Analysis: The Meaning of the Suicide Attack on the CIA

January 2, 2010 by 2 Comments

Forward Operating Base Chapman

Chapman FOB

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS* | intelNews.org |
The recent deaths of seven and the serious injury of another six CIA personnel in Afghanistan’s Khost province has undoubtedly shocked an Agency not used to mass casualties. But what exactly is the significance of Wednesday’s suicide attack at the Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman, and how will it affect the US military and intelligence presence at the Afghan-Pakistani border? Given that the CIA team at Chapman FOB could not have consisted of more than 15 to 20 agents, it would be logical to conclude that the attack virtually decimated the CIA presence in Khost. But the impact of this development on US operations in Afghanistan will be minimal, in contrast to operations inside Pakistan, which constituted the primary objective of the CIA team at Chapman FOB. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0238

January 1, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • The real story behind Nigerian bomber security lapses. “The real story line internally is not information sharing or connecting dots”, a former intelligence official said. “It was separating noise from chaff. It’s not that information wasn’t passed around; it’s that so much information is being passed” (Research credit to Politico‘s Laura Rozen).
  • Obama orders creation of declassification center. US President Barack Obama created by executive order Tuesday a National Declassification Center to oversee efforts to make once-secret government documents public. Among other things, the executive order eliminates the ability of intelligence officials to veto declassification decisions.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0237

December 31, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Christmas Day bomb plot exposes fissures in US spy community. As intelNews regulars know, turf wars between US intelligence agencies are nothing new. But lapses that allowed Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to board a Detroit-bound plane with a bomb on Christmas Day, and the finger-pointing that followed, have raised questions about supposedly sweeping changes made to improve intelligence-sharing after the 9/11.
  • Mysterious life of Soviet spy couple unveiled. Soviet agents Mikhail and Yelizaveta Mukasey were legends among illegals –i.e. international spies operating without diplomatic credentials. Now the Russian government is carefully releasing information on their activities and missions, which ranged from the US to Israel, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For second time in history, CIA suffers 8 deaths in a day [updated]

December 31, 2009 by 4 Comments

US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after the April 18, 1983 bombing

US Beirut mission

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Update: The CIA now says that seven, not eight, of the “Agency’s workforce” died in the Khost suicide attack. There is, however, some confusion as to the status of the bomber himself, with some Taliban sources in Afghanistan claiming he was already operating as a CIA informant.

Since it emerged last night that eight CIA agents were killed in a suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan, intelNews has received several emails asking whether the deaths marked a horrific record for the US spy agency. The unnamed agents were reportedly killed along with at least one Afghan civilian at the US-operated Forward Operating Base Chapman, close to the Pakistani border. The CIA is not known for forwarding details on its agents who perish while on missions around the world. But there is at least one other known instance when the Agency lost eight of its operatives in one day: Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Controversy over head of Obama’s terrorism watch-list review

December 31, 2009 by Leave a comment

John Brennan

John Brennan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A veteran CIA official appointed to review the US government’s defective terrorism watch-list system, was actually involved in designing it, and later helped sustain it through a lucrative private-sector contract. John O. Brennan was appointed by President Barack Obama on Sunday to head a “comprehensive interagency review” of travel security measures, after it was revealed that the father of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect, had notified the CIA about his son’s activities. It turns out, however, that not only was Brennan part of the US National Counterterrorism Center team that designed the terrorism watch-list system, but he also helped sustain it while heading the Analysis Corporation, a scandal-prone private contractor charged with overseeing the watch-list system. Politico’s Carol Lee and Laura Rozen are among the very few reporters who have connected the dots on Brennan. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

White House memo sides with CIA in inter-agency turf war

December 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
For several months now, I have been keeping tabs on a bitter inter-agency turf war between the CIA and the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Now a Los Angeles Times article by Greg Miller confirms what intelNews reported on November 18, namely that the White House has come down in favor of the CIA position in the dispute. The turf war began last July, when DNI Dennis Blair argued in a still-classified directive that his office, and not the CIA, as has been the case for over 60 years, should have a say in certain cases over the appointment of senior US intelligence representatives in foreign cities. But the White House refused to validate Blair’s request. So, in November, the Office of the DNI hit back by announcing it would be evaluating all “[s]ensitive CIA operations overseas” including all of the CIA’s active paramilitary and espionage operations abroad. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0236

December 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Airline bomb plotter’s father warned CIA about his son. Dr. Umaru AbdulMutallab, the father of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect, visited the US embassy in Nigeria in November, where he told a CIA agent that he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen.
  • New book details Stasi spying on Günter Grass. A new book, entitled Guenter Grass im Visier: Die Stasi-Akte (Günter Grass in the Crosshairs: The Stasi Files), is to be published in March in Germany. Among other things, it will detail spying operations against the Nobel Prize-winning author by the East German secret police, the Stasi.
  • Former Albanian spymaster claiming benefits in Britain. Ilir Kumbaro, Albania’s former spymaster, is wanted by authorities for having kidnapped and tortured three men in his homeland. But after falling out with officials there, he fled to Britain in 1996, where he has lived for 13 years using the alias Shaqa Shatri.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0235

December 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • How the CIA was conned by a compulsive gambler. In 2003, the CIA took seriously the fabricated claims of Dennis Montgomery, co-owner of a software gaming company in Nevada, who claimed he could read messages hidden in barcodes listing international flights to the US, their positions and airports to be targeted by al-Qaeda.
  • Obama names intel advisory board members. The US President has appointed members to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), a critical oversight group tasked with alerting the White House about US intelligence activities that may be illegal or may go beyond Presidential authorization. The appointees are Roel Campos, Lee Hamilton, Rita Hauser, Paul Kaminski, Ellen Laipson, Les Lyles, and Jami Miscik. For more on PIAB, see here.
  • Turkey arrests three on espionage charges. Turkish media won’t say which country the arrestees allegedly spied for, but one of them is said to have “often visited Greece”. A tit-for-tat?

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

US to stop funding scandal-prone Colombian spy agency

December 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The US Congress has voted to stop subsidizing Colombia’s soon-to-be dismantled Administrative Department of Security (DAS) intelligence agency. The Colombian government recently decided to disband DAS, after it was found to have illegally wiretapped the phones of several public figures, including the chief of the Colombian National Police, the minister of defense, as well as those of former Presidents, Supreme Court judges, prominent journalists, union leaders and human rights campaigners. The activities of the scandal-prone agency had not, until now, affected US-Colombian relations, nor had they dampened US-Colombian intelligence cooperation. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0233

December 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0232

December 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We have spies, but not troops in Pakistan, says US

December 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

Predator drone

Predator drone

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
American spies, but not combat troops, are active on Pakistani soil, according to Washington’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Speaking last Tuesday on PBS’ Charlie Rose, Richard Holbrooke said “there are no American troops in Pakistan”, but that the US has “members of our intelligence services in every country in the world”. Asked to clarify whether “[n]o members of the American military or CIA are in Pakistan”, the American diplomat responded: “I only said there are no American troops in Pakistan”. His comments appear to contradict several reports in Western media that US military forces are secretly operating in Pakistan, including a report last February in The New York Times, which stated that over 70 US “military advisers […] and technical specialists” were helping Pakistan’s armed forces fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the remote Pakistani areas bordering Afghanistan. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Venezuelan-Dutch spat over Caribbean islands spying

December 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Antilles

Antilles

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A diplomatic rift between Venezuela and Holland that began three years ago has flared up again, after Caracas accused the Dutch government of helping the US spy on Venezuela. Speaking last week at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez said the US had been granted use of Holland’s Caribbean possessions to spy on Venezuelan communications and to “prepare a possible military attack against his country”. He was referring to Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, the three Netherlands Antilles islands closest to the Venezuelan coast. The Dutch government has authorized the US military to use civilian airports on the islands, which form a self-governing overseas possession of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #0230

December 23, 2009 by 3 Comments

  • Ukrainians claim netting ‘spies among diplomats’. In the last 6 months of 2009, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has “exposed 7 spies among diplomats”, according to its director, Valentyn Nalyvajchenko. He apparently cited “a case of a Russian spy who was charged with obtaining defense industry secrets for a Chinese special service”. If anyone out there has information on this case, please contact us.
  • France launches new spy satellite. France has launched a military spy satellite, Helios 2B, part of a boost in spending on independent surveillance. The satellite can reportedly tell whether a truck convoy is moving or halted and whether a nuclear reactor is operational or not.
  • Seized N. Korean weapons destined for Middle East: US spy chief. An illicit North Korean arms shipment seized in Thailand last week was destined for the Middle East, US director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, has claimed. Blair’s comment, which was meant to tout improved cooperation among America’s 16 intelligence agencies, was the first official confirmation of the US role in the case.

Bookmark and Share

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

US media under-report US missile attack on Yemen

December 22, 2009 by 3 Comments

Airstrike site

Airstrike victims

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last Friday, a handful of US websites reported “an airstrike” in Yemen against “a leading al-Qaeda figure there”. The incident, which made headline news along the Arab peninsular, was quickly forgotten in the US. But it now turns out that there were two airstrikes, not one; and they were not carried out by “Yemeni forces”, but rather by the US military, which fired cruise missiles at targets in Yemen on direct orders from US President Barack Obama. And yet the revelation, made by ABC News on Friday, appears to have failed to arouse the interest of US news outlets, the vast majority of which are blatantly ignoring this report. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →