Attorney behind NSA domestic wiretapping defends his views

July 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

John Yoo

John Yoo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The former US Justice Department lawyer who authored legal memos sanctioning the legality of the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program has defended his views. John Yoo, who on 9/11 was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, has penned an article in The Wall Street Journal, in which he voices disagreement over a recently published US government report that criticizes the wiretap program’s secrecy and dubious legal basis. The report was authored by the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It says that the Bush administration’s decision to keep NSA’s domestic wiretap program secret even from senior Department of Justice and intelligence officials hampered the broader intelligence community’s ability to use the program’s output, and subverted the government’s ethical standing in the so-called “war on terrorism”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0029

July 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Iranians revolting against Nokia for alleged spying complicity. Consumer sales of Nokia handsets in Iran have allegedly fallen by up to 50%, reportedly because of the company’s membership in the Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) partnership. As intelNews has been pointing out since last month, NSN allegedly helped supply the Iranian government with some of the world’s most sophisticated communications surveillance systems.
  • Analysis: Why NSA’s Einstein 3 project is dangerous. This editorial argues that US President Barack Obama’s decision to proceed with a Bush administration plan to task the National Security Agency with protecting government computer traffic on private-sector networks is “antithetical to basic civil liberties and privacy protections” in the United States.
  • New US government report says Bush secrecy hampered intelligence effectiveness. A new report from the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, says that the Bush administration’s decision to keep NSA’s domestic wiretap program secret seriously hampered the broader intelligence community’s ability to use the program’s output.

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News you may have missed #0028

July 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Iran could have the bomb in six months, says German intelligence. Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) alleges that if the Iranians “wanted to they could test a nuclear bomb within half a year.”
  • Australian PM threatens China over Rio Tinto spy case. Kevin Rudd warned China it has “economic interests at stake”, less than a week after Beijing arrested the Australian chief of the Anglo-Australian mine company’s iron ore operations in China.
  • 12 Mexico intelligence officers mutilated and killed. The mutilated bodies of the one female and 11 male federal intelligence officer were left in a heap beside a road in rural Michoacan state. Drug gangsters launched a brutal offensive against the Mexican government last Saturday, after the capture of their senior leader, Arnaldo “La Minsa” Rueda. “We’re waiting for you,” read a taunting sign left with the bodies.
  • NRO releases unclassified portions of 2009 budget. The super-secretive US National Reconnaissance Office, which is in charge of US satellite spying, has released fragments of its FY2009 Congressional Budget Justification Book. Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago there were rumors circulating in Washington that NRO may be broken up into several smaller agencies.

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Comment: Not So Fast, Cyberwarriors! [updated]

July 14, 2009 by 2 Comments

Hoekstra

Hoekstra

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Rep. Peter Hoekstra wants to launch a cyberwar against North Korea. The Republican from Michigan, who heads his party’s delegation on the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, urged the US government last Thursday to “launch a cyber attack” or at least increase international sanctions on Pyongyang. Hoekstra urged this in response to a series of mysterious cyber-attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and US government websites for three days earlier this month. And he’s not alone. Last Friday, ABC News technology pundit Michael Malone effectively echoed Hoekstra and warned that “enemies of freedom everywhere” could use cyberterrorism to kill untold numbers of Americans by remotely controlling “fetal monitoring systems, surgical equipment, robotic bomb demolition equipment and ICBMs”. But South Korean cybersecurity specialists, who intensely monitor North Korean information systems, and were the ones who actually informed their US counterparts of the unfolding cyber-attacks on July 4, are not so sure that Pyongyang was behind the attacks. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Ulterior Motives In Panetta’s Philippines Visit

July 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

Panetta & Arroyo

Panetta, Arroyo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Few heads outside Southeast Asia were turned last Sunday by CIA director Leon Panetta’s brief visit to the Philippines. Panetta arrived in Manila early Sunday morning and left at 10 p.m. on the same day. But he managed to squeeze in meetings with Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, as well as her most senior cabinet executives, such as Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. Panetta’s meeting with the President was brief, reportedly lasting around 30 minutes, but its significance was enormous for Washington’s continuing military and intelligence presence in the region. To understand the level of that commitment, one must consider the rare telephone call that US President Barack Obama recently placed to his Philippine counterpart. Read article →

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News you may have missed #0026

July 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US Attorney General considers torture probe. The Associated Press is among several news outlets reporting that Eric Holder is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the use of torture by US intelligence agencies after September of 2001.
  • Iran’s invisible Nicaraguan embassy. The US State Department has been raising alarm bells about the Iranians supposedly “building a huge embassy in Managua”. But nobody in Nicaragua can find any super-embassy, The Washington Post reports.
  • Kim Jonh Il likely to die soon, CIA tells S. Korean spy agency. According to South Korean sources, the CIA now believes that Kim Jong-Il’s chances of surviving the next five years are less than 30%. Last June, intelNews relayed reports that Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s third son, appears to be his father’s most likely successor.

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News you may have missed #0023

July 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Private companies to help NSA monitor US government networks

July 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

NSA HQ

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
We have already mentioned on this blog that US President Barack Obama has decided to proceed with a Bush administration plan to use National Security Agency (NSA) assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. NSA is America’s largest intelligence agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security. Critics of the program suspect it may include 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. Read more of this post

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Israel directs cyberwar resources against Iranian nuclear program

July 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

Ahmedinejad

Ahmadinejad

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Israeli cyberwarfare project that began in the late 1990s is a major tool in the Jewish state’s covert war on the Iranian nuclear program. A former member of the Israeli Knesset has anonymously confirmed the program’s existence to the Reuters news agency, while US experts said they view the clandestine project as “the likely new vanguard” in Israel’s attempts to hamper Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Israel’s cyberwarfare program is apparently encouraged by Washington’s resistance to an all-out military confrontation with Tehran, which includes US President Barack Obama’s rumored reluctance to endorse conventional air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. As intelNews has reported before, the Israeli cyberwarfare project is probably part of a wider Israeli operation, which British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has described as a covert “decapitation program”. The operation, which involves assassinations, front companies and bribing, among other tactics, is supplemented by an extensive CIA operation approved by President George W. Bush in early 2008 and “hand[ed] off to President […] Barack Obama”, according to The New York Times.

 

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Larry Franklin, implicated in Israeli spy affair, breaks silence

July 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

Franklin

Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lawrence Anthony Franklin, the former US Defense Department analyst whose 12-year prison sentence was suspended last month, has finally broken his silence. Franklin, who was accused by the US government of handing classified US military information to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists, has told Jeff Stein of SpyTalk that he handed out the secret information “in hopes that it would be passed on to the White House”. He said he was “worried” the Bush administration pursued a schizophrenic policy on Iran and had not calculated the Iranian reaction to a possible US invasion of Iraq. He therefore decided to pass on the classified information, which included “the names and locations of Iran’s secret agents and safe houses in Iraq”, to AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who claimed they had senior contacts in the Bush administration. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0016

July 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Wife of cleric kidnapped by CIA seeks European Court trial. Nabila Ghali, the second wife of Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr, who was kidnapped by the CIA from a street in Milan, Italy, in 2003, announced plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the Italian government’s state secrecy clauses that are hampering the Italian trial on Nasr’s abduction. 
  • NSA to build huge facility in Utah. The National Security Agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security, is in the process of renovating its soon-to-be-unveiled 470,000-square-foot Texas Cryptology Center, which will cost upwards of $130 million and be used primarily to store intercepted communications data. This is now to be coupled with another, 1-million-square-foot data center, to be built at Utah’s Camp Williams. 
  • US government to keep CIA black sites open, for now. A government prosecutor has disclosed during the ongoing trial of former Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Galani that the CIA does not plan to close down its black sites “for now”.

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Coalition requests disbarment of government lawyers behind CIA torture

July 1, 2009 by Leave a comment

John Rizzo

John Rizzo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Yesterday I wrote about John A. Rizzo, the CIA Acting General Counsel who is preparing to step down from his post despite being termed “the most influential career lawyer in CIA history”, according to The Los Angeles Times. The reason behind his sudden early retirement is the discovery earlier this month by several anti-torture critics in Congress that he gave the CIA legal advice in support of the Agency’s “enhanced interrogation” program. But the controversy over Rizzo’s role in the torture scheme is likely to stay with him even after he leaves Langley. Yesterday, the Velvet Revolution, an activist network of over 120 groups, issued formal requests with the New York and DC bar associations to disbar Rizzo and two other government lawyers behind the CIA torture program. Read more of this post

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Most influential CIA lawyer in history “retires” over torture

June 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

John Rizzo

John Rizzo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Finally, someone’s paying attention to John A. Rizzo, the CIA Acting General Counsel who is preparing to step down from his post despite being termed “the most influential career lawyer in CIA history”. In a well-researched article for The Los Angeles Times, Greg Miller explains the reasons behind Rizzo’s sudden departure from the Agency. Remember those internal CIA memos the US Justice Department released last April? Among other interesting facts, the memos revealed the names of government lawyers behind the Agency’s secret detention and torture program. Along other, more publicly known names, such as those of “aggressive interrogation” advocates John Yoo and Jay Bybee, several of the memos contained legal advice by Rizzo, who acted as what one CIA official described the Agency’s “legal enabler”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0012

June 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New book on KGB activities in the United States. Based on archival material, authors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr estimate that from the early 1920s more than 500 Americans, including many Ivy League graduates and Oxford Rhodes Scholars, were recruited to assist Soviet intelligence agencies, particularly in the State Department and America’s first intelligence agency, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA). 
  • South Korean spy agency launches video game. “Spot the Spy” video game is offered online by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) “to promote public awareness about security”. But pro-unification activists complain the game demonizes them. 
  • 2006 spy satellite failure a mystery, says NRO. The secretive US National Reconnaissance Office claims it still doesn’t know what caused the 2006 failure of one of its most expensive spy satellites, despite “an exhaustive formal failure investigation and three different independent review team investigations”. 
  • Memoir of fourth Cambridge spy soon to be unsealed. In early July the British Library will permit public access to the 30,000-word unfinished autobiographical manuscript of Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of Pictures for Queen Elizabeth II, and a member of the Cambridge Five, a group of spies working for the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the early 1950s.

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Former CIA analyst issues critique of Panetta record

June 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

Goodman

Goodman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, currently senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, has issued a scathing critique of the CIA leadership record of Leon Panetta. In an article published in The Public Record, Goodman, who supported Panetta during his confirmation hearings, accused the Agency director of letting down “[t]hose of us who […] were hopeful that he would bring a much-needed era of openness, accountability and credibility to an Agency that has lost its moral compass”. Goodman takes issue with New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s recent article on the CIA under the Obama administration, in which she referred to Panetta’s “great judgment, [reputation for integrity, and his ability to] restore the integrity of the intelligence process”. Instead, the former Agency analyst accuses Panetta of actively working to block the release of further documentary evidence of torture of terrorism detainees by CIA interrogators, and of retaining “all the senior [CIA] officials […] who were the ideological drivers for the creation of secret prisons and the use [of torture]”. Read more of this post

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