Privacy concerns as NSA admits “helping” Microsoft

November 20, 2009 by 2 Comments

Richard Schaeffer

Richard Schaeffer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Security experts raised privacy concerns after a US National Security Agency official revealed that the Agency collaborated with Microsoft during the development stage of Windows 7. The revelation was made in a prepared statement by NSA information assurance director Richard Schaeffer, before the US Senate’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, which operates under the Judiciary panel. Speaking during a hearing on cybersecurity on November 17, Schaeffer acknowledged that the NSA drew on its “unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft’s operating system security guide”. Schaeffer ‘s prepared statement is available on video here (forward to 32nd minute). Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0191

November 19, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Peru-Chile spy dispute deepens. Not only was senior Peruvian Air Force officer Victor Ariza Mendoza, who was arrested in Lima last Saturday, a spy for Chile, but there were six other individuals involved in the ring, according to Peruvian authorities. Peru has even asked Interpol to get involved in the affair.
  • UN-Iran in secret nuclear negotiations, says paper. The London Times has alleged that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is secretly negotiating a deal to persuade world powers to lift sanctions against Iran and allow Tehran to retain the bulk of its nuclear energy program, in return for co-operation with UN inspectors.
  • Analysis: The real spy war between CIA and DNI. For months, the CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence fought an intense and acrimonious turf battle over covert action oversight and access to White House officials. Now new details are emerging about deeper and more sensitive conflicts between the two agencies, including which agency is responsible for oversight of the CIA’s controversial and classified Predator drone program.

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FBI kept tabs on Pulitzer-winning author Studs Terkel for 45 years

November 19, 2009 by Leave a comment

Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The FBI, which acted as America’s political police during the Cold War, spent several decades watching Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, who died earlier this year at age 96. The revelation was made by the City University of New York’s NYCity News Service, which acquired 147 of the 269 pages in Terkel’s FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request. The FBI said that it intends to keep the remaining 122 pages kept secret “because of privacy and other reasons”. The FBI appears to have opened a file on Terkel in 1945, in an attempt to discern whether he was affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0189

November 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

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CIA-DNI turf war enters new phase

November 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The CIA may have won a lengthy turf battle against the office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI), but the war between the two agencies continues. As intelNews reported last July, the dispute started 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. A few days ago, when the White House finally came down in favor of the CIA, the imbroglio appeared to be ending. But now the DNI has hit back by announcing it will 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

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One third of Pakistani spy budget comes from CIA, say officials

November 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

ISI HQ

ISI HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
As much as one third of the annual budget of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence has come from the CIA in the last eight years, according to a new report in The Los Angeles Times. The paper says that even more US dollars have been supplied to the ISI through a secret CIA monetary rewards program that pays for the arrest or assassination of militants wanted by Washington. The payments reportedly began during the early years of the George W. Bush administration, and are now continuing under the Obama administration, despite “long-standing suspicions” that the ISI and the Pakistani military maintain close links with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and elsewhere. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0187

November 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Cambodia arrests Thai for spying on exile leader. Cambodian authorities said the man, Siwarak Chothipong, who works for the Cambodia Air Traffic Service, spied on the flight itinerary of visiting former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been living in exile since a 2006 military coup in Thailand. The Thai government has rejected the charge.
  • CIA’s Panetta to visit India, Pakistan. CIA director Leon Panetta will visit Pakistan and India for three days, starting on November 20. IntelNews will be keeping an eye on his visit.
  • Former Monaco spymaster says prince invokes immunity. More on the saga of former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer, who until recently was spymaster to prince Albert II of Monaco, and is now suing him for €360,000 ($542,000) in alleged unpaid income. Eringer’s lawyers have accused Albert of invoking head-of-state immunity, “an absolute defense used by dictators around the world to avoid accountability in US courts”.

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News you may have missed #0186

November 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • UN shares intel with Rwandan rebels, says paper. Rwandan daily The New Times has aired allegations that the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has an intelligence-sharing relationship with Hutu FDLR rebels, which runs “even deeper than earlier thought”.
  • Pakistan militants target spy agency. Militants have stepped up their fight against the Pakistani government in western Pakistan, by ramming a truck bomb into the Peshawar regional office of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s main spy agency. This is the first large-scale specific targeting of intelligence agents in the region, outside of Afghanistan.
  • US bases in Colombia to be used for spying, says Chávez. Venezuela’s President says he does not think that the new US bases will be used for counternarcotics efforts, but rather for “electronic spying”.

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Book claims CIA turned blind eye on Pakistan’s post-9/11 terror links

November 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

Jean-Louis Bruguiere

J.L. Bruguiere

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A new book by France’s former leading investigating magistrate on counterterrorism affairs alleges that the CIA allowed the Pakistani army to train members of a notorious Islamist militant group, even after 9/11. In the book, entitled Ce que je n’ai pas pu dire (The Things I Would Not Utter), Jean-Louis Bruguiere says the US spy agency was aware that Pakistani army trainers worked with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group responsible for a series of sophisticated strikes in India, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The former magistrate bases his allegations on official testimony provided by Willy Brigitte, a French citizen from Guadeloupe, who was arrested in Australia in 2003, in connection with Lashkar-e-Taiba activities there. Soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Brigitte traveled to Pakistan aiming to join the Taliban insurgency, but was unable to cross the Pakistani-Afghan border. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0185

November 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Article claims US employed cyberwar in 2007. A cover story in the Washington-based National Journal claims former US President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to “launch a sophisticated attack […] on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings”. IntelNews regulars will remember that we had suspected as much.
  • Somali suicide bomb recruiter had US residency. Somali Mohamud Said Omar, who was arrested a week ago in Holland on suspicion of recruiting youth in Minneapolis for suicide missions in Somalia, has a US green card, Dutch media reported Friday.
  • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial a huge challenge for US judiciary. The alleged 9/11 mastermind’s case poses the question of how to deal with what is likely to be an extremely large body of classified evidence that the prosecution will want to present.

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News you may have missed #0184

November 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Rumors of joint US-Israel-Egypt-Jordan spy meeting. Israeli site DEBKAfile is one of several Middle Eastern news outlets alleging that a secret meeting was held earlier this month between senior intelligence officials of the US, Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
  • Germany won’t prosecute suspect in Litvinenko murder. Germany has dropped attempts to prosecute Dmitri Kovtun, a former Soviet military intelligence officer implicated in the 2006 killing in London of Russian former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Meanwhile the primary suspect in the case, former KGB bodyguard Andrey Lugovoy, who lives in Russia, said he may be ready to face questioning in the UK “under certain conditions”.
  • FBI charged terrorism suspect after trying to recruit him. Tarek Mehanna, a Massachusetts man accused of plotting to kill Americans, was charged by the FBI only after he refused to work as an informant against Muslims, according to his lawyer. This is not the first time such allegations have surfaced.

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News you may have missed #0183

November 14, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Did US Rep. Hoekstra compromise a secret NSA spy program? Rep. Peter Hoekstra (MI), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence panel, may have inadvertently compromised a sensitive National Security Agency email collection program while commenting on allegedly intercepted emails sent and received by Fort Hood shooter Malik Nadal Hasan.
  • Blog requests readers’ help to examine released documents. Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog has issued a request for readers to help pore over thousands of US government documents relating to the proposed immunity for telephone companies involved in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The documents were released following a FOIA lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  • An opportunity in Cuba for CIA field agents? They’d have to pose as McDonald’s restaurant workers.

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CIA reportedly wins turf battle with DNI office

November 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The CIA has reportedly won a turf battle with the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), after the White House came down in support of the CIA position on Thursday. This blog has kept tabs on the dispute, which started last May, when DNI Dennis Blair argued in a still-classified directive that his office should have a say in certain cases over the appointment of senior US intelligence representatives in foreign cities. Former CIA officials publicly denounced the directive, which would allow the appointment of non-CIA personnel to these positions for the first time in 60 years, as “simple insanity”. Since then, various actors have sided with the two antagonists, with the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence committee supporting the DNI and Vice President Joe Biden backing the CIA’s position. But the stalemate reportedly ended on Thursday, after the White House ruled that the CIA, not the DNI, should appoint senior US intelligence representatives abroad. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0181

November 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #0180

November 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • UK spy tip led to Zazi arrest in New York. British spies tipped off their American counterparts to what has been described as “the most serious terrorist plot foiled in the US since 9/11”, which led to the recent arrest of Najibullah Zazi in New York.
  • US prevents Indian spies’ access to jailed Islamist. US authorities won’t let an Indian intelligence team question American Muslim David Coleman Headley, who was arrested last month for traveling to Denmark in order to plot an attack on a newspaper targeted by Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, because it published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Sources blamed “bureaucratic” and “procedural” hurdles. Hmmm…
  • Largest military deal in Israeli history taking shape. The largest defense deal in Israel’s history, the purchase of 25 F-35 stealth fighters, is advancing, as talks continue between Israel, the Pentagon, and Lockheed Martin.

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