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The Government Now Admits There’s an ‘Area 51’
Newly declassified documents, obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, appear to for the first time acknowledge the existence of Area 51. Hundreds of pages describe the genesis of the Nevada site that was home to the government’s spy plane program for decades. The documents do not, however, mention aliens.
The project started humbly. In the pre-drone era about a decade after the end of World War II, President Eisenhower signed off on a project aimed at building a high-altitude, long-range, manned aircraft that could photograph remote targets. Working together, the Air Force and Lockheed developed a craft that could hold the high-resolution cameras required for the images, a craft that became the U-2. Why “U-2”?
They decided that they could not call the Read more…
Pentagon confirms plan to create new spy agency
March 7, 2012: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP)
The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that it is carving out a brand new spy agency expected to include several hundred officers focused on intelligence gathering around the world.
At a time of budget cutbacks, particularly in the military, it’s unclear how the Defense Department has been able to move around the money to afford a new agency. The Pentagon wouldn’t get into specifics saying only that the so-called “Defense Clandestine Service” wouldn’t involve “significant new resource requirements.”
The service would be an offshoot of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Officers drawn from that agency would be sent to beef up U.S. intelligence teams in areas that are now receiving more attention. They include Africa, where Al Qaeda is increasingly active, as well as parts of Asia, where the North Korean missile threat and Chinese military expansion are causing increasing U.S. concern.
Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby called the Read more…
CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher
CIA Director David Petraeus unwinds with some Wii Golf, 2008. Photo: Wikimedia
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. CIA Director David Petraeus cannot wait to spy on you through them.
Earlier this month, Petraeus mused about the emergence of an “Internet of Things” — that is, wired devices — at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
All those new online devices are a treasure trove of data if you’re a “person of interest” to the spy community. Once upon a time, spies had to place a bug in your chandelier to hear your conversation. With the rise of the “smart home,” you’d be sending tagged, geolocated data that a spy agency can intercept in real time when you use the lighting app on your phone to adjust your living room’s ambiance.
“Items of interest will be
We’re Watching You: Surveillance Expansion In the Land of the Free is Unprecedented In Human History
Have you ever heard of a Yottabyte? To put this number into perspective consider the size of a terabyte, which is about the size of a typical modern hard drive. It can hold roughly 100 high definition DVD’s.
A yottabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 terabytes – or over 1 trillion terabytes of information.
This is important because according to a recent report from Politico, the National Security Agency (NSA), which is the security apparatus responsible for monitoring electronic communications across the globe, is building a new data warehousing center in Utah at the cost of $2 billion dollars. It will be housed in a one million square foot complex and be capable of storing at least one yottabyte of data.
We pointed out the various ways that the U.S. government is monitoring Read more…
Classified report: Russia tied to blast at U.S. embassy
Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chamber’s Republican whip, said he sent a classified letter in June to the House and Senate intelligence committees asking them to investigate the incident and report back to members. (Associated Press)
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a classified report late last year that Russia’s military intelligence was responsible for a bomb blast that occurred at an exterior wall of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September.
The highly classified report about the Sept. 22 incident was described to The Washington Times by two U.S. officials who have read it. They said the report supports the findings of the Georgian Interior Ministry, which traced the bombing to a Russian military intelligence officer.
The Times reported last week that Shota Utiashvili, director of information and analysis for the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the embassy blast and others in his country were the work of a Russian military intelligence officer named Maj. Yevgeny Borisov.
“It is written without hedges, and it confirms the Read more…
US Spy Drone Shot Down by Iran
TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian legislator confirmed earlier reports saying that a US drone has been shot down by Iran over Fordo nuclear enrichment plant in the Central Qom province.
Member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Ali Aqazadeh Dafsari said on Tuesday that the unmanned spy plane was flying near the Fordo nuclear enrichment plant in Qom province when the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)’s Air Defense units brought it down.
The official stated that the US drone was on a mission to identify the location of the Fordo nuclear enrichment plant and gather information about the nuclear facility for the CIA, Dafsari stated.
Earlier this year, a senior Iranian military official had Read more…
Government Increases Hysteria Over Cyber Attacks in Push to Crack Down on Internet
Last week Republican senator John McCain called for the government to establish a special panel to come up with legislation to address supposed cybersecurity threats facing the United States.
“The only way to move comprehensive cyber security legislation forward swiftly is to have committee chairmen and ranking members step away from preserving their own committees’ jurisdiction … (and) develop a bill that serves the national security needs of all Americans,” McCain said.
As if on cue, the Pentagon announced two previously unpublicized attacks following McCain’s call for a bipartisan action.
On Thursday, out-going deputy secretary of defense Bill Lynn said a foreign intelligence service had stolen 24,000 files on a sensitive weapons system from a defense contractor’s network.
Lynn said the Defense Industrial Base Cyber Pilot was established to work with the private sector in the battle against cyber foes.
“Our success in cyberspace depends on a robust public Read more…
Bodyguard Who Killed Karzai’s Brother Was Trusted CIA Asset
The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.
Sardar Mohammad, who shot Ahmed Wali Karzai at his home in Kandahar City on Tuesday, also held regular meetings with British officials, and had two brothers-in-law serving in a CIA-run paramilitary unit, the Kandahar Strike Force, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
Yet evidence is emerging that the Taliban recruited Mohammad – who was believed to be a friend, confidant and trusted lieutenant of Ahmed Wali Karzai – in an infiltration of the Read more…
Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?
Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America’s rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don’t see it that way.
They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighborhood than a military conflict.
These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen – and since last month in Somalia – should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are Read more…
CIA informants’ detention by Pakistan’s spy agency intensifies U.S-Pak edgy ties
The detention of Pakistani informants, who helped the CIA by providing information prior to the raid that killed the Al Qaida leader, by Pakistan’s top intelligence agency has intensified the already tense relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
According to a report that appeared in the New York Times on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) has detained five CIA informers who supplied information to CIA ahead of the raid the previous month in which the Al Qaida leader was killed.
One of the arrested CIA informants was reported to be a currently serving major in the rank of Pakistan Army. According to U.S authorities, the detained major took note of license plates of vehicles stopping over at the compound of Osama Bin Laden.
Meanwhile U.S officials have stated that Read more…
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