Category: Intelligence

Thank You CIA, for Preserving Polio

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You see, the Taliban is targeting workers on the UN Polio eradication program, because they claim that they are CIA spies.

The problem here is that the CIA has, and has probably continued, to use vaccination programs as a part of the intelligence gathering process:

Back in 2000 I shared a train cabin from Amsterdam to Munich with an Afghan man who, when he learned I was a journalist, pleaded with me to communicate to the American public that the CIA had to stop destroying his country and rebuild it instead. “They have so much power,” I recall him saying. I reacted with the tolerant and condescending attitude of the Western liberal. The real sources of Afghan misery, obviously, were tribal, political and religious rivalry, and while it was tempting for people with lower levels of political understanding to blame a foreign mastermind for their troubles, such conspiratorial thinking was actually part of the problem in the Mideast, as in Eastern Europe. Right?

Afghanistan and Pakistan are where liberalism goes to die. In the years since, it’s become increasingly clear that my traveling companion was at least partially right: when trying to explain a social or political event in Afghanistan or Pakistan, it’s entirely rational to assume that it stems from a plot by an intelligence agency, quite likely the CIA. The sickest confirmation of this point was the recent revelation that the CIA ran an operation to verify Osama bin Laden’s location by gathering DNA samples through a false-flag hepatitis B vaccination programme. As James Fallows notes, American officials are defending this operation, not denying it.

This is despicable and stupid.

I would use the term evil, a term that I have increasingly applied to various actors in the United States state security apparatus, though one could also use the quote from (probably) Tallyrand, “It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake.”

We are So Lucky that Petraeus is Done

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Because his goal at the CIA was to get out of the intelligence collection and analysis business, so that he could go fully into the assassination business, or as Marcy Wheeler puts it, “moar dronz“:

When I saw DHS is acquiring more drones this morning, I joked that the policy response of government agencies when they fail at their core function is to ask for more drones.

………

I swear, when I made that joke, I had not yet read how the CIA closed its climate change center because David Petraeus thought it more important to hunt terrorists with drones.

The center was designed as a small unit of senior specialists focused on the impact that environmental changes could have on political, economic and social factors in countries of concern to the United States. The analysts probed questions such as, under what scenarios might a massive drought cause large-scale migration, and when might a government’s failure to respond to a devastating flood open the door for terrorist groups to win over the local populace?

Analysts at the center worked to develop warning software that combined regional climate projections with political and demographic information, and held climate war games looking at what might happen in extreme scenarios, such as if rapid glacial melt caused the ocean’s major currents to shut down.

The center didn’t focus on the science behind climate change but instead relied on data from other government agencies as well as recommendations — including ones in a report released just over a week ago — from the National Academy of Sciences (Greenwire, Nov. 9).

But congressional Republicans skeptical of the science behind climate change sought to block the center’s funding shortly after it was launched. Those efforts failed, but sources say the center received little internal support after Panetta left the CIA in 2011 to take the top job at the Defense Department. Under his successor, David Petraeus, the agency was highly focused on terrorism, specifically targeted killings using armed drones. [my (Wheeler’s) emphasis]

The diddling Director, it seems, thought taking out an American teenager with a drone was more important than responding to a crisis that is already leading to migration and increased credibility for terrorist groups.

Even without the devastating take down of Petraeus’s record by Michael Hastings,* the reporter who took down General Stanley McCrystal, it’s pretty clear that we as a nation are in a much better position with someone, anyone, else at the helm of the CIA.

*The nickel tour of Hastings:  Iraq surge was the aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing, his bronze star was political in nature, the Afghan surge was a failure, his first tour in Iraq (training security forces) was a miasma of corruption and weapons going to death squads.

Yes, This is Worth Breaking My Embargo of HuffPo

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The invaluable Dan Froomkin looks at Patrick Fitzgerald’s record as a prosecutor, and concludes that he went out of his way to avoid a serious investigation of the people at the top of the pyramid:

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecution of former CIA officer John Kiriakou for talking to journalists about the Bush/Cheney torture program has at least one thing in common with his conviction of I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby in 2007.

In both cases, Fitzgerald went for the little fish. But the big fish got away. (See related story on the Kiriakou case.)

In the Plame case, Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby, then-vice president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for perjury and obstruction of justice related to the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA operative. But he stopped short of charging Cheney or top presidential adviser Karl Rove — both of whom had been targets of his investigation.

It appears that FBI investigators thought that they had Rove completely nailed, and that Cheney was at significant risk of indictment, but that Fitzgerald backed off.

Well, he was appointed by a Republican president on the recommendation of a Republican senator.

In Other News, the Sky is Blue

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Gee, after a long history of blatantly political censorship in its reviews, the CIA is finally investigating its publications review board:

The CIA has begun an internal investigation into whether a process designed to screen books by former employees and protect national security secrets is being used in part to censor agency critics, U.S. officials said.

The investigation coincides with the publication of a flurry of books from CIA veterans, and it is largely aimed at determining whether some redactions have been politically motivated.

Among the publications expected to get particular scrutiny is a memoir by the former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who used his book, “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,” to mount a vigorous defense of interrogation methods that were widely condemned but that he asserts provided critical intelligence about al-Qaeda.

The target of the probe is the agency’s Publications Review Board. The PRB evaluates hundreds of submissions each year and is supposed to focus exclusively on whether publication of material would threaten national security interests.

The CIA declined to comment on the internal investigation or to answer questions about the composition and practices of the PRB.

U.S. officials familiar with the inquiry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that it reflects growing concern in the intelligence community that the review process is biased toward agency loyalists, particularly those from the executive ranks.

Gee, you think?

This process has been corrupt and self serving for at least a decade.

The 2nd Underoos Bomber is a CIA Double Agent

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So we have another bomb plot “foiled”:

The successful blocking of an ambitious Al Qaeda plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner was an international sting operation worthy of Hollywood, with spies tricking terrorists into showing their cards.

Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to convince the Al Qaeda franchise in Yemen to give him a new kind of non-metallic bomb that the militants were designing to easily pass through airport security.

But the double agent instead arranged to deliver the explosive device to U.S. and other intelligence authorities waiting in another country, officials said Tuesday. The agent is now safely outside Yemen and is being debriefed.

Experts are analyzing the sophisticated device at the FBI’s bomb laboratory at Quantico, Va., to determine if it really could evade current security measures. It appears an upgraded version of the so-called “underwear bomb” that failed to take down a passenger jet over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

So, we’ve had four attempts to blow up a US plane:

And now we have  the 2nd underoos bomber.

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to wonder if the CIA is doing the same thing as the FBI, and finding a bunch of losers, and then build them up, so that they can have a high profile bust.

(on edit)

And yes, those I forgot those folks who were drying those dumb ass liquid bombs which require us to buy overpriced sodas on the airlines.

Manning is Referred For Court Martial

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22 counts, including “aiding the enemy, which carries a potential death penalty, for leaking thousands of files to Wikileaks.

It appears that the “the enemy” is the American public.

It’s a f%$#ing kangaroo court, as evidenced by the convening authority refusing to allow the most of the defense’s witnesses, because the goal, of both the military and the Obama administration is to suborn perjury from Manning, so that they can manufacture a case with which to prosecute Julian Assange.

Oh, This Doesn’t Sound Good

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It is increasingly looking like the Iranians took down the RQ-170 drone using electronic warfare techniques, rather than an accidental crash:

Iran guided the CIA’s “lost” stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone’s systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

Rather unsurprisingly, the GPS exploit has been known for nearly two decades, which reminds me about how the Serbs took down an F-117 in the ’90s: it was sent on identical routes, at the same time every night, which is like painting a target on your back.

This is what happens when you think that technological whiz bang means that you can be stupid with impunity.

Unfortunately, this means that smart people with more limited resources sometimes kick your ass.

Apparently, the reason that it crashed, and did damage to the underside of the the drone, (hence the shroud on the bottom) was because there was a slight difference in elevation between the Iranian airfield and the home airbase, and it was either too high or too low.

My only question now is what they are asking the Chinese to give them for a peek at their prize.

Well, Now I Know Why They Were Flying a Stealth Drone in Afghanistan

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Click for full size

Note the Radar Blocker in the Inlet

I thought that its deployment to Afghanistan was a budget ploy, after all, why use a stealthy drone, the RQ-170, against an opponent who has no radar (the Taliban), but I was wrong.

It turns out that they were using it to spy on Iran, and Tehran, does have an integrated air defense network.

And now the us sources are privately admitting that they flew it over Iran, and that the Iranians did get the drone.

Of interest, to my not particularly schooled eye, I think that I realize what the fairing on the top of the wing are; they are to accommodate the landing gear.

BTW, here’s a rundown on what secrets might be compromised, and it’s a pretty big deal.

They Went After Juan Cole?

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The New York Times has discovered that Bush and His Evil Minions™ set the CIA on distinguished professor, and well known blogger, Juan Cole:

A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

And just in case you are wondering if he is a disgruntled spy who went to the Times, he isn’t. The Times came to him:

Mr. Carle, who retired in 2007, has not previously disclosed his allegations. He did so only after he was approached by The New York Times, which learned of the episode elsewhere. While Mr. Carle, 54, has written a book to be published next month about his role in the interrogation of a terrorism suspect, it does not include his allegations about the White House’s requests concerning the Michigan professor.

My money is on it being someone in Dick Cheney’s office, because it smells like Cheney.

You Know That if There is News, Republicans Will Lie About It

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They are now claiming that torture got us Osama bin Laden, but it’s a lie.

The sources in Gitmo gave information after 2006, but they were all tortured before 2005, meaning that the information was obtained through more ethical methods:

From these dates we can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

With al-Libi, the connection between whatever torture he experienced and this intelligence is less clear (since he was first detained in 2005), but even with al-Libi, it appears clear he either never revealed the courier’s real name or only did so after he had been in custody for a year, and almost certainly until after he arrived in Gitmo.

Update: Putting the AP’s reporting here together with the DAB, it seems like al-Libi did give up the name, perhaps earlier than reported. But still not waterboarding.

Expect more lies from Republicans on this, because this is what they do.

Your bin Laden Update

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The most interesting bit is the dog that did not bark, one of the red flags that tipped off the CIA was the fact that a rather expensive, on the order of $1 million, but there were no phone lines or internet connectivity.

After the Moonie Washington Times revealed that we were monitoring his satellite phone in the 1990s, we went old school on his communications, using only couriers, and so, when he set up his homestead a mile from the Pakistani military academy (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?) he was having none of telecommunications thing, and that lack marked him.

On the truly weird side, it turns out that the raid was life tweeted by someone (@ReallyVirtual) who was unaware of the raid, and was just complaining about the helicopters late at night.

There is a bigger picture, but that’s the next post.

And In the World of the Surreal…

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The CIA is touting its green credentials by revealing that they generate heat by burning shredded documents:

A press release from the CIA explains that their “burn after reading” practice conserves energy because the exhaust from their incinerator generates steam to heat water at CIA headquarters. Says the CIA:

In addition to saving fuel, that process reduces the amount of waste–which would otherwise be destined for landfills–by nearly 1,000 tons per year. The CIA increases its recycling efforts each year, annually collecting over three tons of plastic, glass, cardboard, aluminum, construction debris, and other waste.

I dunno, I find this kind of …… odd.

Bradley Manning Has Been Transfered from Quantico to Leavenworth

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And it appears that the conditions of his confinement will improve significantly:

The family of Bradley Manning has welcomed news that he has been moved from a top security military prison in Quantico, Virginia, to a “more open” military facility in Kansas.

Manning, the US soldier accused of downloading and leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks, was transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, early on Wednesday, his aunt, Sharon Staples, confirmed.

His transfer follows sustained protests from human rights campaigners and others over his conditions at Quantico, where he was held in solitary confinement and on suicide watch, which has required him to be stripped naked at night apart from a smock and checked on repeatedly.

The commander of the Kansas facility said Manning would now receive three hours of recreation a day, and would “have the capability to interact with other pre-trial inmates on a routine basis”. Psychiatrists would assess his mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health on arrival, Lt Col Dawn Hilton said.

This did not happen because either the Pentagon or the Obama administration wanted this.

Between members of the British Parliament demanding an accounting of his treatment, Manning holds dual UK-US citizenship, and the UN Special Investigator demanding access, I think that the attempt by the Obama administration to extort a false accusation from Bradley Manning against Julian Assange has finally become politically untenable.

Props to those people who made this politically untenable.

Something Else Obama Lied About

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I honestly thought that P.J. had committed bureaucratic Seppuku when he gave an honest opinion about the torture detention conditions of alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning, so on one level, I am not at all surprised that Barack Obama fired him.

But Will Bunch, who was lied to by Obama during the campaign, Barack said that he would prosecute torturers and other administration and official law breakers, nails the dishonesty and hypocrisy involved:

“I don’t want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone.”
— Barack Obama, June 18, 2008.

Barack Obama lied.

Again.

He lied because somebody — a good man, a decent man, and a respected spokesman for the U.S. State Department — pushed Obama out of his comfort zone this week. And so what happened? — the Obama administration forced him out of his job. Apparently Obama does just want to have people who agree with him. Imagine that.

I’m not surprised, but I am disgusted.

I Generally, Don’t Approve of Armchair Generals…

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But with all the inside Beltway pukes, (and yes, I do mean you, John Kerry) calling for aggressive air strikes in Libya under the fig leaf of a “no fly zone”, I think that I need to put on my incredibly incompetent tactician cap, and kick some metaphorical butt.

First, I think that a lot of people think that a “No Fly Zone” is where we wave some sort of magic wand, and fly planes over hostile territory to keep the other guy from flying his planes.

It’s a lot more involved.

In order to enforce a no fly zone, you have to be able to fly over hostile territory with impunity, which involves:

  • Thoroughly disabling every SAM site in the country.  (Bombing)
  • Thoroughly disabling every AAA site in the country.  (More bombing)
  • Crippling the command and control systems (yet more bombing, and likely boots on the ground to confirm this).
  • Bombing all the air fields, and pretty much anywhere that an attack helicopter might be based.

A no fly zone is invasion-lite.

OK, so, if you want to support the anti-Gaddafi forces, what do you do, if you don’t want to go Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia on his ass?

Well, here is where I put on my stupid hat, and make a military suggestion.

What you do, is that you give the insurgents some sort of aid that:

  • Has a low marginal cost.
  • Cannot be transferred to entities who are hostile to the US (see Stinger missiles given to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan)
  • Is highly perishable, so that you can withdraw it and get them to stop when you want it to stop.

The thing is that there IS something that fulfills all this criteria:  Accurate real-time tactical intelligence.

Between satellites, long range radars on AWACS and E-2Cs, and signals intelligence (Sigint), we could be giving warnings of things like air-strikes, and the specific order of battle of Gaddafi’s forces.

Ironically, about a decade ago, the US Army thought that this sort of situational awareness would allow them to largely dispense with armor on their vehicles, which brought forth the abortive FCS, but the Army, as is the rest of the Pentagon, is constrained by a need to have zero casualties, while the rebels in Libya are under no such artificial constraint.

They just need to die less than their opponents.

Then again, my military experience would fit in a thimble with room to spare.

Now They are Charging Bradley Manning With a Capital Crime

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They have added, giving aid to the enemy, which carries the death penalty to the list of charges against the soldier accused of leaking diplomatic cables, and probably the “collateral murder” video, to Wikileaks.

What is going on here, with his pre-trial detention, with 23 hour a day solitary confinement, which is best described as torture, and now the threat of execution, is that they are clearly attempting to coerce perjured testimony, so that they can gin up some charges to engage in a political prosecution of Julian Assange.

Yet another truly repulsive embrace of Bushes Stalinesque embrace of the unlimited national security apparatus by Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™.

There’s his campaign slogan for 2012: Marginally less morally repugnant than whoever he is running against.

He’s Not Just CIA, He’s Blackwater

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And it appears that he was working as a contractor for the CIA, and former, and perhaps currently, worked for Blackwater or Xe.

It should also note that the New York Times has been told by the government that it has permission from the US government to confirm his CIA connections.

Permission from the government? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? (Glenn Greenwald is somewhat more articulate on this issue.)

So he’s a contractor, and considering his background, perhaps the appellation “mercenary” would be appropriate, said the contractor (working as an engineer, not a shooter).
In any case, the fact that they are admitting this means that both CIA and the State Department are very worried about this.

Just Who, and What, Is Raymond Davis

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He’s currently being investigated for a double murder in Lahore, Pakistan, and the US government is claiming that he has diplomatic immunity, and so must be released.

There are a number of peculiarities here. As constitutional lawyer
Scott Horton notes, the issuance of a diplomatic passport does not convey diplomatic immunity, the host country formally recognize and accept their diplomatic status.

Also, it’s unclear if he was a diplomatic or a consular officer and if the latter, then the charge, double murder, would certainly not be covered by any immunity.

In fact, immunity might not apply in either case, since the Vienna convention does not apply to serious crimes, like, for example, murder.

Additionally, thanks Dave Lindorff of Eurasia review for this, it appears that Mr. Davis was not a consular or embassy employee, but rather the employee of a defunct security firm, Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, which makes his status even more suspicious.

Also, when caught, he had at least two guns in his car, a number of cell phones and batteries, and a telescope.

Linhoff also reports that the two Pakistanis were shot in the back, and that he has received reports that they were not just two guys on a motorbike, but in fact operatives of Pakistan’s security service, the ISI.

Given the circumstances, and the fact that a heavily armed strike team in the SUV rushing from the US consulate to try to snatch him from police immediately following the incident, and running down and killing a person in the process, I would be inclined to believe that whatever he was doing there had nothing to do with diplomacy.

One interesting factoid in all of this is that his arrest has corresponded to an unusual lull in drone strikes, which would be consistent with his having a senior managerial role in those operations:

A mysterious halt to U.S Predator strikes on Pakistan after the Raymond Davis incident in Lahore has led to intense speculation the American “diplomat” was connected to the Drone program even as Washington and Islamabad are going eyeball-to-eyeball over his status.

Davis, 36, was apprehended by Pakistani police after he shot dead two Pakistanis on a busy Lahore thoroughfare on January 27, four days after the last drone U.S Drone strike in Pakistan. There has not been a single strike in the 25 days since then, making it the third-longest period of inactivity since the U.S ramped up the Predator program to take out terrorists infesting Pakistan’s frontier regions, according to Long War Journal (LWJ), a blog that tracks U.S Predator attacks.

Speculation is now rife that Davis was somehow connected to the Predator program since he was reportedly carrying a GPS, telescope, camera and assorted equipment not usually associated with thoroughbred diplomats. Pakistani authorities have also accused him of unauthorized travels to the Frontier region and being in touch with extremist elements in Waziristan, which suggests he might have been coordinating the attacks with U.S moles in the region.

While Davis claimed that he shot the two Pakistanis in self-defense when they were trying to rob him, some reports have said they were ISI tails assigned to follow him because the Pakistani intelligence felt he had crossed certain unspecified “red lines.” Those red lines may have involved discovering the Pakistani establishment’s links with terrorists group, a pursuit which led to the death of Wall Street Journalist Danny Pearl.

I’m thinking that Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, is about as real as Brewster-Jennings was for Valerie Plame, and that he works for the CIA, some other TLA (three letter agency), or a contractor hired by some arm of the US government.

It would explain why heads have been exploding at Foggy Bottom (State), and probably Langley (CIA) as well, for the past few weeks.

Republican Fail

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I’m not sure how it happened, but the Republicans in the house failed to pass an extension of some of the more contemptible parts of the Patriot Act:

Too clever by half, the House GOP leadership allowed only 40 minutes of debate on the extension of the PATRIOT Act today, and brought the bill up for a vote under a rule allowing no amendments and requiring two-thirds of the body to vote YES.

Well, that didn’t happen. Apparently, the Tea Party Congresscritters discovered their love for the constitution, Amendments One and Four inclusive, while taking the opportunity to stand up to their leadership’s lackadaisical attitude toward the Act’s extension.

I believe that the Republican House leadership may have a much deeper appreciation of just the deeper meaning of the exclamation that Dan Castellaneta created as the voice of Homer Simpson.

Heh.