetelin Yovchev is the new head of the State National Security Agency (DANS). The Agency’s previous director, Petko Sertov, recently handed his resignation, allegedly after Bulgaria’s “American partners were said to have lost faith” in him. He will now serve as Bulgaria’s general consul in Thessaloniki, northern Greece.
  • US paper sees power struggle inside Iranian intelligence. The Washington Times claims the recent firing of intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, two other Ali Khamenei loyalists and nearly 20 other high-ranking officials, has weakened Khamenei’s hold over the Iranian intelligence ministry and has strengthened the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

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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

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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

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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

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