News you may have missed #0034
July 21, 2009 2 Comments
- Busting of Israeli spy ring in Lebanon continues. Lebanese authorities have announced the arrest of yet another suspected member of Mossad’s alleged spy ring in southern Lebanon.
- Secret space shuttles. Excellent primer on the longstanding secret collaboration between NASA and the super-clandestine National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in the United States.
- Israelis jail man accused of joining Palestinian intelligence. An Israeli court has jailed Muhammad Jayusi for 42 months for being a member of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence (GI), for “tailing Israeli citizens and [for] transmitting information on them” to GI.
- Will Obama administration end the over-classification of US defense information? Pentagon classification authorities are treating classified historical documents as if they contain today’s secrets, rather than decades-old information that has not been secret for years, says the National Security Archive.
- What did CIA director Panetta tell Philippine President Arroyo? Writing from the Philippines, Ramon Farolan says Leon Panetta did not go to Manila on a “social visit. CIA directors don’t make social visits to any place, and frankly, I can’t recall any CIA director ever visiting the Philippines”, he says. IntelNews has covered Panetta’s recent trip to the Philippines here.
intelNews.org 
Wiretap whistleblower shunned by US Congress, media
July 21, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment
Mark Klein
By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Those of you who have been following the ongoing revelations about STELLAR WIND, the National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless wiretapping scheme authorized by the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11, will know about Thomas M. Tamm. Tamm was the Justice Department official who in 2005 first notified The New York Times about the existence of the project. But Tamm was not the only whistleblower in the case. He was joined soon afterwards by another insider, Mark Klein. Klein had just retired from AT&T as a communications technician when he read The New York Times revelations about STELLAR WIND. As soon as he read the paper’s vague description of the NSA project, Klein realized he had in his possession AT&T documents describing exactly how the company shared its customers’ telephone communications with the NSA, through a secret room at the AT&T Folsom Street facility in San Francisco. To this day, Klein remains the only AT&T employee to have come forward with information on STELLAR WIND. But, apparently, nobody cares. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with AT&T, AT&T Folsom Street facility, communications interception, Dianne Feinstein, James Bamford, Mark Klein, National Security Agency, News, NSA, operation STELLAR WIND, San Francisco, telecommunication service providers, telecommunications, Terrorist Surveillance Program (STELLAR WIND), Thomas M. Tamm, United States, US Department of Justice, warrantless communications interception, whistleblowing, wiretapping