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By Scott Ritter
$11.16
By Gina B. Nahai
$25.00
$17
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msnbc.msn.com
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is officially involved in the Trayvon Martin case, conducting its own inquiry into the Feb. 26 killing of the teenager in Sanford, Fla., to determine, for one, whether shooter George Zimmerman zeroed in on Martin for any racially motivated reasons.
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AP / Paul Sakuma
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Since his death last year, we’ve heard plenty of lionizing and denigrating takes on Steve Jobs and his challenging leadership style, but we can now add the FBI’s character sketch of the late Apple founder, circa the George H.W. Bush era, to that mix.
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Flickr / Lord Jim (CC-BY)
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You there, with the surreptitious driving-while-texting action and also you, with the hands-free gadgetry on your head—take heed. The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency that traffics in such matters, wants you both to hang it up.
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Wikimedia Commons
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The CIA has lost a foothold, and some measure of its critical anonymity, in Lebanon after some of the spy agency’s operatives were exposed in recent months. Last June, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah triumphantly announced that at least two agents had been nabbed within his organization’s ranks ... (more)
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CIA
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Here’s a spooky story: The Central Intelligence Agency has once again called unwanted attention to its clandestine collaboration with the New York Police Department, a relationship that was fortified after 9/11 and led to special NYPD surveillance of the city’s Muslim communities, as it has come to the notice of select lawmakers and media outlets that an experienced CIA operative ... (more)
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AP / K.M. Chaudary
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It’s not like we couldn’t have seen this coming: Due in part to a special request made by the head of the Pakistani army, the U.S. has been asked to scale back significantly on the number of CIA operatives in Pakistan and to stop drone attacks on northern militants.
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With all this talk of a potential government shutdown, it would help, wouldn’t it, to get to the bottom of what that scenario would actually entail? Well, according to this timely dispatch from The Associated Press, the term might be a bit of a misnomer, given what would actually happen (or not).
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Lorie L. Jewell
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After many long months of leading U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus is said to be considered for, and considering, the easy and relaxing job of CIA director. Meanwhile, current CIA chief Leon Panetta reportedly has his sights set on the Pentagon.
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cia.gov
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What will those clever minds at the CIA think of next? The agency has assembled a task force to gauge the effects of WikiLeaks’ recent intelligence exposés on its operations, dubbed the WikiLeaks Task Force—or W.T.F. for short.
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fbi.gov
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One would think that if a bunch of FBI operatives were to devise a plan to cheat on a key intelligence exam, they might be a little more creative and a lot less obvious about it than the group of agents who recently drew attention to themselves ... (continued)
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dodd.senate.gov
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Plans to create an independent agency to provide consumer financial protection have probably been scrapped. According to a leaked document, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is proposing that the protection office be within the Treasury Department instead of being independent, a clear capitulation to the Republicans.
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cia.gov
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In case you didn’t know, there’s a “secret war,” as The New York Times puts it, going on in Pakistan, and the drone attacks that occasionally make headlines represent just one tactic that the U.S. is employing to target militants. Another involves CIA operatives joining forces with their Pakistani counterparts at the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI.
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washingtonpost.com
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Barack Obama gave U.S. intelligence agencies the presidential equivalent of a knuckle-rapping Tuesday for their failure to connect the dots and nab Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before a fellow passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was forced to foil his underwear bomb plot the old-fashioned way.
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The latest in a string of attacks in Pakistan this week happened Friday when a bomb exploded outside the Inter-Services Intelligence agency’s northwest headquarters in Peshawar, killing at least nine people and wounding 50.
Posted on Nov 12, 2009
READ MORE 
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AP Photo / Akira Suemori
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What’s a former secretary of state to do once her time in the White House runs out? In Condoleezza Rice’s case, the next step in the “reinvention and evolution” of her professional life involves signing on at the William Morris Agency, according to Variety.
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Flickr / oxfam international
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He may be a lame duck, but the president still has the power to mess with America. His latest project: pushing through rule changes that would reduce protections for endangered species. Given the wonky complexities of the rule-changing process, it will be difficult for Barack Obama to undo the damage, but then that’s the whole point.
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AP photo / Juan Karita
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Bolivian President Evo Morales on Saturday made another move to signal his administration’s displeasure with the United States, announcing that he is “indefinitely” halting all activities of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency within his country.
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According to an internal e-mail obtained by the AP, the chief of staff of the EPA’s enforcement wing has issued a gag order, telling staffers in June exactly what to do should a reporter, the inspector general or the Government Accountability Office call: “Please do not respond to questions or make any statements.”
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By Marie Cocco — The comment was outrageous, but it was not the least bit surprising. A psychologist responsible for assessing returning war veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder—a psychological ailment that could entitle them to monthly disability payments—told staff members not to diagnose the illness because to do so would increase the government’s costs.
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Flickr / alforque
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A former EPA official, Jason Burnett, told congressional investigators that the White House interfered in a decision regarding California’s regulation of carbon emissions. EPA staff members were unanimous in supporting California’s right to tougher restrictions, Burnett said, but after the agency spoke with the White House and got “input into the rationale” from Bush aides, the state’s request was denied.
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Flickr / mape_s
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George Bush’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t been the most proactive defender of the environment. The agency has been avoiding a decision on the fate of the polar bear since 2005, but a federal judge has just ordered the administration to officially classify the world’s largest land predator endangered or not by May 15.
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AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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The reputation of the U.S. on the world stage might be further colored by President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have limited the CIA’s (and other intelligence agencies’) array of interrogation techniques to those in the Army field manual. In defending Saturday’s veto, Bush once again invoked 9/11.
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AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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The New York Times has discovered that the CIA destroyed “at least two videotapes” showing agents using severe interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. Those interrogations were part of the evidence in the official 9/11 investigation, yet the CIA never told the 9/11 Commission of the existence of the tapes or transcripts. The agency cited a “serious security risk” for destroying the evidence.
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FEMA has admitted that it was probably a mistake to hold a press conference without members of the press. On Tuesday the agency, perhaps trying to get a jump on the kind of negative publicity it received after Hurricane Katrina, stuffed a press briefing with its own employees, who lobbed softballs such as “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?”
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AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
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Aaron Glantz —
The sorry state of care of American veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is not accidental. It’s on purpose. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has fought every effort to improve care for wounded and disabled veterans.
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AP Images / John Bazemore
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Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI kept close tabs on Martin Luther King Jr.‘s wife, Coretta Scott King—which isn’t exactly startling news, except for the detail that the agency’s surveillance intensified after her husband’s assassination in 1968.
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businessinnovationinsider.com
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Signaling a sea change in the advertising business, four top-tier ad agencies are lining up to pitch to former Vice President Al Gore in hopes of landing the account for his Alliance for Climate Protection and helping Gore design a multimedia global warming campaign with a whopping $100-million annual budget. The takeaway, according to AdAge: Global warming is hot on Madison Avenue.
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gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
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The National Security Archive at George Washington University has posted documents on its website that expose ugly activities by the CIA before reforms were made in the 1970s. The secrecy watchdog says the agency violated its charter for 25 years by spying on journalists and political dissidents, in addition to engaging in other nefarious activities.
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militaryplaques.com
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Disturbing news from the FBI: The top U.S. intelligence agency recently underwent an internal audit, which produced some pretty creepy results. Even in a small sampling of the agency’s activities (the survey covered 10% of the whole organization, according to The Washington Post), the bureau was found to have violated privacy laws and agency rules some 1,000 times while monitoring phone calls, e-mails and other communications.
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Senior Bush officials and other top Republicans are apparently angry that U.S. intelligence agencies aren’t issuing more ominous threats about Iran. The GOP’ers, marred by (but unrepentant for) their Iraq debacle, are eager to use their lethal Tonka Toys once again—this time in Iran.
Check out an intelligence expert at AMERICAblog who argues that Iran poses no imminent threat to the U.S.
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Faces: from smartmobs.com / NSA seal: from isoc.org
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The National Security Agency is funding research into ways to collect personal information from social networking websites like MySpace and Friendster, according to New Scientist magazine. The agency reportedly aims to combine the information with details from banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
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Images: From "The Charlie Rose Show"
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Truthdig salutes Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who broke the blockbuster story about the NSA’s program to amass the records of every phone call made in America. Her scoop laid waste to President Bush’s assertion that his domestic spying targets only a handful of suspected terrorists living in the U.S. In the wake of her story, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter is calling for congressional hearings.
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From NSA.gov
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The presumed next head of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, once ran the National Security Agency. Fine. It’s got a cartoon picture that leads to a kid-friendly site called Cryptokids: America’s Future Codemakers and Codebreakers. It’s filled with decryption games and NSA employment resources.
Huh? Cartoons appeal to 7-year-olds. How many of them are going to be surfing the NSA’s website? And if the agency is trying to recruit high school students, why use a cartoon turtle as a roper?
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AP
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Resigning unexpectedly 19 months after taking the job, Porter Goss leaves the spy agency in a “free fall,” according to earlier comments by one congresswoman. The CIA has been plagued with personnel losses and criticism by former officers.
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