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$10.99
By Douglas A. Wissing $25.00
$23
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 twicepix (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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The intelligence arm of the Pentagon aims to recruit up to 1,600 intelligence “collectors” to create an international spy network that would rival the CIA in size, sources told The Washington Post.
Posted on Dec 2, 2012
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 bbc.co.uk
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After an American drone was downed last week in Iran, the U.S. made the unrealistic request that Iranian authorities return the spy machine, and on Tuesday, that appeal was unsurprisingly rejected.
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 imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — Under Tomas Alfredson’s leaden direction, the film, which is set in the 1970s when the Cold War was at its height, consists mainly of guys enigmatically sipping whiskey, smoking cigarettes and exchanging meaningful stares.
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 Wikimedia Commons / Anaxibia (CC-BY-SA)
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As if our current surveillance society wasn’t creepy enough, the wave of the spying future may come on the backs of creepy-crawlies. No joke—in tiny beetle “backpacks” or perhaps hitched around their wing muscles. Read it and get skeeved out.
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 cia.gov
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This information, we should note, comes from Iran’s state-sponsored news agency, but officials in Tehran said Wednesday they had arrested as many as 12 CIA agents who had been working undercover to gather intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program and what the government planned to do with it.
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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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By John Pomfret —
For decades during the Cold War, the most captivating spy-vs.-spy battle was the one waged between Moscow and Washington. With the rise of China, a new player has entered the game.
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 CIA
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In a story that harks back to the bad old days of intelligence abuses, a former CIA spook says he and another agency staffer were asked by Bush administration officials to dig up dirt on Mideast scholar, Iraq war critic and Truthdig columnist Juan Cole. (more)
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 AP / Aqeel Ahmed
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This bit of news probably will not help the already dicey relationship between Pakistan and the U.S.: Pakistani officials have arrested five people believed to have assisted the CIA in the operation that felled Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad last month.
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Mike Keefe, The Denver Post —
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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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 AP / K.M. Chaudary
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Last month’s arrest in Pakistan of one Raymond Davis, an American working security for other U.S. operatives in Lahore—and an American with clear employment ties to the CIA and previously to Blackwater Worldwide—has made for additional diplomatic strain between the two nations.
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 AP / Jose Luis Magana
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The U.S. and the U.K. have maintained a diplomatically symbiotic relationship, to all appearances, for decades, but yet another WikiLeaks cable cropped up to harsh that friendly mellow late this week. Let the official backpedaling commence.
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 AP / Dana Verkouteren
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On Thursday, 10 members of an alleged Russian spy ring pleaded guilty of espionage in a New York courtroom—a move which, as previous reports suggested, could lead to a prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. Ah, Cold War nostalgia.
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 AP / Dubai Ruler's Media Office
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Dubai’s Police Chief Dahi Khalfan had some fighting words for Israel on Tuesday, accusing the Israeli government of forging passports used by a hit squad of 27 suspects in the January murder of Hamas leader Mahmud al-Mabhuh, who Dubai police believe was killed by members of the Mossad.
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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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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
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 Library of Congress
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A 72-year-old former State Department employee and his 71-year-old wife were arrested Thursday on charges of spying for the Cuban government. An undercover FBI agent reportedly tricked the couple into giving up their secret after they allegedly had been engaged in espionage for 30 years.
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 a.abcnews.com
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Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi just got back to the States following six years in Iran, the last four of which she spent in prison under an allegation of spying—a charge she initially confessed to but later recanted. Saberi recounted her story on Thursday’s edition of “All Things Considered” on NPR, one of the outlets for which she reported while in Iran.
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 CIA
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The president-elect has reportedly chosen Leon Panetta to head the CIA and retired Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Both men bring a mixed bag. Panetta is an experienced bureaucrat, but he’s no James Bond. Blair has been praised for his terrorist-fighting skills, but he was criticized for a supposed conflict of interest that benefited defense contractors.
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 Flickr / sergis blog
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How did two nuns end up on a list of terrorists? Blame a now-defunct investigation by the Maryland State Police, who sent undercover troopers to spy on political groups and identify supposed terrorists, among them pacifists, environmentalists, a congressional candidate and those two feisty nuns. Update
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 thirdphaze.com
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Just what kind of interpretation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would allow U.S. National Security Agency linguists to eavesdrop on Americans’, er, pillow talk? That’s the charge being leveled by more than one such NSA interpreter who worked at an NSA listening station at Fort Gordon, Ga.
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 AP photo / Bullit Marquez
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By Scott Ritter — Dave continued pacing back and forth in front of Mohammed. “My president,” he said, “is in trouble. Can you help him?” Mohammed was taken aback by the question. “Excuse me?” he asked. “Could you repeat yourself?” Dave sat down next to the Iraqi. “George Bush is in trouble. Our people did not find any WMD in Iraq. Can you help us?”
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 Flickr / Sir Mildred Pierce
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An investigation by Mother Jones has turned up an interesting life—one Mary McFate, aka Mary Lou Sapone, who for years worked as a national figure in the gun-control movement and as a paid spy for the NRA. According to the mag, McFate held board positions in numerous activist groups while her alter ego has been known to infiltrate such organizations for a fee.
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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BBC reporter Paul Danahar had to go to great lengths in order to report from Burma. A secret identity was just one method for avoiding the military intelligence agents who scoured the country looking for the journalist who dared to report on the devastation of Cyclone Nargis, which struck May 3.
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 AP photo / Mark Wilson, pool)
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The official reason the U.S. military offered for its show of fireworks Wednesday night high above the Pacific was to shoot down, using an anti-satellite missile, a failed spy satellite before it might do damage upon reentry. However, not everyone read the skywriting that way.
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By Elliot D. Cohen — The “Last Days of Democracy” author warns that Congress is about to aid the Bush administration with its Orwellian plans by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications giants for helping the government spy on Americans.
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 defenseindustrydaily.com
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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.
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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
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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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.
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 channel4.com
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Alexander V. Litvinenko is dead after suffering an extensive illness he believed was caused by poisoning. A former KGB agent, Litvinenko had become critical of the Russian government. He began feeling ill after meeting in London with two Russians and an Italian security specialist.
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A European Union oversight committee has concluded that the data sharing program between the U.S. and a European financial consortium broke the law by violating the civil liberties of European citizens. The decision may prompt the EU’s ruling body to sue Belgium for allowing the program to continue.
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 Huffington Post
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Read an excerpt of the explosive new book “Triple Cross,” which tells the story of Ali Abdel Saoud Mohamed, Osama bin Laden’s most trusted security adviser, who infiltrated the U.S. Army Special Forces and served as an FBI informant—all the while overseeing some of the most infamous Al Qaeda terror strikes of the last decade. (Excerpt, and more info).
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Although a judge recently ruled Bush’s warrentless wiretapping program unconstitutional, a federal court unanimously agreed to keep the program running until an appeal is decided, though the three judges involved gave little explanation as to how they reached their decision.
Posted on Oct 5, 2006
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By Marie Cocco — “In this political atmosphere, who could blame Hewlett-Packard for believing it could spy on reporters—or even try to intimidate them?”
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From U.S. Newswire: “Two lawyers who brought the first lawsuit against the Bush administration, Verizon and AT&T for illegally examining the phone records of virtually every American citizen will announce today that they are serving subpoenas on the Bush White House and on Verizon.”
We suspect those lawyers may have a bit of trouble nailing down that particular deposition.
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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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A federal judge has denied the government?s request to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing AT&T for its involvement in the NSA?s wiretapping program.
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Invasion of privacy is not just for the NSA anymore! Parents have always snooped, but as the SF Chronicle reveals, new tech toys are taking what was once standard parental prying to a whole new level of unacceptable surveillance and spying. Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned conversation? (Via boingboing.net)
Posted on Jul 10, 2006
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 AP
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By Robert Scheer — Five of the largest U.S. newspapers shirked their journalistic responsibility by covering up the government’s outrageous smear campaign against Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
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 Illustration: Blair Golson
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This is the big one, folks. Wired News unearths internal AT&T documents that show how the telecom company, at the behest of the government, built “secret rooms” in cities across America that enable the NSA “to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what people are doing.”
Story and AT&T internal documents
Wired News explains why it published the story
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In the wake of Sept. 11, the vice president argued that the NSA should intercept purely domestic calls and e-mails without warrants, reports the N.Y. Times.
The NSA ultimately decided against the idea, but this report leaves no doubt about Cheney’s regard for civil liberties.
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The telecom giant faces two suits—one for $20 billion, another for $5 billion—for handing over customers’ phone records to the NSA.
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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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Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on a lot these days, but they do agree that the U.S.’ new spy chief, John Negroponte, is “creating just another blanket of bureaucracy, muffling rather than clarifying the dangers lurking in the world,” according to the N.Y. Times.
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A sobering report commissioned by Rumsfeld details how U.S. military planners want to take control of the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum, allowing America to dominate telcommunications for propaganda and psy-ops purposes.
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The House committee votes 62-2 to block the White House from allowing the UAE to acquire six major U.S. ports.
At the same time, however, Senate Republicans handed the president a victory by approving a plan to allow Bush to spy without warrants.
The New York Times says “rebellion” is in the air, but that’s mostly because of the ports. The spying program, although under some Senate control, is basically a win for Bush.
Posted on Mar 8, 2006
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The MSNBC host lays bare the White House’s attack on press freedoms and whistle-blowers.
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