|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Dale Wright
$26.91
By Zachary Karabell
17.79
$23
|
|
|
|
defenseindustrydaily.com
|
For those of us who are alarmed by Google Maps’ satellite-generated views of our homes and favorite stomping grounds, a recent decision made by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell ought to stand some hairs on end.
|
|
A British committee investigating possible UK involvement in extraordinary rendition has found that the U.S. ignored British intelligence caveats and concerns, possibly straining a historically close intelligence relationship. The committee also recommended a ban on cooperation that could lead to secret detention, which it said “is of itself mistreatment.”
|
militaryplaques.com
|
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.
|
|
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, with the blessing of the White House, will rewrite the Reagan-era executive order that defines the function of the United States’ many spy agencies and prohibits espionage against Americans. While critics concede that the order is out of date, they worry that an administration with a fondness for spying on its own might seize the opportunity to trample on a few civil liberties.
Posted on Jun 12, 2007
READ MORE 
|
|
The Senate Intelligence Committee has declassified and released two prewar intelligence reports that warned a postwar Iraq could struggle with sectarian violence and might benefit al-Qaida and Iran. Democrats on the panel, along with Republicans Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, criticized the Bush administration for ignoring the prescient warnings.
|
|
George Tenet’s combative interview with “60 Minutes” is as fascinating as it is upsetting. The former CIA director careens between defensive ire and finger-pointing at an administration he says distracted us from the biggest threat to our nation’s security.
|
|
By Joe Conason — While the natural human fascination with gossip and backbiting among our rulers guarantees media coverage and best-seller status for George Tenet’s new memoir, the former CIA director cannot achieve absolution in print or on television.
|
AP Photo / Lawrence Jackson
|
By Robert Scheer — The three short sentences at the beginning of Chapter 17 of former CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” tell it all: “The United States did not go to war in Iraq solely because of WMD. I doubt it was even the principal cause. Yet it was the public face that was put on it.”
|
|
In a new memoir, former CIA Director George Tenet accepts some responsibility for his intelligence assessment of Iraq in the buildup to war, but he also blames the Bush administration for its ill-founded determination to invade. He takes particular issue with Vice President Dick Cheney for citing Tenet’s “slam dunk” statement as justification for war: “I remember watching and thinking: ‘As if you needed me to say “slam dunk” to convince you to go to war with Iraq.’ ”
|
|
Months before 9/11, French intelligence warned the CIA that al-Qaida was planning an attack involving airplanes, according to classified documents and former French intelligence officials. The information was vague and possibly misleading, but it speaks to the intelligence community’s inability to coalesce fragmentary warnings into something concrete and comprehensive.
|
cnn.com
|
The Washington Post continues to investigate the now infamous 16 words the president used to help make his case for war. It’s not surprising to read that the Niger uranium claim was bogus, but it is disconcerting to learn just how many people in the intelligence community knew it all along.
|
|
By Andy Borowitz — The satirist envisions a Cabinet-level agency to better handle the abundance of misinformation pumped out by the administration.
|
theyoungturks.com
|
British and Iraqi forces raided a National Iraqi Intelligence Agency detention center on Sunday and discovered 30 prisoners, including two children, “many of whom showed signs of torture and abuse.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raid as an “illegal and irresponsible act” and has ordered an investigation.
|
|
A State Department official said the U.S. will not extradite 26 suspected CIA agents to Italy, where they are accused of carrying out “extraordinary rendition.” Legal adviser John Bellinger added a veiled threat, saying further legal action in Europe would hamper “intelligence cooperation.”
|
abc.net.au
|
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (ret.), a veteran of the Pentagon with firsthand experience of the administration’s cherry-picking of intelligence, reveals why Bush thinks he can win a war with Iran, why few politicians are serious about withdrawal and why “when they call Iraq a success, they mean it.”
Update: Full transcript added
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Even as jurors pondered whether Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff should be convicted of lying about what the Bush administration did to smear one of its critics, there was Cheney accusing another adversary of doing the work of the terrorists.
|
|
Before the invasion of Iraq, Gen. Tommy Franks gathered with his top advisers to review their plans. The recently released slides from that meeting offer an insight into the startling optimism of the men who designed the war. Four years post-invasion, the commanders expected Iraq to have a fully representative government, a functioning army and as few as 5,000 U.S. troops. Whoops!
|
AP Photo / Evan Vucci
|
By Robert Scheer — The lies of Douglas Feith, exposed by the Pentagon’s inspector general, are the key to understanding the greatest intelligence fiasco in American history.
|
|
You didn’t happen to see, oh ... let’s say, about 160 FBI laptops, did you? They’re really important and some of them have top-secret info inside them. The FBI seems to have lost track of them in the last four years. Oh, also while you’re looking, keep an eye out for the 160 weapons it just reported missing.
|
from npr.org
|
An internal review by the Pentagon found that the intelligence cherry-picking policy shop run by Douglas Feith (above), a group President Bush relied on to sell the war, acted inappropriately but not illegally. The inspector general’s findings will be made public at a Senate hearing Friday.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
Spy satellites provide much of the intelligence community’s raw data, whether snapshots of Iran’s nuclear facilities or al-Qaida training camps. David Kaplan has the story on how the National Reconnaissance Office, the $7.5-billion-a-year agency that builds and operates the satellites, has had to contend with potentially massive fraud among its many contractors.
|
|
A declassified version of the long-awaited new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq has just gone public. Its findings are grim: It says the term ” ‘civil war’ accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict.” Check out the document (.pdf file).
|
|
According to sources familiar with the document, the latest national intelligence estimate paints a bleak picture for Iraq, one that most of us have already come to know from simply following the news.
The summary of information from across the intelligence community says that the situation is perilous, the U.S. has little control and the major cause of violence is not al-Qaida but fighting among Iraqis.
|
|
CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden told the House Intelligence Committee that President Bush has ordered him to “pay more attention” to Hugo Chavez. According to former intelligence czar John Negroponte, U.S. intelligence already pays a great deal of attention to Chavez, leaving one to wonder exactly what kind of action has been authorized, particularly for an agency with a long history of meddling in Latin America.
|
|
President Bush has authorized the CIA to take covert action in Lebanon against Hezbollah, according to a secret presidential finding obtained by The Daily Telegraph. As part of the policy, the CIA and other intelligence groups will subvert Hezbollah’s influence by funding activists who are supportive of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government.
(h/t: Largest Minority)
|
nytimes.com
|
Bush’s former Iraq and U.N. ambassador, John Negroponte, currently the director of national intelligence, is expected to accept a tacit demotion in order to become Condoleezza Rice’s deputy at the State Department. As if shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, the president continues to shift a cast of familiar characters he’s come to rely on to implement his failed policies.
|
house.gov
|
Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the Democrats plan to form a new House intelligence committee based on recommendations of the 9/11 commission. The panel would combine elements of the current intelligence and appropriations committees with the aim of achieving better oversight.
|
intelmessages.org
|
Despite all the attention focused on the Iraq Study Group’s report, one of its more damaging allegations has largely escaped media scrutiny: The Pentagon and intelligence agencies are drastically underreporting acts of violence in Iraq. The panel said that one day the U.S. reported 93 acts of violence when in fact there were more than 1,100. (h/t: Randi Rhodes)
|
|
Seymour Hersh says the White House is channeling intelligence related to Iran’s nuclear program, a la Iraq, preventing the CIA from scrutinizing “evidence” attributed to a secret Israeli source inside Iran. According to Hersh, the CIA maintains Iran has “no secret program of significant bomb making.”
|
|
National Public Radio interviews Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer and former White House advisor Ron Christie on the significance of the declassified National Intelligence Estimate. (Listen)
|
|
“The Daily Show” host has the perfect rejoinder to Bush’s assertion, regarding the National Intelligence Estimate, that war critics are “naive.” Watch it.
Posted on Sep 29, 2006
READ MORE 
|
|
Reuters reports: Donald Rumsfeld, “asked about the N.I.E. report that concluded the Iraq war had spread Islamic radicalism, said intelligence could be faulty and sometimes ‘flat wrong.’ ”
Really!?!? How enlightening to hear that—three years after we went to war based on faulty and manipulated intelligence.
Posted on Sep 28, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
By Robert Scheer — All 16 U.S. intelligence services have concluded that Bush’s war in Iraq “has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists” worldwide, but that won’t deter a president who puts no stock in intelligence.
|
|
The Texas columnist sounds off on the National Intelligence Estimate, corruption in the Education Dept. and Bush’s view of the “comma” in Iraq.
|
|
The latest National Intelligence Estimate blames the Iraq War for the expansion of terrorist threats. According to the consensus gathered from 16 intelligence agencies, “jihadism” has increased since Sept. 11, 2001, due especially to the war in Iraq.
|
NPR/Patrick Kovarik
|
In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” former President Bill Clinton vigorously argued against Bush’s torture plans, citing both moral and practical reasons: “We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law, and you don’t need blanket advanced approval for blanket torture.”
|
|
The chief of intelligence for the Marines in Iraq, a man known for straight-shooting, wrote in a secret report that there is almost nothing U.S. forces can do to prevent the western section of Iraq from descending into total lawlessness.
|
|
A Senate report on prewar intelligence has concluded that there was no evidence Saddam had ties with Al Qaeda. This is yet another confirmation of what we all, sadly, already know—not only about the realities of Mideast tyrants, but about the realities of liars in the Bush administration. Also, there are new tidbits inside.
|
|
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.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
