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CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Wi ...
The CIA fears that high-tech border checks will blow its spies’ cover. Iris scanners and biometric passports at worldwide airports, hotels, and business headquarters, designed to catch terrorists and criminals, are playing havoc with operations that require CIA spies to travel under false identities. “If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you…
Inside the Secret World of America’s Top Eave ...
Officially, the Special Collection Service, a secret joint program with the CIA codenamed F6, doesn’t exist. Unofficially, its snoops travel the world intercepting private messages and cracking high-tech encryption. SCS is responsible for placing super-high-tech bugs in unbelievably hard-to-reach places. Data collected is then transmitted to the National Security Agency. The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, the…
Iranian Doctoral Student Being Tried In His Country ...
By Daria Carmon
Omid Kokabee, an Iranian Ph.D. candidate in physics at the University of Texas in Austin, is standing trial on espionage charges in his homeland, after being held in custody since the end of January or February. It is believed he was picked up at the Tehran airport en route to continuing his graduate studies…
CIA Coverup in Swiss Atomic Blackmarket
A Swiss family who once acted as moles inside the atomic black market and had a relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency might be in big trouble. A Swiss magistrate recommended on December 23 that the men be charged with trafficking in technology and information for making nuclear weapons. The CIA has been trying to hide…
Michigan Man is Guilty in Chinese Spy Case
Glenn Shriver, a 28 year old man from Michigan, has pleaded guilty to a single offense of conspiring to provide national defense information to Chinese intelligence officers. In court, the man acknowledged that he had received $70,000 from Chinese agents in payment for trying to secure jobs with the CIA and U.S. Foreign Service.
Court papers show…
Italian Prosecution Looking for More Spy Conviction ...
An earlier ruling by an Italian court that convicted 23 American and 2 Italian citizens has been appealed. The defendants were accused of kidnapping a terrorism suspect. Now, the Italian prosecution is trying to reverse some of the lower court’s decisions. They have opened an appeal in hopes of incriminating the 5 other Italian agents who had been acquitted…
Iranian Scientist Shahram Amiri Answers Some Questi ...
By Haggai Carmon
I don’t purport to suggest that Shahram Amiri or the Iranian intelligence services read my July 13 Op Ed (in which I posed ten questions following Amiri’s public surfacing in the U.S.) and then rushed to respond. That said, Amiri’s July 15 appearance on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s public television offered some answers,…
Ten Questions Regarding the Case of the Missing Ira ...
By Haggai Carmon
Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, went missing in May 2009 during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Other than the fact that Amiri subsequently resurfaced in the U.S., almost everything else in the espionage-thriller style case is disputed publicly. The barrage of information offered during the past 5 weeks makes it difficult to distinguish…
CIA to Improve Intelligence Gathering Techniques
Just about everything about the CIA is classified – including its budget – but occasionally we get a little insight into how it’s spending its money: This week, the agency announced plans to pour millions of dollars over the next five years into improving intelligence gathering techniques, technologies and communications.
Number 1 on the agenda is upping…
Ahmadinejad indignant in Sawyer interview
Diane Sawyer, anchor for ABC’s “World News,” interviewed Iranian President Ahmadinejad in Copenhagen, Denmark, after he attended the UN’s climate change conference. From an espionage perspective, Iran’s been…
Spy chief resignation in Lithuania raises eyebrows
Yesterday, the man in charge of Lithuania’s secret service resigned without specifying why, leaving people to wonder about his involvement in the prison that the CIA allegedly set up in the Baltic nation for…
Blackwater CEO indignant
CEO Erik Prince of Blackwater, the infamous company contracted by the CIA to develop a targeted assassination program (a.k.a. hit squad for hire), recently spoke with Vanity Fair, sharing information about the top-secret…
American spies get time for CIA kidnapping in Italy
On Wednesday, 23 Americans and two Italians were convicted of participating in an extraordinary rendition allegedly carried out by the CIA in Milan in 2003. In a nutshell, the CIA wanted to interrogate a Muslim…
Ms. Castro chose CIA over Fidel
Between Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, it would seem that the Cuban communism is a family affair, but not so when you look to little sister Juanita, now 76. She has lived in Miami – in exile from her home – since…
CIA turns to open-source intel
Web 2.0 means that there’s a plethora of user-generated information out there to monitor – blog posts, tweets, commentary on news pieces, videos, reviews of books, etc. But the CIA’s not interested in any of that harmless chatter, right? Wrong. The investment arm of the U.S. intelligence community, In-Q-Tel – which serves…
Prison sentences for Americans in Italy CIA renditi ...
In Italy the trial against those Italian and American agents believed to be involved in an alleged CIA rendition operation continues. The Italian prosecutor has…
More and more spies sent to Afghanistan
As the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan drags on, the number of intelligence officials deployed to the country continues to grow, and it seems now that…
U.S. spy chief reveals spy strategy
Tuesday night, U.S. Intelligence Director Dennis Blair shared with the public his new official spy strategy for U.S. intelligence, which includes more collaboration between the 16 different spy agencies, increased…
Son of notorious CIA double agent pleads guilty
Earlier this year, it was discovered that the son of the highest-ranking CIA operative ever to be convicted of spying for the other side, was helping his imprisoned father to continue collaborating with the Russians. The father – Harold Nicholson – was…
CIA under investigation
Despite protests (we’ve already conducted an internal investigation; employees who committed abuses have already been duly reprimanded) and extenuating circumstances (the CIA was up against a then very unknown enemy…
CIA’s contractor conundrum
The CIA’s been under a microscope lately, and Director Leon Panetta didn’t help matters by coming clean to Congress this June about a terrorist assassination operation that went on for seven years (unbeknownst to Congress). Worse yet is…
U.S. hikers accused of working for CIA
According to a Tehran television news program, local Iranian police are now accusing the three Americans arrested in Iran on Friday of being U.S. spies in the employ of the CIA. Shocked? Of course not. The accusation is…
U.S. spy chief in favor of less secrecy
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this Wednesday, July 22 and it seems he’s looking to involve the private sector in intelligence operations. This is an indication of a few things: 1. the recognition of the need to bring in…
CIA misled Congress for 8 years
A group of seven Democrats, all members of the House Intelligence Committee, has just made public a rather controversial admission made by CIA Director Leon Panetta in closed-door testimony before the committee last month.
Panetta testified that the CIA routinely hid “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 through to June 2009. Although we do not know the…
CIA out to sabotage ex-employee’s writing career?
Stephen Lee used to work for the CIA as an operations manager. He now blogs for The Washington Examiner, and is getting the sneaky suspicion that his former employer is out to make his life in his new career a little difficult.
“I believe I am being subjected to a campaign of low-level harassment,” said Lee, who…