Posts tagged as:

cia

The Capture and Execution of Colonel Penkovsky

5 March 2010

CIA, 5 March 2010: On the afternoon of October 22, 1962, a nondescript man was suddenly seized off the streets of Moscow by the KGB. He had been under surveillance on suspicion of treason. Thus ended Oleg Penkovsky’s career of spying for the United States and Great Britain. Penkovsky is considered one of the most [...]

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The Public Side of a Private Person: CIA Officer Elizabeth Hanson

3 March 2010

Colby College, 2 March 2010: News reports described CIA agent Elizabeth Hanson ’02 as a soft-spoken young woman who studied economics and Russian at Colby and who quietly set out on the path that would lead to her death. Serious student? Yes, say her close Colby friends. Soft-spoken? No way. “She was anything but quiet [...]

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CIA technician arrested on theft charges

3 March 2010

Washington Times/Bill Gertz, 2 March 2010: A CIA technical-support official has been arrested on charges of selling more than $60,000 worth of pilfered agency electronic gear. Todd Brandon Fehrmann, a communications-technology specialist with the agency, was arrested Friday morning at his office in Virginia and charged in a criminal complaint with stealing government equipment and [...]

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Interview with Double Agent/Suicide Bomber Humam al-Balawi

1 March 2010

Short Excerpt:
NEFA, 1 March 10: As-Sahab Media: “An Interview With The Shaheed Abu Dujaanah al-Khorasani” (a.k.a. Jordanian doctor, CIA asset Humam al-Balawi who blew himself up, killing seven CIA personnel in Afghanistan)
. . . . [The Shaheed Abu Dujaanah al-Khorasani] “In Shaa Allah [God willing], we will get you, CIA team. In Shaa Allah, [...]

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Al-Qaida bomber calls for attacks on Jordan spies

1 March 2010

AP, 28 Feb 10: An al-Qaida double agent that killed seven CIA operatives and a Jordanian spy called for jihad in Jordan and attacks on its intelligence agency in a posthumous video message posted on extremist Web sites Sunday. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi also described Sunday in the 43-minute video his recruitment by Jordanian [...]

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CIA opens files on project to raise Soviet sub

15 February 2010

AFP, 13 Feb 10: The CIA for the first time has revealed details about an ultra-secret Cold War-era project to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in 1974. The high-risk salvage operation, code-named “Project Azorian,” had been shrouded in secrecy for decades but the spy agency broke its silence [...]

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Online Jihadists Discuss Targets in U.S. – Including Government Buildings Like White House, CIA HQ

8 February 2010

MEMRI, 4 Feb 10: A discussion thread begun on February 2, 2010 on the Al-Falluja jihadist forum discussed which sites in the U.S. would make the most effective targets for a terror attack – or, as the initiator of the thread put it, “how we can hasten getting rid of America, Allah willing.” . . [...]

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Obama Honors Fallen CIA Officers, Legacy to be a Summons to “Win the War”

5 February 2010

ABC News, 5 Feb 10: President Obama today honored the “sacrifice” of seven CIA officers who lost their lifein the Khost, Afghanistan suicide bombing late last year, and called for their legacy to be a summons to carry on and win the war.
“There are no words that can ease the ache in your hearts,” Obama [...]

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Children of dead CIA officers try to learn about their work

4 February 2010

Washington Post, 3 Feb 10: John F. Sullivan had always wondered about his mother, Leonor E. “Lee” Sullivan, a CIA secretary and translator who died in December at 70, and especially about the strange telephones in their Reston home in the late 1970s and ’80s. The Spy Phones, as the family called them, looked like [...]

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CIA Ups Foreign Language Requirements for Top Staff

29 January 2010

CBS News, 29 Jan 10: Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta announced Friday that the CIA is raising language requirements for employees looking to be promoted to the top ranks of the agency, the Senior Intelligence Service. Panetta sent a note to CIA staff saying he expects these high-ranking employees “to lead the way in [...]

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The James Angleton Phenomenon — “Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors”: Wandering in the Angletonian Wilderness

27 January 2010

CIA, 27 Jan 10: New “Studies in Intelligence” posted. Includes:
The James Angleton Phenomenon — “Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors”: Wandering in the Angletonian Wilderness
Whatever genre they work in — history, journalism, literature, or film — observers of the intelligence scene find James Angleton endlessly fascinating. The longtime head of counterintelligence (CI) at the Central Intelligence Agency [...]

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Retired CIA Officer Luis Reuda on How Strong Is Al-Qaida?

26 January 2010

PBS NewsHour, 25 Jan 10: Luis Rueda spent 28 years in the CIA, mostly as a case officer and station chief in the field, including in the Middle East and South Asia. His last assignment was deputy director for counterintelligence at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, where he dealt with double agent operations and tradecraft security. [...]

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Canada’s man in Tehran was a CIA spy

25 January 2010

Globe and Mail, 23 Jan 10: Ken Taylor, the Canadian diplomat celebrated 30 years ago for hiding U.S. embassy personnel during the Iranian revolution, actively spied for the Americans and helped them plan an armed incursion into the country. Mr. Taylor, ambassador in Iran from 1977 to 1980, became “the de facto CIA station chief” [...]

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CIA vs KGB: “Moscow Rules” – From Someone Who’s Been There, Done That

11 January 2010

Michael Sellers, 11 Jan 10: I’ve been asked a number of times about “Moscow Rules” — a term which has found its way into the lexicon of intelligence, both fiction and reality, referring to a set of “rules” that describe how intelligence officer’s had to operate in the extraordinarly hostile Moscow environment during the Cold [...]

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The Spies Who Got Left in the Cold

11 January 2010

New York Times/Robert Grenier, 9 Jan 10 (Grenier spent 27 years with the C.I.A.’s National Clandestine Service): AS I reflect on disturbing events of recent weeks — the massacre of seven C.I.A. officers in Khost, Afghanistan, and the near bombing of Northwest Flight 253 on its way to Detroit — I can see in my [...]

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Tolkachev: The True Story of the CIA’s Top Spy in Moscow During the Height of the Cold War

11 January 2010

Michael Sellers, 8 Jan 10: Before I was assigned to Moscow Station, I spent three months sitting on the USSR Desk at CIA Headquarters, “reading in” on the various cases that I might be expected to handle when I got to the station, including the case of Adolf Tolkachev, an electronics engineer working at the [...]

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CIA bomber was 50 feet from most of his victims

11 January 2010

Baltimore Sun, 8 Jan 10: The suicide bomber who carried out an attack on a CIA firebase in Afghanistan detonated the device as he was about to be searched, and used an explosive so powerful that it killed agency operatives who were as far as 50 feet away, a U.S. intelligence official said Friday. The [...]

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Anatomy of a Double-Cross

9 January 2010

Newsweek, 9 Jan 10: At the CIA training facility in Virginia known as “The Farm,” one of the standard courses is called “High Threat Meetings.” All aspiring case officers spend the three-week class learning how to arrange a get-together with potentially dangerous informants. When meeting with such agents, “security is everything,” recalls one graduate. “I [...]

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CIA bomber struck moments before pat-down search

9 January 2010

Washington Post, 9 Jan 10: The Jordanian doctor arrived in a red station wagon that came directly from Pakistan and sped through checkpoints at a CIA base in Afghanistan before stopping abruptly at an improvised interrogation center. Outside stood one of the CIA’s top experts on al-Qaeda, ready to greet the doctor and hear him [...]

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Year of the Spy: Cyril Gelibter’s History of the CIA in Moscow 1984-86

8 January 2010

Michael Sellers, 7 Jan 10: One of the rather cool things about this blogging software is that it tells you what search terms people are using to find your blog, or to find posts within your blog. Over the last several days there have been a number of searches for “Cyril Gelibter” which evidently [...]

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CIA Orders Changes After Failed December 25 Bombing

8 January 2010

Reuters, 7 Jan 10: CIA Director Leon Panetta has ordered changes at the U.S. spy agency to improve the tracking of suspected militants and speed up the dissemination of information about their activities, the CIA said on Thursday. . . . In a statement, the CIA said Panetta had instructed the agency to finalize [...]

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Al Qaeda Claims Responsibility for CIA Base Bombing

7 January 2010

ABC News, 7 Jan 10: Al Qaeda claimed credit for the deadliest attack against the CIA in 26 years, releasing a written statement saying a suicide bombing that killed five agency officers and two security contractors was retaliation for drone attacks that killed senior militant leaders. The statement identified the bomber as Humam Khalil Mohammed [...]

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Jordanian Bomber’s Path Remains a Mystery to His Family

7 January 2010

New York Times, 6 Jan 10: The telephone rang at 7 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, and then the heavily accented voice of a stranger — possibly an Afghan — told the man who answered what had happened to one of his sons who disappeared a year ago.
“They said that Humam had made a [...]

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Suicide Bombing Puts a Rare Face on C.I.A.’s Work

7 January 2010

New York Times, 6 Jan 10: . . . . .In the days since the attack, details of the lives of the victims — five men and two women, including two C.I.A. contractors from the firm formerly known as Blackwater — have begun to trickle out, despite the secretive nature of their work. What emerges [...]

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U.S. Saw a Path to Qaeda Chiefs Before Bombing

6 January 2010

New York Times, 5 Jan 10: Before detonating a suicide bomb in Afghanistan last week, a Jordanian militant was considered by American spy agencies to be the most promising informant in years about the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s top leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahri, the terrorist group’s second-ranking operative.
American intelligence officials said Tuesday they had been [...]

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Strike on CIA base tests U.S. assessment of al Qaeda

5 January 2010

Reuters, 5 Jan 10: Revelations that a double agent linked to al Qaeda may have carried out last week’s bombing at a CIA base in Afghanistan suggests the group has achieved a new level of sophistication and may not be as weakened as U.S. officials had thought.
Current and former intelligence officials said on Tuesday the [...]

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Suicide bomber who attacked CIA post in Afghanistan was trusted informant from Jordan

5 January 2010

Washington Post, 5 Jan 10: The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian informant who lured intelligence officers into a trap by promising new information about al-Qaeda’s top leadership, former U.S. government officials said Monday.
The attacker, a physician-turned-mole, had been recruited to infiltrate al-Qaeda’s senior circles and [...]

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Profile: Jordanian ‘triple agent’ who killed CIA agents

5 January 2010

Daily Telegraph, 5 Jan 10: Balawi was from Zarqa, the same Jordanian town as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the infamous leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq who tormented the US military and Bush administration until his death in 2006 with a terrorist campaign that inspired militants around the world and made him a rival in influence to [...]

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Behind Afghan Bombing, an Agent With Many Loyalties

5 January 2010

New York Times, 4 Jan 10: The suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. officers and a Jordanian spy last week was a double agent who was taken onto the base in Afghanistan because the Americans hoped he might be able to deliver top members of Al Qaeda’s network, according to Western government officials.
The [...]

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Jordanian Bomber of CIA Base Deceived Family

5 January 2010

AP, 5 Jan 10: Relatives and friends of the Jordanian suspected as a double agent who killed eight people on a CIA base in Afghanistan say he wanted to die in a holy war, and wrote fiery Internet articles calling for jihad against the U.S. and Israel.
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 32-year-old physician, struck the [...]

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CIA Bomber Got His Start as a Jihadist Troll

5 January 2010

Wired/Danger Room, 4 Jan 10: We’re learning more about the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA officers at a base in Afghanistan last week. It appears as though the man responsible for the worst losses in CIA history served both as a double agent for Jordanian intelligence and a webmaster for a popular and now-defunct [...]

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Bodies of Slain CIA Agents Returned Home in Private Ceremony

5 January 2010

ABC News, 5 Jan 10: The bodies of seven CIA officers killed in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber were returned to the U.S. today in a private ceremony as authorities confirmed that the assailant was a Jordanian informant who turned against his CIA handlers.
Seven flag-draped coffins were handed over to the officers’ families in [...]

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Jordanian informant lured CIA operatives into suicide attack, officials say

4 January 2010

Washington Post, 4 Jan 10: The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian informant who lured intelligence officers into a meeting with a promise of new information about al-Qaeda’s top leadership, according to two former U.S. government officials briefed on the incident. The informant had been working undercover [...]

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3 of 7 CIA employees killed in suicide bombing in Afghanistan are identified

4 January 2010

AP, 3 Jan 10: A former Navy SEAL from Virginia and a former Atlanta police detective expecting his first child next month were among seven CIA employees killed in the Dec. 30 suicide bombing on an agency base in southeastern Afghanistan — one of the most lethal attacks ever for the CIA.
The CIA let the [...]

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Jordanian double-agent killed CIA officers

4 January 2010

NBC News, 4 Jan 10: The suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan last week was carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was an al-Qaida double agent, Western intelligence officials told NBC News.
Initial reports said that the attack, which killed seven CIA officers, was carried out by a member of the Afghan National [...]

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Bomber of CIA Base Was Being Recruited as Informant

4 January 2010

Wall Street Journal, 2 Jan 10: The attack that killed seven Central Intelligence Agency officers on a U.S. base in Afghanistan appears to stem from a strategy of calculated risk in running the spy agency’s informant network, posing a sharp challenge as operations ramp up for the Obama troop surge.
U.S. intelligence and military officials [...]

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CIA Attacker Driven in From Pakistan

4 January 2010

ABC News, 2 Jan 10: The suicide bomber who killed at least six Central Intelligence Agency officers in a base along the Afghan-Pakistan border on Wednesday was a regular CIA informant who had visited the same base multiple times in the past, according to someone close to the base’s security director.
The informant was a Pakistani [...]

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Details Emerge on Victims of Afghan Blast

4 January 2010

Wall Street Journal, 2 Jan 10: The suicide bombing targeting Central Intelligence Agency officers in Afghanistan deprives the agency of decades in accumulated experience and knowledge on counterterrorism.
Several former intelligence officials said Friday that the attack was emotionally difficult for the spy agency, almost trebling in one day its entire Afghanistan death toll during more [...]

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London-Based Muslim Scholar Azzam Tamimi: Islam Liberates Europeans from Their Lives of Stupidity

29 December 2009

FBIS, which was run by the CIA, is now the DNI Open Source Center. The fact that Tamimi worked for FBIS/CIA is disconcerting. Another FBIS/CIA employee was Larry Wu-Tai Chin, who spied for China for 40 years before being arrested by the FBI in November 1985.
MEMRI, 28 Dec 09: The following are excerpts from a [...]

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The People of the CIA … Milan Miskovsky: Fighting for Justice

23 December 2009

CIA, 23 Dec 09: On Christmas Eve in 1962, more than 1,000 prisoners taken during the Bay of Pigs invasion were granted a holiday miracle: their freedom. The prisoners would not have been released as soon had it not been for the skilled negotiating of Milan “Mike” Miskovsky, who served as a CIA lawyer during [...]

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Blackwater Guards Tied to Secret Raids by the C.I.A.

11 December 2009

New York Times, 10 Dec 09: Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
The raids against suspects occurred on [...]

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Secret CIA ‘Magic’ Manual Reveals Cold War Spy Tricks

4 December 2009

ABC News, 4 Dec 09: For decades, rumors of top-secret “magic” manuals swirled within CIA circles. The long-lost guides were said to have been written by a prominent magician, but many officers dismissed them as myth, believing them too fantastical to be true.
But in 2007, retired CIA officer Robert Wallace unearthed an extraordinary archived [...]

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In Appreciation: CIA “China Hand” Jim Lilley, 1928-2009

4 December 2009

CIA, 3 Dec 09: The CIA and the nation lost a legendary figure with the death of James R. Lilley on 12 November. During his 25 years with the CIA, Lilley became known as an exceptional intelligence officer.
CIA colleagues remember Lilley for being blunt, outspoken, even brutally frank—arguably just as an intelligence officer should be. [...]

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Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy

2 December 2009

Vanity Fair, 2 Dec 09: “I put myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of Blackwater, [...]

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Remembering CIA’s Heroes: Johnny “Mike” Spann

1 December 2009

CIA: This is a part of our series about CIA employees who have died in the line of duty, making the ultimate sacrifice for the United States of America.
Currently, there are 90 stars carved into the marble of the CIA memorial wall. The wall stands as a silent, simple memorial to those employees “who gave [...]

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1953 manual detailing tricks of the Agency’s trade is published

1 December 2009

The Independent, 28 Nov 09: At the height of the Cold War, the CIA issued its top spooks with a more prosaic piece of equipment: a beginner’s guide to magic, educating them in the old-fashioned arts of conjuring and sleight-of-hand.
The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception was written in 1953 by a well-known [...]

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TV ad seeks to recruit Arab-Americans to CIA

19 November 2009

AP, 19 Nov 09: There’s a swirl of activity in a spacious, modern kitchen as final meal preparations are made. An older man tries to swipe a felafel off an appetizer plate but instead gets a loving hand slap from a woman. The happy, well-dressed guests move to a table full of food in a [...]

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Lithuania investigates facility that may have been CIA ‘black site’

19 November 2009

Washington Post, 19 Nov 09:  Residents of this village were mystified five years ago when tight-lipped American construction workers suddenly appeared at a mothballed riding stable here and built a large, two-story building without windows, ringed by a metal fence and security cameras.
Today, a Lithuanian parliamentary committee is investigating whether the CIA operated a secret prison [...]

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National intelligence director to evaluate CIA missions

17 November 2009

Los Angeles Times, 17 Nov 09: Sensitive CIA operations overseas will face new scrutiny from the nation’s intelligence director under a plan approved by the White House and outlined in a memo to the espionage workforce last week.
The move marks an attempt by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair to assert greater authority over [...]

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CIA says it gets its money’s worth from Pakistan spy agency

16 November 2009

Los Angeles Times, 15 Nov 09:  The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan’s intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency’s annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say.
The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through [...]

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