LOGO: Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines. A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
2010 Webby Award Winner for Best Political Blog
 
May 26, 2012
Log in / Register

 Choose a size
Text Size

Trending:     gay marriage     barack obama     ndaa     robert scheer     chris hedges
Most Read

TED: 'A Money-Soaked Orgy of Self-Congratulatory Futurism'

Truthdiggers of the Week: 400,000 Canadians Launching the ‘Maple Spring’

Russia and Exxon Mobil Sign Arctic Oil Deal

I Can't Hear Myself Think

A Rare Admission That Money Trumps Everything Else

Most Comments
Most Emailed

Reports
Why Bain Questions Matter
OSHA Struggles When Tower Climbers Die

Ear to the Ground

A/V Booth

Arts & Culture
Better Than We Found It
The Good-Natured Dictator

Digs
Financial Meltdown 101

Truthdig Bazaar more items

 
Ear to the Ground

Cloak and Dagger Inc.

Email this item Email    Print this item Print   

Posted on May 16, 2010
U.S. Air Force

Michael D. Furlong, the man who set up the contractor spy network, is currently under investigation over contract and financial dealings.

The U.S. military, despite reports to the contrary, has continued to rely on a secret private spy network, akin to a Blackwater with brains, that has provided a stream of intelligence to military forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than a year.

Government officials earlier this year admitted existence of the program but indicated that it had been shut down. But new information has come to light that shows the complexity of the program and the proximity of contract operatives to military commanders.

The U.S. military is largely barred from conducting operations inside Pakistan, and Pentagon rules forbid the Army to hire private contractors for spying. —JCL

The New York Times:

Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.

Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.

But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement


New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.

MarthaA's avatar

By MarthaA, May 16, 2010 at 11:55 pm Link to this comment

Down with the private contractor spy network.

Report this

By the worm, May 16, 2010 at 6:33 pm Link to this comment

Privatizing ignorance will result in no better intelligence than could be obtained
by American soldiers.

Either way, we would continue bombing wedding parties; shooting respected
village elders; and wiping out families.

In other words, public or private, we dont know shit from apple butter about
Afghanistan.

To the oxymoron ‘military intelligence’ can now be added a second oxymoron -
‘blackwater intelligence’.

We might even wonder if there is intelligence in the White House;

Recently, McChrystal noted ‘We’ve killed so many innocent civilians’.  During
months of agonizing closed-door ‘analysis and reflection’, we’re asked to
believe neither Obama nor any General said “We’re entering an insurgency,
fewer than a dozen of our men and women speak the language, fewer than
that know anything of the culture,  we’ll be going directly into citizens’ homes,
farms and villages, we’ll be heavily armed with high-tech lethal weapons, and
we wont be able to tell friend from foe. What do you think the chances are that
we’ll be killing innocent civilians?”  No one considered this?

A third oxymoron: ‘Political intelligence’

Report this

By Aaron Ortiz, May 16, 2010 at 5:42 pm Link to this comment

Why was the CIA outsourced…private spies?...doesn’t seem very foolproof. What
of double agents?

Report this
PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, May 16, 2010 at 5:11 pm Link to this comment

Turner Construction Co. performed work at the WTC just prior to 9/11 to the columns where the planes hit.

Turner also performed work at the labs were the nano-thermite was produced.

Turner is also a world class friend to Israel and is run by many notable zionists. 

http://learnact.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/records-for-reported-wtc-renovation-work-destroyed-on-911/

Report this

By FRTothus, May 16, 2010 at 4:27 pm Link to this comment

PatrickHenry, I daresay they very well may BE the
real perps of 9/11.  The thing has CIA / NSA / US
military intelligence fingerprints all over it. A
textbook black op with plausible deniability, where
US investors profit.  And as the Pentagon was
controlling the news feeds, the images on TV were
just as the playbook ordered, and the newsreaders
read without flinching, the world applauds the
emperor’s new clothes.

“It is ... necessary to whip up the population in
support of foreign adventures. Usually the population
is pacifist, just like they were during the First
World War. The public sees no reason to get involved
in foreign adventures, killing, and torture. So you
have to whip them up. And to whip them up you have to
frighten them.”
(Noam Chomsky)

“Far from being the terrorists of the world, the
Islamic peoples have been its victims, principally
the victims of U.S. fundamentalism, whose power, in
all its forms-military, strategic, and economic-is
the greatest source of terrorism on Earth…. People
are neither still nor stupid. They see their
independence compromised, their resources and land
and the lives of their children taken away, and their
accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the
great enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably,
terror breeds terror and more fanaticism. But how
patient the oppressed have been. Their distant voices
of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway
brutalized places have at last come home.”
(John Pilger)

“Poor people living in third-world countries are not
the only victims of the so-called new world order. At
the heart of this “new” order is a troubling paradox:
Poor people within the United States, and the country
as a whole, are getting poorer at the same time as
the rich within the United States are getting
richer.”
(Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer)

Report this
PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, May 16, 2010 at 2:36 pm Link to this comment

These are the guys who would know the real perps of 9/11.

Report this

By samosamo, May 16, 2010 at 1:31 pm Link to this comment

****************

 

My word, you don’t say, a blackwater with ‘brains’? Shit that in
itself makes me wonder why, according to gen. mcchyrstalmeth,
that we are getting NOWHERE. I could understand it with
blackwater with NO brains, but here is a spy network WITH
brains and still it remains a war that is just sustained to enrich
the profiteers.

Report this

By diamond, May 16, 2010 at 10:20 am Link to this comment

In a parallel universe it’s only right to have a parallel intelligence service that can do whatever the hell it wants and there won’t be any ‘blowback’ for whichever administration is in Washington even though it’s a privatized army of extremely dangerous people, off the leash and running free.

Report this
Newsletter

Get Truthdig in your inbox


 
 
 
Join the Liberal Blog Advertising Network
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.