U.S. government efforts to counter foreign spies remains fragmented and weak, despite a series of highly damaging spy cases, said a report made public Monday by a former high-ranking counterintelligence official.

Michelle Van Cleave, the former U.S. national counterintelligence executive, stated in the report that the FBI, CIA and other federal counterspy units lack both a needed focus and strategy for thwarting the growing foreign intelligence threat. "Our counterintelligence capabilities are in decay. Instead of leadership and strategic coherence, the [director of national intelligence's] office has given us more bureaucracy," Miss Van Cleave said in an interview. "Hostile intelligence activities are a national security challenge of the first order," Miss Van Cleave said. "The new administration will need to go back to first principles and be willing to make some major changes, in order to build a genuine strategic counterintelligence capability for the United States."……(Washington Times, 30 Sep 08)

Ex-CIA Official Pleads Guilty to Fraud

The CIA's former top administrator pleaded guilty yesterday to steering agency contracts to a defense contractor and concealing their relationship, making Kyle "Dusty" Foggo the highest-ranking member of a federal intelligence or law enforcement agency to be convicted of a crime, officials said. Foggo, 53, admitted that he conspired to defraud the government through his relationship with Brent R. Wilkes, a California businessman and close friend. Prosecutors said Wilkes took Foggo and his family on a $30,000 Hawaiian vacation and courted the CIA official with expensive meals throughout the Washington area, including at Ristorante La Perla in the District, the Capital Grille in Tysons Corner and the Serbian Crown restaurant in Great Falls. Wilkes also offered Foggo a job. In return, court documents say, Foggo helped Wilkes get lucrative contracts, including one in which the CIA paid 60 percent more than it should have for water a Wilkes-affiliated company supplied to CIA outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Foggo, a longtime logistics officer, was the CIA's executive director from November 2004 until May 2006……(Washington Post, 30 Sep 08)

Bringing an End to ‘Libel Tourism’

The House of Representatives has passed a good bill that would prevent American courts from enforcing libel judgments obtained in foreign countries if those countries provide less free speech protection than the United States does…The bill on “libel tourism” strikes an important blow for free expression. American law imposes a high bar on libel lawsuits — far higher than many other countries. To get around these free-speech protections, some plaintiffs have been bringing lawsuits in Britain where libel protections are notoriously weak.  Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi Arabian businessman, sued Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American author, in Britain for stating in her book “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It” that he has been involved in financing terrorism. Mr. bin Mahfouz says that charge is false. The book was not published in Britain, but because a few copies were sold there over the Internet, a British court heard Mr. bin Mahfouz’s lawsuit and awarded him a substantial amount. He is now free to ask an American court to collect the judgment…….(New York Times, 30 Sep 08)

A former executive director of the CIA has pleaded guilty to wire fraud as part of a plea bargain.  Kyle “Dusty” Foggo was the number three man in the CIA from 2004 to 2006. At a hearing Monday in federal court in Alexandria, he pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, admitting that he helped his best friend obtain contracts with the CIA at inflated prices.  As part of the plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to drop the other 27 counts against him. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in January, but prosecutors agreed that they will seek no more than three years……(AP, 29 Sep 08)

CIA ‘backed’ Irish battle against Brussels treaty

First it was the sheer ingratitude of the Irish, then it was the failure of the Dublin government to mount a successful yes campaign. Now Brussels has found a new explanation as to why Ireland voted down the European Union treaty in June - a CIA and Pentagon-backed plot, devised by American neoconservatives to weaken the EU.  The European parliament wants an inquiry into whether Declan Ganley, the multi-millionaire chairman of the Libertas group that campaigned against the treaty, could be in the pockets of US defense and intelligence services.  The calls have been led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the firebrand 1968 student leader turned Green MEP, who pointed to Irish press reports that “revealed there possibly exists a link between the financiers of the no campaign in Ireland and the Pentagon as well as the CIA.  “If proved true, this would clearly show there are forces in the US willing to pay people to destabilize a strong and autonomous Europe”…….(Sunday Times, 28 Sep 08)

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ishmael Jones, a former member of the Central Intelligence Agency. He joined the agency in the 1980s, where he served as a deep cover officer focusing on human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. His assignments included more than fifteen years of continuous overseas service in numerous exotic countries and several rogue nations. He resigned from the CIA in good standing. Ishmael Jones is a pseudonym, in accordance with laws that make it a felony to reveal the true names of deep cover officers. He is the author of the new book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. It is the first book written by a deep cover CIA officer……(FrontPage, 26 Sep 08)

Remains of Vietnam MIA from Scarsdale ID'd; flew secret missions

In 1970, Gomer D. Reese III of Scarsdale was flying secret missions in the Vietnam War for a CIA group calling themselves the Ravens. Enemy fire shot down his plane in Laos that year and his remains were nowhere to be found.  That is until now. The Department of Defense spent years investigating Reese's death and announced yesterday they have positively identified his remains and those of another pilot, Capt. James E. Cross of Ohio.

Military investigators interviewed Laotian citizens who claimed to have witnessed the crash. Remains and items linked to the crash turned up over several years of investigations.  This spring an excavation recovered human remains. Dental records helped make the identifications….(LoHud, 25 Sep 08)

Senate Homeland Security Committee approves policies for release of sensitive documents

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Tuesday approved legislation that would establish polices and procedures for the designation and release of sensitive but unclassified government information.  The draft bill, offered by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., cleared on a voice vote in a committee meeting off the Senate floor.  It would establish a Controlled Unclassified Information Office within the National Archives and Records Administration. The office would be responsible for developing and issuing polices and procedures "governing the designation, safeguarding and dissemination of controlled unclassified information" from federal agencies whether in print or electronic form.  The bill calls for the policies to be developed with the help of a new Controlled Unclassified Information Council, which would be chaired by the director of the new office and made up of officials from federal agencies……(Congress Daily, 26 Sep 08)

Today officials ballyhooed the introduction of ORION, an online intelligence sharing system that will give federal and local investigators instant access to "every scrap of information " on a big breaking case, such as the DC Beltway Sniper shootings in 2002, which was plagued by law enforcement miscommunication.  Supervisory Special Agent Mike McCoy, who worked on the Beltway Sniper case, helped design ORION -- the Operational Response and Investigative Online Network -- the FBI said.  "When a phone tip is entered into the system, ORION can actively process that raw data and "push" leads and intelligence to investigators," an FBI statement said……(CQ Politics, 25 Sep 08)

FBI's chief information officer resigns

The FBI's chief information officer announced his resignation Wednesday, nearly five years after inheriting an information technology program fraught with disaster and dramatically turning it around.  "In 2004, everyone was asking when the FBI would join the 21st century," said CIO Zalmai Azmi. "Today I can tell you that we are in the 21st century and continue to move   When Azmi joined the FBI as the acting CIO, the bureau was scheduled to roll out Virtual Case File, a software program meant to replace its archaic, paper-based criminal tracking system. Instead, the system was scrapped--and Azmi got to break the news to FBI Director Robert Mueller that the $170 million system, designed by Science Applications International, was unsalvageable.  Officially named the CIO in 2004, Azmi has since been working to build the bureau's IT branch and build confidence both within the agency and on Capitol Hill, where he meets with lawmakers twice a week…Azmi's last official day will be October 17, and he said his successor will likely be named a few weeks after that. From a large pool of applicants from the public and private sectors, the bureau has narrowed its choices to candidates from the private sector.…..(CNet, 25 Sep 08)

Italian lawyers seek Condoleezza Rice testimony

Lawyers for a former Italian intelligence chief want to call Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a witness in the trial of 26 Americans charged in the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric.  The request filed Wednesday by defense lawyer Nicolo Madia is based on testimony saying Rice was in charge of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.  Former military intelligence director Nicolo Pollari is among several Italians also charged in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr from Mila……(AP, 24 Sep 08)

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Honored as St. Louis Outstanding Business of the Year

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) was honored as a 2008 St. Louis Outstanding Business of the Year at the 7th Annual Business Celebration Sept.19. Mayor Francis G. Slay presented the award to NGA’s Executives Bert Beaulieu and Lynne Puetz. NGA was recognized for the Agency’s vital contributions to the city's growth. The event was sponsored by the Office of the Mayor and St. Louis Development Corporation.  The award is given annually to businesses that have made special commitments or investments in the city. Factors for consideration include job creation, job retention, capital investment and unique project impact, such as bringing new services to underserved areas, investment in pioneering areas or contributing to the diversity of businesses in the city’s business base…..(Directions Magazine, 24 Sep 08)

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command is looking for a contractor to support an intelligence network that will connect command centers and fleet task forces.  In a request for information, Navy officials said they plan a limited competition, based on security restrictions, for the Distributed Common Ground System–Navy (DCGS-N) Prime Mission Product contract. They are seeking sources that can provide a wide array of technical capabilities, such as system design, development, integration, hardware and software, platform and site integration, testing, and installation support.  Navy officials plan to require that contractors’ engineering employees have top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance and that contractors have an accredited sensitive compartmented information facility……(Washington Technology, 24 Sep 08)

"No Plans to Declassify" New Afghanistan National Intelligence Estimate for White House

…Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community's 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final "coordination meeting" of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.  According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors…Seth Jones, an expert on Afghanistan at the Rand Corporation think tank, called the situation in Afghanistan "dire."  "We are now at a tipping point, with about half of the country now penetrated by a range of Sunni militant groups including the Taliban and al Queida," Jones said. Jones said there is growing concern that Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan would "call it quits."  "The US military would then need six, eight, maybe ten brigades but we just don't have that many,"…..(ABC, 24 Sep 08)

CIA recruiters pitch jobs in security to students

Integrity and identity were the main themes at a CIA information session Monday night in Wilson 101. The more than 50 students attending - who were carded at the door for Brown IDs - heard a recruitment pitch for overseas and domestic work that stressed stricter requirements than Brown students may be used to.  Two sub-divisions of the agency, the National Clandestine Service and the Directorate of Intelligence, were represented. National Clandestine Service, created in 2005, is responsible for collecting human intelligence. It often works with other agencies overseas, according to an agent who called himself Nolan, but would not reveal his last name for personal safety reasons. Nolan, who uses a 'cover', or fake identity, during overseas work, said most jobs in NCS required covers.  Employees working overseas (possibly in espionage) could be assigned "any possible cover based on what your mission might be," Nolan said. "Your name doesn't change, your family doesn't change but you have to work for someone else (such as an intelligence agency overseas) and you have to be comfortable with that."  Nolan said that no one is allowed to know the real job of a CIA officer working overseas. "You have to tell (family and friends) that you are someplace else,"…..(Brown Daily Herald, 24 Sep 08)

Justice Dept tweaking terror probe rules

The Justice Department, in a nod to concerns that Americans could be investigated in terrorism cases without evidence of wrongdoing, said Tuesday it will tweak still-tentative rules governing FBI national security cases before they are issued…Not all of the planned changes were outlined during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, but Assistant Attorney General Elisebeth Cook said they would include limits on the length and kinds of investigative activities used in monitoring demonstrations and civil disorders……(AP, 23 Sep 08)

Islamabad Bombing hit site where CIA officers congregate

The suicide bombing at the Islamabad Marriott Hotel may have been targeting Americans, since the location is a common site for U.S. personnel including intelligence agents to not only meet but stay, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.  The initial reports following the bombing were that newly elected Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani may have been targeted, since they were to have dinner at the hotel but changed plans at the last minute and met at the prime minister's residence.  The quick change suggests that there was derogatory intelligence of a threat to their lives, but authorities may have wanted to protect late breaking intelligence to move the venue……(World Net Daily, 23 Sep 08)

AIG is a ‘special case’

The U.S. government’s bail out of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) comes as no surprise to intelligence community insiders. In fact, AIG has been at the center of a number of CIA operations for decades.

The federal government’s $85 billion “bridge” loan to AIG essentially makes the United States government an 80 percent stakeholder in AIG, a move that will prevent external players from peering into AIG’s myriad intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA, according to an insider who has followed AIG’s overseas operations for a number of years…Cornelius V. Starr started AIG as “American Asiatic Underwriters” in 1919 in Shanghai. Starr moved AIG from Shanghai to New York after the Communists came to power in 1949. Ironically, AIG is back in China through its ownership of People’s Insurance Company of China. AIG also owns AIG Korea Insurance.  Ever since the days of Ken Starr’s uncle, Cornelius, AIG has, on behalf of U.S. intelligence, kept tabs on rising players on the Asia political scene, particularly in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries…….(Online Journal, 23 Sep 08)

Passport Snooping Gets Fed Intelligence Analyst Up to Year in Prison

A former State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyst pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to unlawfully accessing passport records of celebrities, actors, athletes and politicians.  Lawrence Yontz, 48, of Arlington, Virginia, faces a maximum of a year in prison when sentenced in December, the Justice Department said. Yontz is the only person charged in a scandal that has rocked the State Department's Passport Information Electronic Records System.  The system maintains data on 127 million passports and can be accessed by more than 20,000 employees.  As part of a security breach, the passport files of Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton were illegally accessed. The department declined to name the identities of others whose privacy was breached.  A July government audit (.pdf) has found "weaknesses, including a general lack of policies, procedures, guidance and training" within the State Department's passport bureau…….(Wired, 22 Sep 08)

Ex-Employee Pleads Guilty to Viewing Passport Files

A former foreign service officer at the State Department pleaded guilty on Monday to illegally reading the private passport files of three presidential candidates as well as those of actors, athletes and media figures. The former employee, Lawrence C. Yontz, looked through the files of nearly 200 people as a result of his “idle curiosity,” prosecutors and his lawyer said in a filing in federal court here.  The plea grows out of the State Department’s revelation six months ago that a number of employees and contractors with access to its internal passport database improperly peered into the files of three senators running for president: John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called all three candidates in March to apologize.  Mr. Yontz, who lives in Arlington, Va., and worked for the State Department for more than 20 years as an employee and contractor, was among five contract employees let go this year after an internal investigation……(New York Times, 22 Sep 08)

Mobster: ex-FBI agent received protection money

Boston mobsters paid former FBI agent John Connolly roughly $235,000 over the years for protection and information that included fingering gang turncoats, a jailed gangster testified Monday at the agent's murder trial.

Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, 74, spoke softly and sipped orange juice as he recounted his life of crime, including at least 10 murders, as a senior member of Boston's Winter Hill Gang. The gang's long relationship with Connolly included envelopes stuffed with $5,000 for yearly vacations and $10,000 at Christmas…..(AP, 22 Sep 08)

The wife of a former FBI agent who went missing in Iran 18 months ago said on Sunday she had requested a meeting with Iran's president when he is in New York this week for the annual U.N. General Assembly.  Christine Levinson said she was waiting to hear from Iran's mission to the United Nations whether she would be able to see President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to discuss her husband's case.  "I hope President Ahmadinejad will agree to meet me and to look into my husband's case. He has the power to get things done," Levinson told Reuters…Robert Levinson vanished in March last year while on a business trip to Iran's Gulf island of Kish. Christine Levinson said she still had no credible information about his whereabouts or what might have happened to him…..(Reuters, 22 Sep 08)

The CIA moves European Head Office to Bern in Switzerland

The American Embassy in Berne will become a European headquarters of the U.S. secret service CIA expanded. The Council of Europe’s special investigators and the National FDP Dick Marty considers this "very problematic".

The U.S. Embassy in Sulgen eckstrasse-19 in Berne: a high security wing. Who wants to enter the building, may not carry bags, and even cell phones are prohibited. And because the Americans at the entrance does not have set up luggage storage, they revive the local industry: For two desperate visitors can francs of the U.S. Embassy their seven things in a nearby bakery zwischenlagern.  The rigid access regime, the darkened windows and the meter-high fence is intended not only security but also the secrecy: The message is like any U.S. diplomatic mission, a CIA base. GLIMPSE than in September 2006, a CIA spy unmasked, the journalists found out that he officially in the Bernese U.S. embassy as "Second Secretary for Political Affairs" has worked……(Bella Ciao, 21 Sep 08)

Cheney Is Told to Keep Official Records

…U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's order came in response to a lawsuit filed this month by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group, joined by several historians and open-government advocates, warned that Cheney might destroy or withhold important documents as the Bush administration winds down if he interprets the Presidential Records Act of 1978 as applying to only some of his official papers. That, in turn, could deprive historians and the general public of valuable records that illustrate Cheney's role. He is widely considered to be the most influential vice president in history -- in forming U.S. policy over the last 7 1/2 years, they argue…Open-government advocates are nervous about the fate of Cheney's papers, because the vice president has long resisted revealing any aspect of the inner workings of his office. He has, for example, shielded information such as the names of industry executives who advised his energy task force, his travel costs and details, and Secret Service logs of visitors to his office and residence. Cheney also has argued that he is not part of the executive branch……(Washington Post, 20 Sep 08)

Judge orders Cheney to preserve records

A federal judge Saturday ordered Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of the records from his time as vice president.  The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under the Presidential Records Act.

The Bush administration's legal position "heightens the court's concern" that some records may not be preserved, said the judge.  In a 22-page opinion, the judge revealed that in recent days, lawyers for the Bush administration balked at a proposed agreement between the two sides on how to proceed with the case.  Cheney and the other defendants "were only willing to agree to a preservation order that tracked their narrowed interpretation" of the Presidential Records Act, wrote Kollar-Kotelly.  The administration, said the judge, wanted any court order on what records are at issue in the suit to cover only the office of the vice president, not Cheney or the other defendants in the lawsuit. The other defendants include the National Archives and the archivist of the United States……(AP, 20 Sep 08)

FBI finds book taken from Ohio presidential center

The last of two rare books stolen from the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center has been recovered and is in the hands of FBI agents in Texas, authorities said.  The book known as "The Freeman Code" will be returned to the Hayes center, U.S. Assistant Prosecutor Tom Secor said Thursday. He declined to say how authorities got it back…"The Freeman Code" was printed in 1798 and contains laws of the Northwest Territory. FBI agents in Columbus last week recovered a stolen copy of "The Maxwell Code," which was printed in 1795 and contains the first printing of Ohio laws.  "The Maxwell Code" has an estimated value of more than $100,000. Fewer than 10 copies are known to exist.  Three people were arrested and accused of stealing the books this summer. Joshua McCarty, 31, and his girlfriend, Angela Bays, 19, both of Columbus, and Zachary Scranton, 21, of Marysville, were charged with theft of major artwork……(AP, 19 Sep 08)

After an exhaustive two-year investigation, former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley isn't expected to face charges for sending salacious messages to underage pages…Foley resigned in 2006 after being confronted with the e-mails and instant messages he sent to pages. He has been under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI.  Foley's attorney, David Roth, has acknowledged that Foley sent the messages to the teens, but says the Florida Republican never had inappropriate contact with minors…In the wake of Foley's resignation, Roth announced Foley was gay and had been molested by a priest as a teenage altar boy…Florida authorities were hampered in their investigation because neither Foley nor the House would let investigators examine his congressional computers…….(AP, 19 Sep 08)

Open source spying means military intelligence

I have been amused by recent coverage of what is called “open source spying.”  It turns out to be nothing more than trying to glean hints of what’s real using unclassified stuff on the Internet.    Spooks act all excited about using the Google, but this has absolutely nothing to do with open source.  If it did, the CIA would be looking toward some community to help it, and sharing with that community. It won’t. … So please don’t call it open source spying, or open source intelligence. Call it reading the virtual newspaper.  Personally, I think open source intelligence should be a baseline for whatever else you want to do in a spy agency. To paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, you need your known knowns before you can have your known unknowns……(ZDNet, 19 Sep 08)

US trains Iraqi women spies

The American military has begun training a first batch of Iraqi women spies to work alongside US-led forces in the violence-hit country, it was announced here on Thursday.  US intelligence specialists addressed Iraqi women who formed the first class to undergo the Basic Military Intelligence Course, the US military said in a statement…The statement did not say how many recruits took part, how long the training would last or where the classes were conducted.  There has been a surge in suicide bombings carried out by Iraqi women, including war widows, in recent months.  They are said to be motivated by poverty, desperation or a desire for revenge for the deaths of family members blamed on the US-led military……(AFP, 18 Sep 08)

Prolonged dispute keeps new FOIA office only on paper

Nine months after passage of a bill creating it, an office meant to help set policy on the Freedom of Information Act remains in limbo due to a dispute between Congress and the Bush administration over its location and the lack of a standard appropriations process.  The plight of the Office of Government Information Services, which might ultimately receive only about $1 million a year for a small staff, continues to draw concern. "There has been no movement on establishing OGIS," House Oversight and Government Reform Information Policy Subcommittee Chairman William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said Wednesday at a hearing on the office's status.  "Funds will not available until 2009," Clay said. "Members are concerned that delays in structuring the office will increase the backlog of FOIA requests and undermine the purpose of establishing OGIS."  A bill updating FOIA practices, signed last year by President Bush, requires that the office be placed in the National Archives and Records Administration. The office would include an ombudsman and would try to address FOIA backlogs and speed up resolution of FOIA requests across government……(Congress Daily 18 Sep 08)

Agency and Bush Are Sued Over Domestic Surveillance

A privacy group filed a class-action lawsuit on Thursday against the National Security Agency, President Bush and other officials, seeking to halt what it describes as illegal surveillance of Americans’ telephone and Internet traffic.  The lawsuit parallels a legal action brought against the AT&T Corporation in 2006 by the same nonprofit group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, charging that the company gave the N.S.A. access to its communications lines and customer records without proper warrants.  Congress derailed that lawsuit this year by passing legislation granting immunity to telecommunications companies that had provided assistance to the agency, though the foundation has said it intends to challenge the constitutionality of the new law…..(New York Times, 18 Sep 08)

Frederick Hitz, former inspector general of the CIA, will present a lecture based on his book "Why Spy? Espionage in an Era of Uncertainty" at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, in 16 Robertson Hall.  Hitz has written extensively about espionage and intelligence issues. His lecture will focus on why espionage worked against the Soviet Union but has been unsuccessful against terrorists.  Appointed by President George H.W. Bush as the CIA inspector general in 1990, Hitz was charged with conducting internal investigations of the agency's activities, including the case of spy Aldrich Ames…..(Princeton, 18 Sep 08)

Administration Trying for Spy Satellites Again

After the spectacular failure of the last spy satellite effort, the Bush administration is trying once again to put a new set of government eyes in space through a $1.7 billion project approved last week whose goal is to have two new satellites in orbit by 2012.  The key players involved this time — including officials from the Department of Defense and the national intelligence director’s office — said in interviews this week that they recognized that the government could not afford another stumble.  The last project, called Future Imagery Architecture, was canceled in 2005 after indecision over what kind of capabilities it should have, which delayed progress and drove up cost. It was canceled even before a single satellite was launched, wasting at least $4 billion……(New York Times, 18 Sep 08)

Open Source Spy Looks for Upgrade

"Open source" intelligence – material taken from newspapers, Internet postings, and TV shows – is starting to play a major role in the nation's spy agencies. But it's still got a ton of problems, says one contractor working in the "OSINT" field. He offers his thoughts on how Open Source can be upgraded:…..(Wired, 18 Sep 08)

FBI Unleashed

The U.S. wants to rescind rules that govern how quickly FBI agents can pursue an investigation. Back in the 1970s, Congress forced the FBI and CIA to limit their ability to investigate spies, terrorists or criminals. This was in reaction to presidents in the 1960s and 70s using these two agencies too freely for partisan purposes. In the last decade, it's been accepted that these restrictions were partially responsible for al Qaeda being able to carry out the September 11, 2001 attacks (in particular those terrorists who learned to fly the aircraft at American flight schools)……(Strategy Page, 18 Sep 08)

Hit man says FBI agent set up Miami murder

A mob hit man who claims responsibility for 20 killings testified Wednesday that he fatally shot a gambling executive in 1982 but that a former FBI agent on trial for murder set events in motion that led to the assassination. John Martorano said leaders of Boston's Winter Hill Gang got protection and tips from former agent John Connolly, whom they often referred to as "Zip." That included information that former World Jai-Alai president John Callahan might finger the gangsters for an earlier hit on an Oklahoma businessman _ also done by Martorano. "John Connolly had told them there was going to be so much pressure. They were going to bring it on Callahan now…..(AP, 17 Sep 08)

Pentagon approves spy satellite program

The Pentagon has approved plans to buy and launch two commercial-class imagery satellites to complement its classified constellation of spy craft.  The Pentagon will also increase the amount of imagery purchased from private companies operating similar satellites already in the sky.  The decision last week caps months of wrangling between the Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Intelligence Directors Office and the Office of the Secretary of Defense over whether to buy and operate commercial satellites, or to pump the money into buying dramatically more imagery from the commercial companies that already have similar satellites in orbit.  The National Reconnaissance Office will buy two commercial satellites for about $1.7 billion. The satellites are to be launched around 2012…..(AP, 17 Sep 08)

An Argument for Open Source Intelligence Secrecy

“There is altogether too much discussion about the deliverables that OSINT [open source intelligence] can produce,” said Jennifer Sims, a former State Department intelligence official, at a DNI conference on open source intelligence last week.  Open source intelligence refers to intelligence that is derived from unclassified, legally accessible information sources.  But the fact that the underlying sources of OSINT are unclassified doesn’t mean the resulting intelligence can be disclosed, said Dr. Sims, who is now director of intelligence studies at Georgetown University …The argument for greater open source intelligence secrecy suggests that U.S. intelligence agencies have been recklessly broadcasting OSINT products and thereby compromising the unique advantages that they provide. But most OSINT products are withheld from the public anyway. And although some OSINT products have reportedly been included in the President’s Daily Brief, few of them seem to offer operationally significant insights that could be compromised by disclosure…..(FAS, 17 Sep 08)

A landmark Italian trial into the 2003 CIA abduction of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Omar Nasr from Milan went ahead Thursday after the judge rejected a suspension request from Italy's former top military spy.
The request was presented by the defense team of Niccolo' Pollari, the former head of Italian military intelligence SISMI, which is now known as AISE.  Pollari argued the trial should be halted pending the result of a suit filed by Silvio Berlusconi's government against the judge.  The judge, Oscar Magi, ruled that there was no compelling reason for the trial to be halted…..(ANSA, 17 Sep 08)

Strike on Syria reactor a joint spy victory: CIA

The destruction of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor last year was the result of an intelligence collaboration that included a "foreign partner" who first identified the facility's purpose, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said on Tuesday.  The reactor at the desert outpost of Al-Kibar was flattened in an air strike on September 6, 2007 that senior U.S. intelligence officials have said was carried out by Israel on its own initiative…Israel has never given an account of the strike or formally confirmed that it took place and some Israeli officials have quietly voiced dismay at U.S. disclosures about the strike……(Reuters, 16 Sep 08)

Hayden: Next president should let CIA do its job

The best way for the next president to help the CIA would be to "do nothing," agency director Michael Hayden said Tuesday.  "We've been pulled up by the roots to check how we're growing on about an 18-month cycle for about the last six years," Hayden said in answer to a question from the audience after a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.  "If asked, I would offer my thoughts to the president-elect's team to pick people you trust who are competent to run these agencies, put them in those positions and the current structure will work well enough with good people...," he said. "We're suffering reformation and transformation fatigue." Hayden outlined some of the key issues the CIA faces…..(AP, 16 Sep 08)

Intelligence from open sources like the Internet is now recognized as an essential part of the work of U.S. agencies -- but one leading expert in the field says much more of it should be secret.  "Open source intelligence is widely recognized as both an essential capability and a formidable asset in our national security infrastructure," CIA Director and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden told a conference in Washington Friday.  Hayden quoted the strategic plan issued this year by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell: "No aspect of (intelligence) collection requires greater consideration or holds more promise than open source information."  But the conference, organized by the DNI's Open Source Center, the agency based at the CIA that provides analysis of open sources for U.S. intelligence, also heard counterintuitive calls for more of its product to be classified.  Jennifer Sims, director of intelligence studies at Georgetown University, told United Press International there was another rationale for classifying intelligence reports, other than the traditional one of protecting sources and methods…..(UPI, 16 Sep 08)

FBI Wrestling With Remake as Intelligence Agency

Seven years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still facing challenges in remaking itself into a domestic-intelligence organization. Among the weak points found by an internal study: an insufficient number and quality of intelligence sources; a lack of understanding of what information should be collected; intelligence officers with limited awareness of their local areas; and quality-control problems with analysis. FBI officials said they are implementing fixes to address the problems. According to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the study was performed last year to diagnose weaknesses they should address as they launched the FBI's latest initiative to improve intelligence collection and analysis, dubbed the Strategic Execution Team…John Miller, the FBI's assistant director of public affairs, says hundreds of agents and analysts have gone through a new training program, which is planned for bureau-wide completion by early 2009. "The FBI's come a long way since Sept. 11," Mr. Miller said.  Several current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials say the latest efforts still fall short of what is needed. In particular, they say, the FBI hasn't sufficiently addressed its gun-and-badge culture, which gives intelligence analysts a lesser status within the organization…..(Wall Street Journal, 16 Sep 08)

Cell phone headset features spy cam and Bluetooth for covert snooping

Here is another spy camera for you wanna-be James Bonds, private eyes, or undercover reporters out there working on a case. What looks like an innocent cell phone headset has a built-in spy camera for covert surveillance and recording, with a Bluetooth receiver that you can use to make cell phone calls with.  This spy kit includes a corded cellphone headset with a pinhole camera with an embedded Bluetooth device for added effect. It also features a 2.4-inch TFT LCD display that can play and record images with 2GB of built-in memory that is also expandable with a Mini SD card. The 3.7mm pinhole camera records images via MPEG4 format along with sound and you can use the Bluetooth receiver at the same time as making video recordings to keep your cover from being blown….(Geek, 16 Sep 08)

Pentagon to expand intel ops at U.S. prison in Afghanistan

The Pentagon plans to expand intelligence operations at its main prison in Afghanistan, records and interviews with military officials show.  Interrogators and analysts are being sought for a bigger Bagram prison scheduled to open next year. They will be hired to question prisoners and provide intelligence that can be used on the battlefield, according to contract solicitations reviewed by USA TODAY. The Army also is seeking a "trained Mullah" to conduct Islamic services for detainees and advise U.S. officials on religious issues. The developments are the latest indication of U.S. plans for a long-term presence in Afghanistan, where the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban militants have regained strength since U.S. forces ousted them in 2001.  Originally built as a Soviet air base in the 1980s, the Bagram prison was meant to be a short-term holding site…The new facility and staff at Bagram will allow U.S. officials to gather more diverse intelligence from the added prisoners as more U.S. forces arrive in the country to take down Taliban strongholds, said Seth Jones, a military analyst at the RAND Corp. think tank.…..(USA Today, 16 Sep 08)

U.S. intelligence gathering ship enters Sevastopol harbor

The U.S. Pathfinder ship entered on Tuesday the Sevastopol harbor that is home to the Ukrainian navy and Russia's Black Sea Fleet a Russian naval source said.  "This is the second planned visit of Pathfinder at the invitation of Ukraine in the past 10 days," the source said.  USNS Pathfinder (T-AGS 60) is an oceanographic survey ship owned by the Military Sealift Command and has a civilian crew and scientists on board.  According to official statements, Pathfinder is searching for a ship which sank in the harbor during World War II…However, Russian intelligence believes that ships of the Pathfinder class could be used for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering purposes.  "We have reliable information confirming that the [Pathfinder] ship has arrived in the Black Sea primarily to conduct intelligence gathering operations in support of the NATO naval task group currently deployed in the area," the source said.  Russian intelligence experts suspect that the ship may be carrying surveillance equipment that could survey the depths and the condition of the sea shelf and monitor the movement of submerged submarines at a distance of up to 100 km (over 60 miles)……(RIA Novosti, 16 Sep 08)

US plans to sell Israel 1,000 bunker-buster bombs

The U.S. plans to sell Israel 1,000 buster-bunker bombs which Israeli military experts said Monday could provide a powerful new weapon against underground arsenals in Lebanon or Gaza.  The experts said they doubted, however, that the bombs could be used to deliver a crippling blow against Iran's nuclear program.  In announcing the proposed $77 million deal, which still needs Congressional approval, the U.S. Defense Department said the sale of the Boeing GBU-39 smart bombs would be consistent with the U.S. interest of assisting Israel "to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability." The Pentagon issued a release on the planned sale on Sept 9……..(AP, 15 Sep 08)

Mob case: Murder trial opens against ex-FBI agent

Former FBI agent John Connolly made a corrupt career out of protecting Boston mobsters, including passing along critical information leading to the 1982 slaying of a gambling executive, a prosecutor said as Connolly's murder trial opened Monday. A hit man for Boston's notorious Winter Hill Gang pulled the trigger that killed John Callahan, but Connolly was equally responsible, prosecutor Fred Wyshak told a jury. "He gave sensitive information to gangsters, who used that information to protect themselves. And (they) used that information to kill people. One of those people was John Callahan," Wyshak said. Callahan was a 45-year-old former president of Miami-based World Jai-Alai. His body was found Aug. 2, 1982, in the trunk of his silver Cadillac, parked at Miami International Airport. Admitted hit man John Martorano has pleaded guilty to shooting Callahan and will testify about Connolly's role in the killing….(AP, 15 Sep 08)

Woman crashes car through FBI gates in Puerto Rico

A woman was arrested Monday for crashing her car through the gates of FBI headquarters in the Puerto Rican capital after guards refused to let her speak with the local director of the U.S. law enforcement agency.

Grace Vega Osorio, 37, was quickly surrounded and arrested on suspicion of destruction of U.S. government property, said Special Agent Harry Rodriguez, a spokesman for the FBI.  Osorio was fleeing Puerto Rican police when she arrived at the gates of the U.S. federal building and said she wanted to speak with Luis Fraticelli, head of the FBI's office in Puerto Rico…..(AP, 15 Sep 08)

US Refrains to Issue Visa for Ahmadinejad to Attend UN

The United States has once again stonewalled the visa process for the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the United Nations General Assembly later this month in New York. Despite a timely application, no visas have yet been issued for the president and any of the Iranian delegation members. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the General Assembly on September 23 and expected to once again refer to the need for amending the status quo of the UN, which he says is controlled by world powers, especially the US. An agreement signed between the United States and the United Nations years ago requires Washington to allow foreign leaders to speak before the world body. The agreement requires visas for heads of states visiting the UN headquarters to be granted as promptly as possible. Ahmadinejad had the same problem last year when he wanted to go to New York. The US last year purposefully delayed the process to disrupt the president's travel schedule…..(Fars News Agency, 14 Sep 08)

Diplomatic Explusions Highlight Need for US to Re-Engage with Latin America

The expulsions last week of the U.S. Ambassadors to Venezuela and Bolivia, and the U.S.'s reciprocal response should not have been unexpected. They illustrate the current condition of long deteriorating relations between the U.S. and those countries, as well as with Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, over the course of the Bush Administration. They are also an unsurprising result of systemic neglect of the U.S. relationship with Latin America more generally.  It’s difficult to imagine any Administration having a happy relationship with Hugo Chavez, who is the most difficult (and obnoxious) Latin American leader the U.S. has encountered since Fidel Castro. Chavez has combined cheesy domestic populism, socialistic and anti-Yankee rhetoric, Machiavellian uses of burgeoning oil revenues, corruption, and outright support for terrorists in neighboring countries to create a problem for the region that the U.S. cannot solve alone…..(Counterrorism Blog, 14 Sep 08)

FBI Outlines Plan to Expand Agents' Tactics; Hill Hearings Set

FBI officials yesterday briefed civil liberties advocates and religious groups on a plan to offer agents an array of tactics to track national security threats, as lawmakers prepared to demand more information at a pair of oversight hearings next week.  The ground rules, known as attorney general guidelines, have been in the works for nearly 18 months. Authorities say they are designed to harmonize the techniques that FBI agents can use to investigate ordinary crimes, collect foreign intelligence or pursue possible terrorist threats.  Under the new plan, agents pursuing national security leads could employ physical surveillance, deploy informants and engage in "pretext" interviews with their identities hidden to assess the danger posed by a subject. Such threat assessments could be initiated even without a particular fact or concrete lead that a person had engaged in wrongdoing……(Washington Post, 13 Sep 08)

Terror Plan Would Give F.B.I. More Power

The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing.  Justice Department officials said the plan, which is likely to be completed by the end of the month despite criticism from civil rights advocates, is intended to allow F.B.I. agents to be more aggressive and pre-emptive in assessing possible threats to national security.  It would allow an agent, for instance, to pursue an anonymous tip about terrorism by conducting an undercover interview or watching someone in a public place. Such steps are now prohibited unless there is more specific evidence of wrongdoing……(New York Times, 13 Sep 08)

Spy Agencies Turn to Newspapers, NPR, and Wikipedia for Information

A few days ago, a senior officer at the Pentagon called his intelligence officer into his office. The boss had heard a news report about China while driving to his office and wanted some answers. It wasn't a tough assignment, given the news coverage, but there was a hitch. "There was plenty of information in the public domain about the topic," recalls the intelligence officer, a 10-year veteran. "And yet, if there wasn't some classified information cited in my report, the boss would never believe it was accurate."   The officer calls it "the seduction of the 'top-secret' stamp."  That's a common refrain in the intelligence community when the subject of so-called open-source information comes up. It's the kind of anecdote recounted over and over again this week at the intelligence community's second annual conference on the use of open-source information…The use of nonclassified information, whether news accounts or other publicly retrievable information, is gaining credibility within the intelligence community. And officials say there can be good reasons for putting some of that open-source information under the secrecy umbrella. "The information might be unclassified but our interest in it is not," Gen. Michael Hayden, head of the CIA, told the conference.  More than 15,000 people in the intelligence community now use the limited-access opensource.gov portal for information……(US News, 13  Sep 08)

Even Spies Go to Trade Conferences

The spies and contractors stood side-by-side, pressing by a crowd of pitchmen at the Ronald Reagan Building.

It was an unusual gathering, a trade show and conference organized by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to promote using open sources of information such as the Internet and television broadcasts as part of the intelligence process.  Judging from the packed seminars and the crowds collecting corporate brochures, mints and pens in the exhibition hall, most everybody was there to do business…The gathering reflected the intelligence community's evolution since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Unlike Cold War-era spies, intelligence analysts and government policymakers can no longer rely primarily on cloak-and-dagger operations to keep track of global threats. Now, like businesses and other organizations, they're increasingly turning to the torrents of information available on the Internet and through other non-classified sources.  The heavy presence of contractors, both in the exhibition halls and seminar rooms, also shows the growing reliance on the private sector. About 70 percent of more than $50 billion in annual spending on intelligence now goes to corporations for everything from major computer systems to heating bills. As many as 37,000 contract employees work alongside up to 100,000 government intelligence workers, according to a recent government survey…One of the central messages from some vendors was that information on the Internet now provides most of the clues that law enforcement and intelligence officials need to do their jobs……(Washington Post, 13 Sep 08)

Clandestine world of intelligence-gathering turns to an open market for data

The global explosion in Internet-based new media has made open source information invaluable to intelligence agencies, CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Friday at the ODNI Open Source Conference in Washington.

Sections of the president's daily intelligence brief are "derived exclusively from open source intelligence" Hayden told the conference, which attracted more than 3,000 attendees from intelligence agencies, academia and industry. Those sections bear the stamp of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Open Source Center.  Development of an open source intelligence organization was one of three key objectives for the ODNI when it was created in 2005, Hayden said, just behind the establishment of a central clandestine service branch and a security branch within the FBI. The Open Source Center, which is managed by the CIA and serves the entire intelligence community, has paid rich dividends since it went into operation in November 2005, he noted.

ODNI built the center around the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service which monitors overseas radio and television programs, and today uses that core capability to pump more than 300 foreign TV broadcasts into intelligence operations centers…..(Gov Exec, 12 Sep 08)

Congressional panels clash over satellite programs

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee butted heads this week over funding for intelligence-related programs, with one key senator saying that billions in taxpayer dollars are being wasted.  Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., said Friday that he and other panel members want to create a technology demonstration program for "overhead imagery" programs, which includes classified military satellites.  Bond said the National Reconnaissance Office has wasted billions in taxpayer funds because it does not have an effective means to determine if and how technology will work before proceeding with big-ticket programs.  When Bond and other Intelligence members offered the idea at a Defense Appropriations Subcommittee markup of the fiscal 2009 Defense spending bill Wednesday, however, they were shot down, according to Bond.  Bond noted that National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell also opposed the idea of funding a technology demonstration program. …..(Congress Daily, 12 Sep 08)

Creation of new appropriations subcommittee ignites Senate turf battle

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., introduced legislation Thursday to consolidate oversight of spending for national intelligence agencies, a move intended to satisfy an unfulfilled recommendation of the 9/11 commission but one that could cause a fierce turf battle.  The bill, which Bond introduced on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, would create a new subcommittee on the Senate Appropriations Committee that would have budget authority for the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, director of national intelligence and all other agencies that fall under the national intelligence program…Under Bond's bill, the Senate Intelligence Committee would continue to exercise oversight of the intelligence community, while the new intelligence appropriations subcommittee would approve budgets and spending requests…The new subcommittee, however, would not have budget authority over tactical military intelligence operations……(Congress Daily, 12 Sep 08)

Panel recommends major changes to Air Force structure

A panel of defense experts reviewing recent Air Force failures in nuclear stewardship has recommended far-reaching changes to the way the service manages its nuclear mission.  Citing an "unambiguous, dramatic and unacceptable decline in the Air Force's commitment to perform the nuclear mission," the Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management said in a report Friday that the service needs to create a culture of accountability and establish a new centralized command for managing the nuclear mission.  In a Pentagon briefing announcing the findings, the task force's chairman, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, said its members -- who all have expertise in Defense management going back decades -- were surprised by the deterioration of Air Force expertise and capability…Under the proposed organizational changes, the existing Air Force Space Command would be transformed into an Air Force Strategic Command. All bomber aircraft would be consolidated into a single force assigned to Strategic Command.  As the single major command responsible for the nuclear mission, Strategic Command would advocate for resources, provide clear lines of authority and accountability, and ensure appropriate staffing and expertise at all levels of the nuclear mission, the task force concluded……(Gov Exec, 12 Sep 08)

The Justice Department will unveil changes to FBI ground rules today that would put much more power into the hands of line agents pursuing leads on national security, foreign intelligence and even ordinary criminal cases.

The overhaul, the most substantial revision to FBI operating instructions in years, also would ease some reporting requirements between agents, their supervisors and federal prosecutors in what authorities call a critical effort to improve information gathering and detect terrorist threats.  The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing…..(Washington Post, 12 Sep 08)

Judge Limits Searches Using Cellphone Data

The government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause of criminal activity before directing a wireless provider to turn over records that show where customers used their cellphones, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, in the first opinion by a federal district court on the issue.  Judge Terrence F. McVerry of the Western District of Pennsylvania rejected the government's argument that historical cellphone tower location data did not require probable cause.  The ruling could begin to establish the standard for such requests, which industry lawyers say are routine as more people carry cellphones that reveal their locations. Around the country, magistrate judges, who handle matters such as search warrants, have expressed concern about the lack of guidance…..(Washington Post, 12 Sep 08)

Years of Neglect Catch Up in Latin America

The news that both Bolivia and Venezuela, whose presidents are staunch allies and friends, have chosen to expel the respective U.S. ambassadors is the most visible evidence of the frayed relations the United States now has with much of Latin America. As my colleague Andrew Cochran wrote the United States then immediately took the step of designating the three most visible Venezuelan officials whose ties to the FARC were clearly established.

What is amazing is that, until this blow-up, U.S. officials in different departments of the government, have been minimizing the well-documented alliance, as well as other issues discussed below, that have made Latin America a far different place than it was five years ago. Unfortunately, with the exception of Colombia policy, there has been virtually no policy toward Latin America, and the festering issues there have been left to fester…..(Douglas Farah, 12 Sep 08)

The US ambassador to Bolivia has been ordered to leave the country by President Evo Morales.

Mr Morales accused Philip Goldberg of "conspiring against democracy" and encouraging the country's break-up.

A US state department spokesman said it had received no formal word of the dismissal and described the accusations against Mr Goldberg as "baseless".  Bolivia has seen large protests in recent weeks by opponents of Mr Morales' economic and social policies.  "The ambassador of the United States is conspiring against democracy and wants Bolivia to break apart," Mr Morales said, in a speech at the presidential palace in La Paz…..(BBC, 11 Sep 08)

All Too Quiet on the Homeland Front

IF recent history is any guide — the first World Trade Center bombing a month after Bill Clinton became president; 9/11 itself, in the first year of the Bush administration; the Madrid bombing in 2004 on the eve of a national election in Spain; and the foiled London-Glasgow bomb plot last summer at the start of a new government — President Barack Obama or President John McCain may well be tested by terrorists soon after taking office.

And it is not just historical patterns that suggest that another major attack is likely to be attempted sooner rather than later. Our intelligence agencies tell us that Al Qaeda is stronger now than at any time since 2001. The sanctuary the group found in Afghanistan has been recreated just over the border in Pakistan, and the departure of former Gen. Pervez Musharraf as that country’s president makes it less rather than more likely that the terrorist training camps there will soon be flushed out.  Thanks to the strain that Iraq continues to place on our military, it may not be long before the Taliban reclaims all of Afghanistan. With two bases of operation, Al Qaeda would be even stronger than it was before 9/11. And around the world, the flames of anti-Americanism have rarely burned hotter, creating a geopolitical environment that increases the risk of a terrorist attack here……(New York Times, 11 Sep 08)

A new web site, described as a "Facebook for spies" and sponsored by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has been created. The site is intended to provide a method of information sharing between all 16 US government intelligence agencies, according to a report from CNN. Called A-Space the system goes live on September the 22nd, via the US government’s classified Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, although A-Space has been running in test phase for several months. Assistant Deputy Director and Chief Technology Officer of the Office of the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Michael Wertheimer who demonstrated the program to CNN to show how analysts will use it to collaborate, said, "It's a place where not only spies can meet, but share data they've never been able to share before,".....(Heise, 10 Sep 08)

US Navy Bolsters its Intelligence Footprint

A discreet entity calling itself the Secretary of the Navy Advisory Panel is due to meet for a second time behind closed doors at the Pentagon’s conference center on Sept. 25. Created last year by Navy secretary Donald Winter to mull a shake-up in intelligence and changes in the way the U.S. Navy buys its equipment, the panel is made up essentially of former CIA staffers and defence industry figures who worked in the past for the defense department (see graph below). Among them are two representatives of private intelligence concerns: Jack Devine, who chairs the Arkin Group; and James Woolsey, former CIA director who chairs the advisory board of ExecutiveAction LLC. Four new advisers have joined the panel since its last meeting at the end of April. They include nuclear weapons specialists Richard Mies and Robert Joseph.  The panel’s last meeting, moderated by former CIA and NSA director William Studeman, concerned changing the Navy’s intelligence capacity and strategies.  Meanwhile, the Navy has just announced the creation of an Irregular Warfare Office tasked with defining a doctrine and beefing up the service’s capacity to wage asymmetric warfare and conduct intelligence and psychological operations…..(Intelligence Online, 10 Sep 08)

Reduced Dominance Is Predicted for U.S.

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.  The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."  Fingar's remarks last week were based on a partially completed "Global Trends 2025" report that assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in the new year……(Washington Post, 10 Sep 08)

In court documents filed late last week, prosecutors in the trial of former executive director of the CIA Dusty Foggo allege that the defendant is attempting to "twist a straightforward case into a referendum on the global war on terror" by taking the spotlight off his charges of corruption and fraud. In going down this irrelevant path, the government argues, Foggo will expose dozens of confidential programs and people still active in the CIA. From the government's motion:  Foggo's desire portray himself to the public as a patriotic hero stands in stark contrast to his Section 5 Notice, in which he expresses (albeit in a sealed filing) a desire to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country's most sensitive programs - even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces……(TPM, 10 Sep 08)

Ex-CIA exec facing trial say he'll expose agents

A former top CIA official accused of corruption and fraud is threatening to expose the identities of numerous agents and programs as part of his defense, prosecutors said.  In a court filing, prosecutors allege that former CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is trying to gum up the works of his trial, scheduled for November, by delving into classified information that is irrelevant to his case. Foggo is charged with 28 counts of wire and mail fraud, unlawful money transactions and making false statements.  Prosecutors say Foggo has threatened "to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country's most sensitive programs - even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces."  Prosecutors also allege his lawyers are seeking to introduce classified evidence to "portray Foggo as a hero engaged in actions necessary to protect the public from terrorist acts" to gain sympathy from jurors...The case against Foggo resulted from an investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., who admitted taking bribes from defense contractor Brent Wilkes, a close friend of Foggo's.  Cunningham pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than eight years in prison. Wilkes was sentenced to 12 years.  Foggo is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from Wilkes, and helped steer contracts to the contractor, including one for delivery of bottled water to covert CIA locations for a 60 percent markup…..(AP, 9 Sep 08)

A lawyer on Tuesday said that American soldiers involved in gathering intelligence against Moro rebels in Mindanao makes them "legitimate targets" of insurgents.  This came from the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) secretary general who said the admission of the Philippine government through AFP spokesman Maj. Ramon Zagala on the involvement of American soldiers in the on-going armed conflict in Mindanao made the American troops “confirmed combatants" under international law.  “Despite the fact that there is no ongoing Balikatan Exercises, US troops were found in various areas in Mindanao where there is fighting between government and MILF forces. As admitted by the Philippine government, one of the reasons for this deployment, other than for alleged ‘humanitarian purposes’ is the gathering of intelligence," lawyer Neri Javier Colmenares, secretary general of NUPL, said.  “But gathering intelligence information on the location or movement of a belligerent force is an act of hostility against that enemy force, making the intelligence officer a legitimate target of attack under international law," he explained.….(GMA, 9 Sep 08)

Groups warn of growing government secrecy

Government secrecy is on the rise by almost every measure, according to a report by a coalition of government oversight groups.  They said the U.S. is classifying more records as top secret or otherwise confidential and employing fewer workers who make federal documents available publicly.  "The open society on which we pride ourselves has been undermined and will take hard work to repair," said the report, described as a "secrecy report card" by OpenTheGovernment.org. It cited 14 different measurements to quantify government secrecy, including patents hidden from the public, secret court approvals for surveillance in sensitive terrorism and espionage investigations and the expanding use of informal labels to keep documents from being disclosed.  The group said there was an 80 percent decline over the last decade in the number of pages of records declassified, dropping last year to 37 million pages. Such declassifications peaked in the Clinton administration, with the opening of 204 million pages in 1997. The findings were based on the government's own figures…..(AP, 9 Sep 08)

House Democrats press FBI on 2001 anthrax attacks, security guidelines

Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee Friday asked the FBI to answer a series of far-reaching questions in anticipation of an upcoming oversight hearing, including whether the White House pressured the agency to conclude that the 2001 anthrax attacks were caused by al Qaeda or linked to Iraq.  In a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the lawmakers also questioned whether the agency failed to help prevent the nation's mortgage crisis and asked if new national security guidelines could be postponed until the next administration comes into office…..(Gov Exec, 8 Sep 08)

After a few years in the wilderness, the U.S. military and its allies in other parts of the world have honed the cutting edge of a significant series of steps that are yielding highly successful results in combatting non-state armed groups-including terrorists, not just in Iraq but in Colombia and elsewhere. The Washington Post’s recent story on the “fusion cells” gets at the core of the program: The integration and blending of field intelligence (human and signal) with the ability to act rapidly on that information.  The NSA targeted its listening operations, the Treasury Department began tracing anything to do with money and Special Operations Forces, with the help of the latest technology and imaging capabilities, carry out the operations…..(Douglas Farah, 8 Sep 08)

Lawsuit to Ask That Cheney's Papers Be Made Public

Months before the Bush administration ends, historians and open-government advocates are concerned that Vice President Cheney, who has long bristled at requirements to disclose his records, will destroy or withhold key documents that illustrate his role in forming U.S. policy for the past 7 1/2 years.  In a preemptive move, several of them have agreed to join the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in asking a federal judge to declare that Cheney's records are covered by the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and cannot be destroyed, taken or withheld without proper review…"The Office of the Vice President currently follows the Presidential Records Act and will continue to follow the requirements of the law, which includes turning over vice presidential records to the National Archives at the end of the term," Cheney spokesman Jamie Hennigan said in an e-mail… Scholars say "executive records" is a term that is not found in the original act, and that seemingly opens the door to withholding some documents on the grounds that they are "non-executive" records -- legislative records, for instance. It raised red flags because Cheney has frequently argued that his office is not part of the executive branch…..(Washington Post, 8 Sep 08)

Spying on Iraqi Leader: Was It Worth the Risk?

Throughout much of the past two years, U.S. surveillance of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, his staff and others within the Iraqi government has given the Bush administration a transparent view of the prime minister's actions, according to officials knowledgeable about the intelligence gathering.  "We know everything he says," said one source, who, like the other officials, declined to speak on the record because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject.  In some specific cases, a second source said, human sources gave senior U.S. officials a heads-up on positions, plans, maneuvers and secret actions of the prime minister, members of his staff and others in the Iraqi government…….(Washington Post, 7 Sep 08)

Ex-FBI Agent Faces Trial in 1982 Murder

John J. Connolly was hundreds of miles away in 1982 when gambling executive John Callahan's bullet-riddled body was discovered in the trunk of his Cadillac at Miami's airport. The admitted shooter said he never met Connolly, the disgraced ex-FBI man at the heart of the agency's sordid dealings with Boston's Winter Hill Gang.  Yet Connolly will stand trial on murder and conspiracy charges this month as if he had pulled the trigger himself, because prosecutors say he secretly gave information that was crucial in setting up the hit……(AP, 7 Sep 08)

CIA, FBI push 'Facebook for spies'

When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.  But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.  "It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more," said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.  The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies…..(CNN, 6 Sep 08)

GeoEye launches high-resolution satellite

GeoEye Inc (GEOY.O) said it successfully launched into space on Saturday its new GeoEye-1 satellite, which will provide the U.S. government, Google (GOOG.O) Earth users and others the highest-resolution commercial color satellite imagery on the market.  "It was a picture-perfect launch and we've now gotten confirmation that ... we have commanded the satellite and it has responded," GeoEye Chief Executive Matthew O'Connell told Reuters in a telephone interview from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where the satellite was launched at 11:50 a.m. PDT (2:50 p.m. EDT)…..(Reuters, 6 Sep 08)

U.S. Teams Weaken Insurgency In Iraq

…The "fusion cells" are being described as a major factor behind the declining violence in Iraq in recent months. Defense officials say they have been particularly effective against AQI, which has lost 10 senior commanders since June in Baghdad alone, including Uthman…The rapid strikes are coordinated by the Joint Task Force, a military-led team that includes intelligence and forensic professionals, political analysts, mapping experts, computer specialists piloting unmanned aircraft, and Special Operations troops. After decades of agency rivalries that have undermined coordination on counterterrorism, the task force is enjoying new success in Iraq with its blending of diverse military and intelligence assets to speed up counterterrorism missions……(Washington Post, 6 Sep 08)

US Slashes Intelligence Unit for NK

The Pacific Command in Hawaii has reduced its officials whose task is gathering intelligence on North Korea by 60 percent since the signing of an agreement last year on the transfer of wartime operational control of Korean troops from the U.S. military to Korean commanders in 2012, officials from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Seoul confirmed Friday. Critics say the move signals a weakening U.S. commitment to the security of South Korea after Seoul takes over the authority to command and control its troops during wartime.  On Thursday, Rep. Kim Dong-seong of the governing Grand National Party revealed in a National Assembly session that the Pacific Command, in charge of U.S. troops operations in case of an emergency on the peninsula, has reduced the numbers of personnel on North Korea by 120 to 80.  The 120 personnel were transferred to a department on intelligence gathering on China, he said, citing a verbal report by JCS officials……(Korea Times, 5 Sep 08)

Online virtual or synthetic worlds are increasingly being eyed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as an potentially important tool for intelligence analysis.  For example, the ODNI’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) program is planning to begin a project called the Analysis WorkSpace for Exploitation (A-SpaceX) that will examine how virtual worlds can be used to create the workspace of future for analysts. In a separate effort, through ODNI’s Summer Hard Problem or SHARP program, roughly 30 people -- about half of whom were intelligence analysts – recently spent the summer studying virtual worlds.  The two efforts are examples of efforts by the ODNI to harness virtual or synthetic worlds, such as the one made popular by Second Life, to improve the 16-agency intelligence community’s analytic capabilities. In the past several years, ODNI has undertaken a series of efforts sought to use mass collaboration and so-called Web 2.0 tools to improve analysis……FCW, 4 Sep 08)

Armed with a doctorate in physiological psychology, Eric Haseltine has explored the boundaries of perception and illusion in commercial projects ranging from flight simulators for Hughes Aircraft to virtual reality and special effects for Disney theme parks.  After the events of 9/11, he became engaged in the study of a different kind of illusion: the shadowy world of international espionage. He headed research and development for the National Security Agency in 2002, and in 2006 he was named associate director for science and technology for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. One of his responsibilities involved research on how to extract information from people during interrogation and how to determine whether the information is valid. Now an independent contractor who calls himself a “technology futurist,” Haseltine divulges as much as he can about deception detection……(MINA, 4 Sep 08)

Shadow analysis could spot terrorists by their walk

Nearly seven years after Osama Bin Laden disappeared, US intelligence agencies are still chasing his shadow. And shadows are precisely what they should be looking for, says NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. By analyzing the movements of human shadows in aerial and satellite footage, JPL engineer Adrian Stoica says it should be possible to identify people from the way they walk - a technique called gait analysis, whose power lies in the fact that a person's walking style is very hard to disguise. Video taken from above shows only people's heads and shoulders, which makes measuring the characteristic length and rhythm of a person's stride impossible. That's not true of shadows, though, Stoica told a security conference in Edinburgh, UK, last month. Shadows, he says, provide enough gait data to deduce a positive ID. To prove it, he has written software that recognizes human movement in aerial and satellite video footage. It isolates moving shadows and uses data on the time of day and the camera angle to correct shadows if they are elongated or foreshortened. Regular gait analysis is then applied to identify people. In tests on footage shot from the sixth floor of a building, Stoica says his software was indeed able to extract useful gait data……(New Scientist, 4 Sep 08)

Dutch Intelligence Works With US Against Iran

The Middle East Newsline has confirmed that the Netherlands has been working with the United States to gather intelligence on Iran's military programs.  A Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, had reported the Netherlands has identified a range of military and industrial targets for a U.S. attack on Iran. De Telegraaf said the Dutch AIVD intelligence agency withdrew a leading agent from Iran amid an assessment that the United States would conduct a major air strike over the next few weeks.  "The United States was thought to be making a decision within weeks to attack Iran with unmanned aircraft," the newspaper said. Western intelligence sources said the report appeared to be part of a psychological campaign against Iran. But the sources said the CIA has been working with several NATO and other intelligence agencies in an effort to determine Iranian nuclear and strategic targets.
De Telegraaf said AIVD infiltrated Iran's defense industry and hampered development projects. The newspaper said the Dutch agency shared data on Iranian programs with the CIA……(Bulletin, 4 Sep 08)

Intelligence officials discuss security challenges

Government officials are in central Florida to talk about challenges in analyzing intelligence and other national security issues.  The Intelligence and National Security Alliance is hosting the conference in Orlando this week.

The U.S. deputy director of national intelligence for analysis is scheduled to address the conference Thursday morning. Tom Fingar will speak about national security issues on the eve of an administration transition…..(AP, 4 Sep 08)

A-Space set to launch this month

Later this month, intelligence community analysts will begin using A-Space, an online collaboration environment that officials hope will improve analysts’ abilities to share information, form communities and collaborate.  A-Space will go live on the government’s classified Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System Sept. 22, the program's designers said today at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s Analytic Transformation 2008 conference in Orlando, Fla.  The Office of the Director of National Intelligence sponsored the effort, and the Defense Intelligence Agency is overseeing it. ManTech International was the prime contractor in developing A-Space.  A-Space has been in development and testing for almost a year, Michael Wertheimer, ODNI’s assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology…..(FCW, 3 Sep 08)

Beginning on the day he was sworn in, Attorney General Gonzales routinely ignored regulations concerning the storage of highly classified documents, including several that dealt with the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, a report by the Justice Department's inspector general concluded yesterday.

The Justice Department's national security division will not be making a criminal case against the former attorney general out of the matter, the report by the inspector general, Glenn Fine, said.  Other former high-ranking government officials caught mishandling classified material — including a former national security adviser, Samuel Berger, who hid classified documents under a trailer in downtown Washington — have faced charges but rarely jail time.  "The approach they seem to have taken with Gonzales is not inconsistent with the approach they've taken with other mishandling" of classified document cases involving top government officials…..(New York Sun, 3 Sep 08)

Report Describes Careless Handling of U.S. Secrets

Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales told investigators that he could not recall whether he took home notes regarding the government's most sensitive national security program and that he did not know they contained classified information, despite his own markings that they were "top secret -- eyes only," according to a Justice Department report released yesterday.  Gonzales improperly carried notes about the warrantless wiretapping program in an unlocked briefcase and failed to keep them in a safe at his Northern Virginia home three years ago because he "could not remember the combination," the department's inspector general reported.  A National Security Agency official who reviewed the notes said they contained references to operational aspects of the wiretapping initiative, including a top-secret code word for the program, information that had been "zealously protected" by the agency and was "not a close call" in terms of its sensitivity……(Washington Post, 3 Sep 08)

Reports: Anti-Terror Law Could Hamstring U.S. Intelligence Efforts via Internet

A landmark federal law that Congress passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks may be contributing to what experts call a dramatic– and for U.S. national security agencies, regrettable – shift in the way Internet traffic travels throughout the world.  The so-called “Patriot (News - Alert) Act” gave federal officials wide new investigative powers in the name of protecting the nation. Touted as paving the way for agencies such as the FBI to root out terrorists before they can act, the law has been sharply criticized by civil liberties groups who long have called for greater transparency in the way those new powers are used…..(TMC Net, 2 Sep 08)

Six Ways to Fix the CIA

For a start, current management has got to go. For too long it has truckled to power, spending its day scurrying down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for orders. If it's not Cheney treating George Tenet as a court jester, it's some analyst badgered until he changes his assessment. What I'm trying to say is that it's not the CIA that is broken, it's Washington—which means the quick fix is to build a firewall between a hopelessly partisan Washington and the CIA. And it wouldn't cost much….(Time Magazine, 2 Sep 08)

Spies-for-Hire Raking in the Cash

Outside contractors were supposed to save the federal government money. But, in the U.S. intelligence community, at least, that's not how things have panned out. A typical contract worker in the spy agencies rakes in 65 percent more than the average federal employee, according to the Office of the Direc­tor of National Intelligence. A spook-for-hire takes home $207,000, on average -- compared to a civil servant's $125,000 average salary.  That's making a huge impact on the nation's spying budget. Because these 27,000 contractors now make up more than a quarter of the intelligence workforce, by the most conservative estimate. …..(Wired, 2 Sep 08)

Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales improperly handled classified information about some of the government's most sensitive national security programs, but authorities will not recommend that he face criminal sanctions, according to officials familiar with an investigative report to be released today.  The Justice Department's inspector general has concluded that Gonzales should have taken precautions to safeguard the materials, related to the government's warrantless wiretapping program and other eavesdropping initiatives, when he became the nation's top law enforcement official more than three years ago. Investigators did not find any evidence that the information had been shared with or accessed by people who lacked the proper clearance to review it.  At issue are notes that Gonzales took during a March 2004 meeting between President Bush and congressional leaders in the White House Situation Room, as a program that allowed authorities to secretly monitor communications for evidence of terrorist plots was set to expire……(Washington Post, 2 Sep 08)

GeoEye Hopes for Clear Skies Ahead

…From its orbiting height of 425 miles, GeoEye-1 will have fine enough resolution to pick out home plate at Nationals Stadium. It will sell photographs to its biggest customer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and commercial customers including Google Maps.  The new satellite joins GeoEye birds already in orbit: Ikonos, OrbView-2 and a satellite whose camera stopped working shortly after launch and is used for training exercises. The company has plans to launch another in 2011 or 2012……(Washington Post, 1 Sep 08)