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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Kremlin dismayed after US retains Kyrgyz air base

June 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bakiyev

Bakiyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The recent decision by the Kyrgyz government to halt the eviction of US forces from the Manas air base has been hailed as a foreign policy success for the US government, and a rare defeat for Russia’s resurgence. Russian foreign ministry officials admitted earlier this week that the Kyrgyz reversal was a setback for Moscow’s plans and hinted that the Kremlin had been deceived by the government of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. As intelNews reported last February, Kyrgyzstan had announced that it would expel US forces from Manas, which experts have described as the “primary logistics hub” for the US military’s operations in Afghanistan. The decision of the Kyrgyz government came soon after it received an unprecedented $2.2 billion in Russian loans and aid. But President Bakiyev changed his mind after the US government agreed to “triple its rent for Manas”, and –it appears— cease its criticism of Kyrgyzstan’s rapidly deteriorating human rights record. Read more of this post

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Foreign spy services active in Pakistani army’s war with the Taliban

June 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Fazlullah

Fazlullah

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Pakistani military and security officials alleged earlier this week that foreign intelligence services are helping pro-Taliban warlords fight the Pakistani army in Swat and in other tribal areas in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. According to news reports from Islamabad, the officials have presented the Pakistani government with an extensive report alleging covert assistance to pro-Taliban forces from Indian and Israeli agents. The classified report alleges that Israel supplies tribal warlords “with modern technology”, including radio equipment, while Indian agents, operating out of Indian consulates in the region, are providing the Taliban with weapons and probably training. Pakistani military officials claim they have proof of visits by Indian operatives to Taliban training camps and of meetings between Indian operatives and leading pro-Taliban military leaders and propagandists, such as Maulana Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud. Read more of this post

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Low-tech radio ciphers helped Myers couple avoid detection for years

June 21, 2009 by 1 Comment

Walter Myers

Walter Myers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The recent arrest in the US of Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, on charges of spying for Cuba for over 30 years,  have prompted discussions about how the couple managed to escape detection by US counterintelligence authorities for so long. The reasons are many, and undoubtedly include careful spycraft and shrewd handling. But Carmen Gentile offers another suggestion in The Washington Times: low-tech shortwave radio transmissions. Specifically, the Walter and Gwyn Myers “appears to have avoided capture for 30 years because their communications with [Cuba] were too low-tech to be detected by sophisticated US monitors”. Read more of this post

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Comment: Board overseeing US intelligence practices still without members

June 19, 2009 by 1 Comment

Mike McConnell

Mike McConnell

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Intelligence insiders in the US are beginning to wonder why US President Barack Obama has yet to appoint any members to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB). The PIAB, first established in 1956 by President Eisenhower, is tasked with conducting executive oversight of US intelligence practices. Its sensitive role is accentuated by its main focus, which is to alert the White House about US intelligence activities that may be illegal or may in any way go beyond Presidential authorization. This part of its mission makes the Board extremely critical in ensuring adequate executive oversight of the US intelligence community. But now, lacking any members whatsoever, the PIAB is being managed by its administrative staff and is in a sort of “autopilot” mode, according to its counsel, Homer Pointer, who spoke to the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News. Read more of this post

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Analysis: What is the state of Cuban spying in the US?

June 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Gwen Myers

Gwen Myers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The recent arrest by the FBI of Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, on charges of spying for Cuba for over 30 years, offers a good opportunity to contemplate the current state of Cuban espionage in the US. In an article published in The Miami Herald, Juan Tamayo relays a brief history of Cuban espionage in the US, from the first decades (1950-1980), when the island’s intelligence services were “regarded as among the world’s best”, to the purges of the late 1980s, to today. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Former CIA agent warns of Pentagon takeover

June 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Robert Baer

Robert Baer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Robert Baer, the former CIA agent whose memoirs were behind the film Syriana, has written a new column for Time magazine, in which he warns that a Pentagon takeover of the CIA may be again in the works. The bureaucratic infighting between military and civilian agencies for control of the CIA is old news. But Baer believes that the military background of Admiral Dennis Blair, President Barack Obama’s new Director for National Intelligence (DNI), may be a factor in placing the Pentagon closer to its ultimate goal of swallowing the CIA. The former CIA agent mentions the dispute between Admiral Blair and CIA Director Leon Panetta over the appointment of Washington’s new intelligence chief in Kabul. Rumor has it that Blair is preparing to name a uniformed officer for the position, whereas Panetta wants to maintain the CIA tradition of appointing a civilian intelligence official. Read more of this post

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Another Israeli-handled spy in the US walks away free

June 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

Franklin

Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On April 23 intelNews first reported, and on May 4 confirmed, that the two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists involved in the Lawrence Franklin spy case in the US would escape trial. Lawrence Anthony Franklin was a US Defense Department analyst who in 2006 was given a 12-year prison sentence for handing classified US military information to Israeli agent Uzi Arad, Israeli Embassy official Naor Gilon, as well as to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both former AIPAC lobbyists. But last month US Justice Department prosecutors dropped all charges against the two former AIPAC members due to “significant reservations about the case”, even though several Department officials believe that Rosen and Weissman “acted imprudently”, according to The New York Times. As IntelNews learned, the decision was taken despite significant objections from FBI officials, who desperately pressured the Department to go forward with the trial until the very last minute. The Bureau appears to be infuriated about the dismissal, which is rumored to be partly based on fears that classified information exposed during a trial could harm US national security. But this appears to be making no difference. In a final blow to the Bureau, a US federal judge has now decided to let Larry Franklin walk scot-free, despite his former conviction for espionage against the United States.  Read more of this post

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Phone hacking ring helped groups evade eavesdroppers

June 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Even though computer hacking tends to monopolize information security headlines, phone hacking, or phreaking, as it is technically known, remains a major source of headache for communications security professionals. Last Friday, law enforcement agencies in several countries announced the arrest of more than half a dozen individuals in the US, Italy and the Philippines, who were operating a major international phreaking network. The group had apparently broken into thousands of corporate telephone networks in Australia, Canada, the US, and Europe, and was channeling near-free telecommunications services to several criminal and militant organizations around the world. According to law enforcement insiders, “the hacked networks might have been used by terrorist organizations to thwart eavesdropping and tracking by intelligence agencies”. Read more of this post

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CIA now actively hiring failed investment bankers

June 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It’s been several months now since Dennis Blair announced that “the primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications”. Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence even hired James Rickards, a self-described “threat finance” expert, to advise him on “[c]ountries [that] might […] be tempted to engage in financial warfare” against the United States. It now appears that the rapid rise of microeconomic concerns to the top of the US intelligence community’s threat list has also affected the CIA. The Agency has announced a new recruitment program targeting fired investment bankers to work in its Directorate of Intelligence. Speaking on National Public Radio’s Marketplace, CIA official Jimmy Gurule said the new recruitment drive is part of creating “a national strategy […] to deal with these types of financial issues”. Unfortunately, Marketplace’s piece is extremely superficial. A more in-depth analysis of what “these types of financial issues” may mean, is available here.

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Analysis: CIA loyal only to itself, says former agent

May 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Judging from emails we have received, several intelNews readers have noticed the absence from this website of any mention of the recent imbroglio between Nancy Pelosi and the CIA. There are several important reasons for the absence of this story (not least is this site’s focus on under-reported intelligence news), but the most crucial is its “news unworthiness” –for lack of a better term. All parties involved in the dispute appear to be primarily jockeying for political currency, which, in the opinion of this writer, makes for a sad spectacle. A few days ago, however, there surfaced an interesting editorial on the subject by Ishmael Jones. This is the pseudonym of a longtime CIA agent, who resigned from the Agency in good standing and now routinely publishes professional memoirs and critical position papers on intelligence reform. Read more of this post

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CIA Director acknowledges, defends drone strikes in Pakistan

May 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
CIA Director Leon Panetta made an extremely rare public acknowledgement of the CIA unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan, while speaking recently before the Pacific Council on International Policy. Panetta was speaking in reaction to a May 17 article in The New York Times by David Kilcullen, former counterinsurgency adviser to US Army General David Petraeus, and Center for a New American Security fellow Andrew Exum. Kilcullen and Exum joined intelNews in its March 15 condemnation of the illegal and counterproductive CIA airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months. Read more of this post

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Comment: CIA operations in Pakistan will continue despite DoD involvement

May 21, 2009 by 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last week, when news emerged that the US will be expanding its unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan, I received several reader emails arguing that the CIA air operations inside Pakistan will soon be over. These expectations are unrealistic. Washington has decided to deploy a separate fleet of drones under military command, which will be deployed alongside, not in replacement of, CIA Predator drones. There appear to be at least three reasons –perhaps as many as four– for this development. Read more of this post

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