NewsTrust - CIA - Most Recent Stories

Dismantling of Saudi-CIA Web site illustrates need for clearer cyberwar policies

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ellen Nakashima - Mar. 19 (News Report) - By early 2008, top U.S. military officials had become convinced that extremists planning attacks on American forces in Iraq were making use of a Web site set up by the Saudi government and the CIA to uncover terrorist plots in the kingdom.

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Al Qaeda's new tactic is to seize shortcuts

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Greg Miller - Mar. 19 (News) - An examination of recent plots, including the bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, has convinced U.S. counter-terrorism analysts that Al Qaeda is becoming more opportunistic, using fewer operatives and dramatically shrinking the amount of planning and preparation that goes into an attack.

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The Pentagon's Stringers

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:10:56 -0700

Mother Jones - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - But one of the companies established by Pelton and Jordan, International Safety Networks (ISN), offered to do more than just information gathering. It pitched services that merged reporting, intelligence, connection-peddling, and strategic

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Drone Strike Kills Senior Qaeda Leader in Pakistan

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David E. Sanger - Mar. 18 (News Report) - The commander, Hussein al-Yemeni, played a significant role in planning the killing of Central Intelligence Agency operatives at a base in Afghanistan last year, according to officials.

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Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti - Mar. 15 (Special Report) - A Defense Department official set up a private network of spies in Afghanistan and Pakistan who gathered intelligence on insurgents, according to officials.

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Clinton Says Iran Headed For “Military Dictatorship |

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

atlanticfreepress.com - By Sherwood Ross - Feb. 25 (News Analysis) - Well may Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warn students in Qatar that “Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship.” She is, after all, an authority on the subject, representing a country where the Pentagon has long been ascendant.

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How significant is Mullah Baradar's arrest?

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - By M Ilyas Khan - Feb. 16 (News Analysis) - The capture of top Taliban militant commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in the Pakistani city of Karachi is the most important catch for the American CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service since March 2007.

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Top Taliban commander captured in Pakistan: report

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Karen DeYoung - Feb. 16 (News Report) - The top military commander of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been captured in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret raid by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence forces, The New York Times reported on Monday.

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Secret Joint Raid Captures Taliban’s Top Commander

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Mark Mazzetti, Dexter Filkins - Feb. 16 (News Report) - The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

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Under Obama, more targeted killings than captures in counterterrorism efforts

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Karen DeYoung, Joby Warrick - Feb. 14 (News Report) - When a window of opportunity opened to strike the head of al-Qaeda in East Africa last September, U.S. Special Operations forces prepared several options. They could obliterate his vehicle with an airstrike as he drove through southern Somalia. Or they could fire from helicopters that could land ...

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How Should Obama Deal With Bush Era Torture?

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Feb. 14 (Opinion) - Walling and phobias are the least of it: hypothermia, sleep deprivation up to 960 hours, waterboarding, brutal stress positions, sensory deprivation and isolation for years, mock executions, and confinement in upright coffins were all deployed and they are all forms of torture. The fundamental judge of torture, the International Red Cross, has called it torture; Museum0004 every other country in the world acknowledges that it was torture, the current president acknowledges that it was torture, and the record shows unequivocally that it was authorized and supervised directly from the president's and vice-president's office. My own hope was that president Bush would take the lead on this. But, alas, he hasn't. I see the great political benefits of this approach - but the belligerence of the far right that refuses to acknowledge the plain facts in front of us would still lead to deep polarization.

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Militant Groups Seen Collaborating Against U.S.

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

NPR - By Tom Gjelten - Feb. 02 (News Report) - If militant Islamist groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region work together to target U.S. forces in Afghanistan, they should be capable of more deadly attacks. But having a "single enemy" could have the positive result of forcing Pakistan to alter its policy of accommodating the Afghan Taliban.

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The Hippocratic Oath Applied to Intelligence

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Barry Eisler - Jan. 28 (Review) - I'm just about finished with Tim Weiner's phenomenal "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA." Two themes are at the heart of the book. First, the Agency has been incompetent from its inception. The roster of incompetence includes subversion operations that cost the lives of hundreds of agents and accomplished nothing; CIA-managed coups that backfired, the Bay of Pigs and many others. Even operations that "succeeded" were pyrrhic.

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CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Foreign Policy - By Jeff Stein - Jan. 27 (News Report) - John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

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Israeli firm blasted for letting would-be plane bomber slip through

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Haaretz - By Yossi Melman - Jan. 10 (News) - The Israeli firm, ICTS, and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253...

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Why Counter-Terrorism Is in Shambles

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley. - Jan. 06 (Opinion) - The debate over who's to blame for missing the Christmas Day bomb plot misses the point. ... there is no getting around the necessity to address the root causes of terrorism or, in the vernacular, “why they hate us.”

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"Obama Has Kept the Machine Set on Kill"

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, ANJALI KAMAT - Jan. 06 (Interview) - In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months.

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US Spy Work Only 'Marginally Relevant' In Afghanistan

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Deb Riechmann - Jan. 05 (News Report) - NATO's top intelligence official has ordered significant changes to information-gathering in Afghanistan, saying the U.S. intelligence community is now only "marginally relevant" to the mission there. U.S. Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn's stinging assessment and plan to focus less on the enemy and more on civilian life was published Monday by the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington.

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CIA Bomber Worked With Jordanian Intelligence, Says Afghan Official

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Siobhan Gorman, Anand Gopal, Yochi J. Dreazen - Jan. 05 (News Report) - The suicide bomber who killed seven Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors and a Jordanian intelligence officer was a double agent the CIA had recruited to provide intelligence on senior al Qaeda leadership, according to current and former U.S. officials and an Afghan security official.

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Taliban bomber wrecks CIA’s shadowy war

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Times - By Christina Lamb - Jan. 04 (News Report) - A middle-aged mother of three and a warm-hearted man called Harold are a long way from the image most Americans have of their top spies in one of the wildest regions of Afghanistan. But they will be among the seven stars added this week to the 90 on the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a Taliban suicide bomber killed seven agents and wounded six at a CIA base in eastern Afghanistan. The attack has thrown the CIA’s whole strategy into disarray.

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Serial Catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama Policy

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Informed Comment - By Juan Cole - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - You probably won't see it in most US news outlets, but on Monday morning in Kabul and Jalalabad, hundreds of university students demonstrated against US strikes this weekend that allegedly killed a number of civilians . I want to underline the irony that the students in Tehran University are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while students in these two Afghan cities are calling for Yankees to go home. Nangarhar University in Jalalabad only has a student body of about 3200, so "hundreds" of students protesting there would be a significant proportion of the student body. The demonstrations could be a harbinger of things to come, but there was worse news.

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Jordan emerges as key CIA ally

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Joby Warrick - Jan. 04 (News Report) - The eighth victim resurfaced over the weekend when his flag-draped coffin arrived in his native country, Jordan. The man, a captain in the Jordanian intelligence service, was given full military honors at a ceremony that referred only to his

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Day of mixed emotions in Baghdad: Elation for U.S., but anger for Iraqis

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Michael Hastings - Jan. 02 (News Report) - for Iraqis, Friday was marked by bitter recriminations over a U.S. judge's decision to dismiss charges against five Blackwater security guards who had been accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians and wounding 20 others in 2007 -- a reminder that resentments toward the American occupation will linger long after U.S. troops have gone home.

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Shooting Handcuffed Children

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

davidswanson.org - By David Swanson - Jan. 02 (Opinion) - The occupied government of Afghanistan and the United Nations have both concluded that U.S.-led troops recently dragged eight sleeping children out of their beds, handcuffed some of them, and shot them all dead. While this apparently constitutes an everyday act of kindness, far less intriguing than the vicious singeing of his pubic hairs by Captain Underpants, it is at least a variation on the ordinary American technique of murdering men, women, and children by the dozens with unmanned drones.

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Eight US 'CIA agents' killed in Afghanistan bomb attack

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - Dec. 31 (News Report) - Eight CIA workers have been killed in a suicide bomb attack in south-eastern Afghanistan, the worst attack against intelligence officials since 2001.

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