Canada, like the U.S., has opened its doors to many immigrants over the years, and CSIS Director Richard Fadden says that his spy agency’s most pressing concern is the peril of second and third generation Canadians who have become radical, adopting fanatic and extreme views. Despite seeming to fit well into the social and economic fabric of Canadian life, some, as is the case in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, have “become appallingly disenchanted with the way we want to structure our society.”

Fadden spoke to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, May 11, saying that “For one reason or another they develop connections with their former homeland, they become very, very disenchanted and they are led to contemplate doing violence.”

No question as to which brand of 2nd and 3rd generation Canadian Mr. Fadden is singling out here, and he confirmed by continuing, “They reject the rule of law, they want to impose Sharia law.”

The CSIS is currently investigating several groups like the Toronto 18, people who have been in Canada for a while, who are ostensibly Canadian, but choose to rebel violently against what the country stands for. Toronto 18, for example, was planning to use three 1-ton truck bombs to blow up the Toronto Stock Exchange, the CSIS offices on Front Street and a military base off Highway 401.

Obama openly reprimanded the intelligence community and has just released a preliminary report reviewing the incident and the intelligence community’s failure to predict and prevent it.

In a nutshell, the report describes Abdulmutallab’s father’s visit to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, and confirms that the intelligence community was aware of an impending terrorist attack, that the dots could have been connected, but that they were not. It does not detail all the dots, i.e. the pieces of information. It does blame a failure of analysis and threat accountability for the attack, and includes a memo from Obama on the immediate measures that will be taken by the intelligence community to improve ‘dot connection’ and avoid future attacks.

Interestingly, it opens by saying that there are many such attacks that the intelligence community has prevented in recent years, many of which the American public will never be privy to. In addition to sending a shiver down our spines, this only serves to confirm the truth embedded in the Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller series. Terror plots are continually being detected, uncovered and interrupted by the intelligence agencies of the free world. Dan Gordon’s adventures will give you insight into that which the American public will never be privy to…

No comment from the United States followed the accusation, but Colombia’s Defense Minister Gabriel Silva denied the charge, saying that Colombia’s air force does not have the capability to carry out the spy mission described by Chavez.

Silva went on to make light of the situation, suggesting that Venezuela had merely confused Santa’s sleigh for a spy plane!

Of course, neither Silva nor Colombia’s Armed Forces Commander Freddy Padilla mentioned anything about the U.S.’s capability, stationed in Colombia’s bases. The United States does have a military presence in Colombia, but its purpose – according to both countries – is strictly to help Colombia in the domestic war against drug traffickers and rebels.

Chavez is convinced that the U.S. is crossing that line, and that its intentions are to launch an armed attack against Venezuela from Colombia. Meanwhile, Colombia accuses Venezuela of sheltering wanted rebels. Relations between the neighboring countries are not exactly friendly and quips like Silva’s, though amusing, don’t really help in allaying tensions…

It turns out the big tip-off in the Zazi case came to the FBI from Scotland Yard, who intercepted a telling email as part of a mostly defunct domestic counter-terrorist operation. The email suggested that someone was going to bomb the NY underground much the way London’s tube system had been attacked in July 2005, killing 52 people.

The FBI’s subsequent investigation led to Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan from Denver, Colorado who allegedly spent some time at an Al Qaeda training camp. Zazi was arrested for conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. It seems he was getting his directions over the internet from a senior member of Al Qaeda based in Pakistan, which is why email interception did the trick.

Apparently Zazi belonged to a group who stole credit cards and used them to purchase chemicals for making explosives. The items bought were very similar to the ones used in the 2005 London bombings.

So what other evidence implicates Zazi? Bomb-making instructions on his laptop, as well as his fingerprints on batteries and measuring scales, explosive residue, and recently recorded cell phone footage of Grand Central Station in New York’s midtown.

According to the Brits, the U.S. “is delighted with the intelligence…and believe it helped prevent a catastrophic attack.” At the time, the U.S. was ready to put a stop to intel relations with the U.K. given the latter’s penchant for inadvertently leaking confidential information to the press, but this little tid-bit of information really turned the tide.

No real details have been released about the capture and arrest, but the Deputy Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Arias Cardenas, has said that Venezuela will come forward with more details and evidence to back up their claims in the very near future.

Relations between Venezuela and Colombia are not always tension-free – in fact, just this past weekend, 10 players on a Colombian amateur soccer team were murdered on Venezuelan soil. Colombia and Venezuela share a border area that is home to several militant groups and drug traffickers, and kidnapping, smuggling and extortion along the border are not uncommon.

Some are speculating that if Colombian spies were rummaging around, it would have been to gather intel on the weekend’s bloodshed, but Colombia’s DAS security agency has issued a statement in which they deny having sent agents to Venezuela.

The Colombian ambassador to Venezuela implies that this is just an attempt by Venezuela to take the heat off of the real issue, which is that “10 people, including eight Colombians, were killed in a massacre.”

It will be interesting to see what evidence the Venezualans come up with…

Although this number is not exact (shared by an unnamed U.S. government official), it’s starting to resemble the size of the huge spy forces stationed in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of their respective conflicts.

Troop numbers are going up, so it makes sense that spy and analyst numbers follow. The military cannot have enough intelligence on the Taliban, whose growing stronghold and increasing attacks are extremely worrying. The Taliban is said to be at its strongest – since it got the boot from Afghanistan in 2001 – with an estimated 15-20,000 insurgents.

One of the areas that the Taliban seems to have down is the recruitment and training of suicide bombers. It is believed that some of these recruits are farmed out to other insurgent organizations.

Of course, the CIA didn’t go from a handful operatives to 700 overnight. A ‘handful’ was just post-9/11, a number that quickly grew to 150 by the close of 2001 and then gradually doubled to 300 over the course of the next four years.

The push for extra spies comes from the military but also from the Obama Administration, where the belief is widely held that come next summer, public support for the war will have all but disappeared. The pressure is on to wrap things up – an end which as of now is nowhere in sight.

Some U.S. spies – instead of focusing on Taliban movements and activities – have been asked to keep an eye on the currently U.S.-backed Afghani government. It is accused of being extremely corrupt, with senior officials involved in drug cartels and election fraud. So on the one hand there’s the Taliban insurgency to deal with, but on the other, there’s the hope of cleaning up the government and protecting civilians from the fanatic rule of the Taliban and the corrupt rule of the present government.

The home front drill referred to is the third in a series of exercises held since the 2006 Lebanon War. They’re calling it Turning Point 3 and it stands apart from its predecessors in that it will involve mobilizing the whole country. On June 2, the drill will culminate with a nationwide siren directing the entire population towards safe rooms and bomb shelters.

Al-Mussawi said in an interview with a London-based pan-Arabic newspaper that Hezbollah is not taking the exercise lightly. They believe that it is somehow related to Israel’s intention to kill Nasrallah with the help of its allies.

Meanwhile back in Lebanon, Nasrallah addressed the Lebanese on television, saying that although not confirmed, the drill may well be in preparation for “a new and unexpected war.”

He said that the drill “gives the impression that Israel is preparing for a security or military attack on something, and assume that this aggression will lead to sudden and unpredictable reactions.”

Israeli diplomats said Nasrallah’s accusations are false – just more politicking on his part.

photo courtesy of arabamericannews.com

The cops arrested the foursome (who had been planning and communicating in code) just after they planted heaps of fake explosives in cars in front of the two targeted synagogues in Riverdale. Why the faux bombs? Rest assured it wasn’t because they were being nice. The FBI had a spy on the inside of the ring, who reported on plans and provided the “explosives” for the mission, which he got from the FBI.

Three of the suspects were brought to court first with hands cuffed at their waists. The fourth, Laguerre Payen, who is apparently a Haitian citizen – not American like the others (as earlier reports suggested), came to court later in the day. Even though the suspects’ lawyers did not ask for bail, the prosecution was ready with arguments against it, saying “it’s hard to envision a more chilling plot” and that the men are “extremely violent.” No plea has been entered for the defendants as yet.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder also said that the men were “disappointed…that the best target (the WTC) was hit already” and that they were “eager to bring death to Jews.” According to Counsel Snyder, Cromitie wanted to be able to see the damage he’d done on TV and declare: “I’m the one who did that.”

Payen’s lawyer, Marilyn Reader, said that her client is both schizophrenic and bipolar and that he cannot read nor write in English. He arrived in court with a bandage wrapped around his head.

The informant – who was quintessential to the FBI’s success in cracking the case – originally got in good with Cromitie by telling him that he had contacts in Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist group suspected of being connected to national Pakistani intelligence. Jaish set up training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban and several of its senior operatives were allowed entrance into Osama bin Laden’s inner circle.

Riverdale residents are understandably shaken, and a statement has been issued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations praising law enforcers and condemning those using religion to justify violent crimes. It seems the men have no real connections to international terror groups and are being referred to as “homegrown terrorists” by the police.

image courtesy of www.stuff.co.nz

The four men hail from Newburgh, NY (about 70 miles north of Manhattan); three were born in the U.S. and one in Haiti. They were arrested last night, caught in the act of planting “explosives” at the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center. The bombs weren’t real, as the informant provided them courtesy of the FBI (though he told the men he procured them from a Pakistan-based terrorist group with which he was affiliated). He also gave the group an FBI-manufactured missile that wasn’t capable of firing.

Back in June 2008, the informant (obviously unnamed) started working with James Cromitie (also known as Abdul Rehman), one of the four men involved in the plot. The story goes that Cromitie was full of hate towards America and openly expressed his feelings to the informant. He was angry about the death of Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he figured it was payback time for the U.S. Cromitie also spoke of moving to Afghanistan, where he was convinced he’d make his way to paradise if he died for the cause. He wanted to join the terrorist group the informant claimed to be connected to, so he could play his part in jihad.

In October, the group plus our FBI informant started meeting at a so-called safe house that was wired with FBI video cams and audio recorders. During their planning sessions, Cromitie and his co-conspirators (David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen) discussed which New York targets they were going to hit.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the guys probably got acquainted in prison, where they all did time for various drug and assault-related charges. The connection between the four and the informant was likely a mosque in Newburgh called Masjid al-Ikhlas, or Orange County’s Islamic Learning Center.

Things are moving quickly since the four men were arrested on Wednesday night. Charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the U.S. and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, they appeared in federal court in White Plains, N.Y. today.

photos courtesy of www.nydailynews.com

The Pakistani government has promised to cut off ties with various militant groups in Afghanistan in past, especially after the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July 2008, which killed 54 people. Evidence showed that Pakistani operatives working for the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, had helped to plan the bombing.

American officials say that despite these promises, Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban have not lessened.

Make no mistake, the sort of support we’re talking about here is not just a boost in morale. Apparently, Pakistani spies are providing the Taliban with money, military supplies and guidance on their military strategy. This is the same Taliban that is getting ready to combat international troops in Afghanistan – a force that will soon include American reinforcements 17,000 strong. Evidence suggests that Pakistani spies are meeting with Taliban leaders on a regular basis to decide whether to notch up or decrease the violence as Afghan elections approach.

The Taliban is not the only group Pakistan is supporting in this way. American officials say that the secretive S Wing of the ISI has provided direct support to three major groups carrying out attacks in Afghanistan: the Taliban based in Quetta, Pakistan, as well as two other militant groups run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Pakistani spies also allegedly shared information with and protected Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group suspected of carrying out the deadly attack on Mumbai in November 2008.

The NY Times reports that at least six security officials in the U.S. and Pakistan were recently interviewed in Washington, D.C. and Islamabad, Pakistan and all confirmed that the ISI does maintain contact with the Taliban. All those interviewed asked that their identities be kept confidential given the classified and sensitive intelligence information being discussed.

The American officials interviewed said evidence of allegiance between the Taliban and Pakistani operatives comes from electronic surveillance and trusted informants. Meanwhile, the Pakistani officials say that they have primary knowledge of the ties, but that the spies’ connections with the insurgents are not actually strengthening the Taliban’s campaign in any way.

Publicly, military and civilian leaders in Pakistan deny allegations of ties to militant groups, and American officials do concede that it’s unlikely top officials in the capital have hands-on involvement with insurgent networks. In fact, the ISI is known for having a mind of its own and operating accordingly, and midlevel ISI operatives developing relationships that have not been approved by their supervisors is not unheard of.

That said, the interviewed Pakistani officials’ take on the situation is that what’s being done is necessary to protect Pakistan in the long run. They say the contacts are a lot less dangerous that the Americans make them out to be, and that Pakistan needs to maintain those relationships for the day America pulls out of Afghanistan and leaves the country free and clear for India to move in. A senior Pakistani military officer said, “In intelligence, you have to be in contact with your enemy or you are running blind.”

It does seem undeniable that the ISI – whether operating with the approval of higher authority or not – is very much in the midst of a duplicitous game.

And it seems some in the West are coming to terms with this fact and are trying to use it to their advantage. One interviewed official shared that the British government has asked operatives, in their talks with the Taliban, to encourage a scaling back of attacks before this summer’s presidential elections.

Of course from the American perspective, officials in the Obama administration are frustrated by the militant group ties that Pakistan seems unable or unwilling to sever. It’s difficult enough to combat this sort of an insurgency without worrying about your allies sneaking off to help the enemy!

Pakistan did play a significant part in building up the Taliban in the 90s, when they had hopes that the group would help to stabilize a country ravaged by civil war. Now, Afghani officials plead with Pakistan to stop its support of the violent insurgents while American officials are threatening to put conditions on the $1 billion in military aid they send to Pakistan every year.

Currently, the money going to Pakistan from the U.S. could be used, via the ISI, to support the Taliban’s attacks against American troops. The Taliban could also be getting intelligence tips from Pakistani spies that help them to stay one step ahead in the conflict.

images courtesy of Reuters (via www.spiegel.de), www.loganclub.in, and www.themoderatevoice.com

Of the six suspects arrested in October 2008 over accusations of connections to the Mossad, only these three were brought to trial. Due to insufficient evidence, the other three were released. The arrest last fall was prompted by the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen in September 2008.

The three men who were brought to trial were charged and convicted of reaching out to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and offering their services in an intelligence capacity to the Mossad. It was the trio’s lead man, 26-year-old Bassam Abdullah al-Haidari, who was sentenced to death. His cohorts, 24-year-old Ali Abdullah al-Mahfal and 23-year-old Emad Ali al-Raimi, will serve five and three years, respectively, in prison.

The three convicted men allegedly made contact with Olmert via email and offered in their communication with him to work for the Mossad. The prosecutors claimed that the email solicitation was received positively by Israeli officials, including the offer by the defendants to help the Mossad.

Yemeni officials have said that al-Haidari, al-Mahfal and al-Raimi adopted the false name of ‘Islamic Jihad of Yemen’ and originally claimed that they had been responsible for the attack on the U.S. embassy, which killed 18 people altogether, including the six perpetrators. Al Qaeda later claimed responsibility for the same bombing.

image courtesy of AP

Under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), federal agencies receive all sorts of requests for information. A private study has found that the FBI is the worst at actually finding and sharing the information private citizens are after: Two out of three people who ask for FBI records are told that the documents they are looking for don’t exist – a rate of failure five times worse than that achieved by other major federal agencies. Average turnaround times for request processing are also some of the longest in the government: Expedited requests take 109 days and more complicated ones take 374 days!

The National Security Archive, a private organization that publishes declassified government docs, submits many FOIA requests to the FBI, and they think the FBI is intentionally using outdated search mechanisms to avoid having to share too much.

“The FBI knowingly uses a search process that doesn’t find relevant records,” Archive director Tom Blanton said. “Not only does this woeful performance lead to unnecessary litigation, but the bureau apparently uses the same searches in its criminal investigations as well.”

The implication for criminal investigations is a big one…info-sharing has never been a strength across intelligence agencies, but not being able to cross-reference information appropriately within an agency can be a huge hindrance. And if the FBI’s ability to meet FOIA demands is any indication, things are not looking too organized or well-catalogued at bureau HQ.

Apparently, over the past four years, the FBI told 66% of requesters (that’s 37,342 out of 56, 530 to be exact) that it had no relevant records to share. The 33 big federal agencies to which the National Security Archive turns to most frequently respond in a similar manner only 13% of the time. In 2008, only 89 requests were met in full (that’s .5% of total requestors) by the FBI; 13% (2,276) got at least some of what they were looking for.

Of course, numbers like these send reporters right to the man in charge – David Hardy, Chief of the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act Dept.
They check requests against their electronic index, Hardy says, which contains names of people, orgs, publications, activities and counterintelligence programs.

Each name listed in the index contains a list of cross-references (names contained in the main file – ones that agents think may be useful or relevant in the future), but the list of cross-references is not exhaustive. Also interesting to note – the electronic index covers files going back only to 1980s. So what of the others? Think dusty card catalogues, folks. The FBI might need to take a few organizational tips from Google.

Hardy goes on to explain that the FBI checks the main names on the electronic index. It does not check the cross-references unless asked to, and it certainly does not check the entire file, paper or field office records unless specifically asked to.

That could be the problem.

Blanton has a point when he starts talking about modern search mechanisms that have the capacity to scan entire documents for key words. Forget Google, it’s as simple as Ctrl+F…but for that, complete electronic files need to exist. Blanton’s convinced that the FBI is digging their heels in on purpose. He has no doubt that Hardy’s department frustrates FBI agents as well.

Not so, counters Hardy. The indexing system was designed to support bureau investigations. “We’re not building a library. If you have something of meaning to the FBI, it’s going to be there.”

Blanton parries, referring to the cross-references that agents choose to include in the electronic index, “No FBI agent is omniscient. They can’t always know what names would be important to another field office or make or break an investigation in the future.”

Things always link back to 9/11, and it turns out that two of the terrorist hijackers were associated with an FBI informant before the attack. If the agent involved had only indexed the informant’s name, how would the hijackers have been found, queries Blanton.

A totally different take from FBI spokesman Richard Kolko: “the reason for the huge number of no-records responses is that it’s become a cult phenomenon to ask the FBI for records on yourself, and most people don’t have FBI records.”

But there are stories that can’t be explained so easily. Jesse Trentadue, a lawyer from Salt Lake City, wanted to investigate a possible connection between his brother’s death in custody and the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. He requested a specific message sent on Jan 4, 1996 between FBI offices, supplying the date, time, sender and recipients of the document, as well as a newspaper clipping with direct quotes from the memo. The FBI told him it did not exist in their records. Trentadue later discovered that the exact memo he’s been after had been released to another FOIA requestor. It’s still unclear how the FBI failed to pull up the message, given the amount of information they had from Trentadue, not to mention the fact that they were able to find it for someone else.

Hardy, on the defensive, says that the law requires them to conduct reasonable, not exhaustive, searches: “We think our system is reasonable.”

The stats seem to indicate otherwise.

The FBI’s policy of requesting privacy act waivers is one of the elements slowing down the info-sharing process. One such privacy act waiver was requested by the FBI from Al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is currently a imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for architecting the 9/11 attacks. Apparently, the FOIA request of a journalism student researching the murder of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan created quite the stir!

Hardy said, “We are supposed to use common sense and waive that rule, but we correct our errors. We’re processing the Pearl documents now.”

images courtesy of www.gwu.edu and www.ipadrblog.com

The report – based on dozens of interviews with British, Canadian, Dutch, and U.S. army, intelligence and diplomatic officials – criticizes the U.S. for not sharing intelligence effectively with allies in the field, to the detriment of counterinsurgency operations.

Several interviewees also shared that often, they felt that an overall strategy for what they were supposed to be doing was completely lacking. Brigadier General Theo Vleugels described his 2006 command experience in southern Afghanistan in words worthy of post-modern literary acclaim: “We didn’t have a campaign plan when we started, but we later got one from my higher headquarters that was close to ours, which is not surprising as they told us to do what we told them we would do.”

Apparently there’s a lot of disinformation floating around in the field, where money generates fabricated tips, and some officials are quantifying the intelligence effort by the amount of money being spent to purchase said tips. U.S. military commanders, overwhelmed by intel-overload coming in from hundreds of different databases, are reluctant to take on board even the intelligence offered to them by the CIA.

Interviewees further believe that the U.S. military has become uncompromisingly dependent on progress indicators that offer little reliable information regarding economic, military and political progress in the area. Some complain that commanders seem to measure success by body count, a method discredited following the war in Vietnam. An anonymous source points out that more Taliban dead is likely an indication that there are simply more Taliban fighting.

A couple poignant examples from the report:

[1] Dutch F-16 pilots in Afghanistan were ordered to hit certain targets by the U.S. When after the mission, the pilots requested to view American ‘battle damage assessments’ relating to the targets, the Dutch, apparently lacking the necessary security clearance, were denied access.

[2] Coalition forces based at Camp Holland in southern Afghanistan have thirteen different intelligence units, none of them collaborating with each other above nominal level.

It’s no secret that the situation in Afghanistan is intensifying, that the Taliban and its allies are growing in confidence and strength. The hefty report suggests that the armed forces tasked with quelling the insurgency are not sufficiently trained/equipped to do so.

The RAND report urges a change in the way intelligence is gathered, disseminated and acted upon. It also points out that (according to senior officials), daily operations including weapons searches and killing or arresting wanted persons have thus far served to alienate the local population without leading to appreciable gain.

British Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely, a top military rep in Iraq, is quoted in the report as follows: “There were some operations taking place in Iraq where the success of the operation… was judged solely against whether tactical success had been achieved; tactical success in terms of attrition of enemy forces, numbers killed or captured, numbers of weapons seized, amounts of explosives captured, extent of area controlled. By these criteria… a given operation would be judged a success, regardless of the fact that it had seriously alienated the local population, and the fact that, within a few months, other insurgents had re-infiltrated and regained control.”

Apparently, the same can be said of Afghanistan.

Finally, the RAND report issues a reminder that military personnel are not only responsible for countering the insurgency but also protecting the civilian population from being caught in the crossfire.

photos courtesy of www.defensetech.org and www.nrc.nl

But given recent events and endorsements, it doesn’t seem that Obama is giving up on Bush’s War on Terror, per se. It’s just that the global economic crisis – and its potential threat to U.S. security – has displaced terrorism somewhat, as U.S. intelligence agencies reported to Congress in February.

You can rest assured, Obama’s keeping himself well in the know when it comes to threats to security generated by economic difficulties. Every day, he receives a special economic report compiled by the intelligence community, which specifically calls out potential changes to the foreign policy of countries facing economic instability, countries like China and Russia, Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela, said new CIA Director Leon Panetta.

Panetta goes on to appease those concerned about Obama’s allegedly relaxed approach to fighting terrorism, saying that when it comes to Islamic militants, President Obama intends to be just as aggressive and persistent as his predecessor in the struggle to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Panetta later confirmed that President Obama has endorsed the CIA’s stepped-up offensive against Al Qaeda, which includes missile strikes carried out by unmanned drones and aimed at Al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Reports indicate that eight Al Qaeda leaders have been killed as a result of the strikes since they began in June 2008.

Within a few days of Obama taking office this January, the U.S. launched two missile attacks, and soon after Panetta’s appointment as Director of CIA this February, additional strikes were made in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Panetta has told members of the Pakistani military and intelligence community that the CIA has no intention of easing up its attack, bent on seriously debilitating Al Qaeda’s central leadership, also known as Osama Bin Laden’s lieutenants.

In the face of a worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s hesitance to do anything about the insurgents spilling over into its territory, the United Stated increased their missile offensive last year.

photo courtesy of www.patdollard.com

Yu works for the Beijing Municipal Security Bureau, where he heads up the internet monitoring department. The bureau tracks email and web usage as part of China’s Great Firewall surveillance program. Yu has been arrested for allegedly taking $5.8 million in bribes to aid anti-virus company Rising rise above its competitor Micropoint.

Yu Bing took the money to frame Micropoint VP Tian Yakui. Yu and other police officers are suspected of having fabricated evidence that was used to prove Tian had let loose cyber viruses and hacked into a computer system to get his hands on trade secrets. According to reports, Tian was convicted and imprisoned for almost a year as a result of the charges. Micropoint, meanwhile, was dealt three years of having to jump through hoops in order to get their anti-virus software launched. Tian was apparently singled out because he had once been VP at Rising but left the company along with the former Managing Director to start Micropoint.

The Rising VP suspected of bribing Yu Bing for his framing services has also been arrested. Micropoint plans to sue Rising for approximately $4.3 million in losses.

image courtesy of www.asinthedaysofnoah.blogspot.com (AP Photo/File)