John Kiriakou, author of “The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror”, pleaded guilty to charges of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and was sentenced to 30 months in Federal Prison.
Initially, Kiriakou thought he was assisting in an FBI investigation, and only too happy to offer his services. About an …
Waterboarding by the military has been front and center in the news media. For nearly 10 years, American officials have been criticized for waterboarding and have been accused that waterboarding interrogation techniques are a form of torture. A former CIA intelligence officer has revealed insights on this practice.
Jose Rodriguez, Jr. is the former chief of …
The Pentagon’s new espionage unit, called the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS), gives it the authority to focus on spy operations of high-priority targets outside of war zones. The new unit will work closely with the CIA, bringing together two organizations which typically have opposition between them. This expansion was made because in today’s times espionage in …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …