We Rage, Europeans Yawn, Over Domestic Counterterrorism Ops

Outside the United Kingdom, which invented civil liberties with the Magna Carta, ordinary Europeans couldn’t care less about wiretapping, national ID cards, preventive detention and police spies in mosques.

CQ Politics (06/20/2008)

Rent-a-Spy

Three quarters of the U.S. intelligence budget now goes to outside contractors, Tim Shorrock says in an important new book. And that ain't good. A review of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

The Washington Post(05/29/2008)

Will a Woman Helm U.S. Intelligence Next Year?

Women have run Britain's domestic counterterrorism agency, and a woman may soon run France's foreign espionage service. Three American women with similar credentials could possibly emerge from the shadows in an Obama, Clinton or McCain administration.

CQ Politics (05/30/2008)

Film Exposes the Seduction of Secrecy

“Secrecy is something like forbidden fruit,” former NSA official Mike Levin says in a startling new documentary, aptly named Secrecy. “You can’t have it. It’s classified. That makes you want it more.” But who should determine what a real secret is -- bureaucrats or the press?

CQ Politics (05/09/2008)

Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say

The elderly man arrested last week on charges of spying for Israel years ago was probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem with another, as yet unidentified spy, former U.S. intelligence officials say. The case serves as a reminder that the U.S.-Israeli intelligence relationship runs on two tracks.

CQ Politics (04/25/2008)

Iran’s Top Terrorist Emerges From the Shadows

Brigadier Gen. Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s supersecret overseas intelligence and sabotage service, is beginning to show a little more ankle, but he remains pretty much an enigma among Iran experts in Washington — including U.S. intelligence agencies, some say.

CQ Politics (04/11/2008)

Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs designed to weaken the resistance of terrorist suspects to interrogation. Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques. But hard evidence that U.S. interrogators are employing hallucinogens, like the LSD the CIA tested on unwitting subjects for at least 20 years beginning in the 1940s, has yet to surface.

CQ Politics (04/04/2008)

Celebrated History of the CIA Comes Under Belated Fire

New York Times reporter Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” hit the New York Times best-seller list last summer, riding a wave of praise from Washington’s national security writing establishment. But a growing cadre of historians, investigative reporters and others has called into question the respected Pulitzer Prize winner's handling of documents and sources, as well his book’s theme that the CIA’s record is one of almost abysmal failure.

CQ Homeland Security (03/14/2007)

Mike McConnell’s Temporary Spokesman Has a Full-Time Job

Ross Feinstein ought to get a Purple Heart for all the hits he’s taken as press agent for Mike McConnell, the serial mis-stater who runs American intelligence. It’s all the more astounding that only a few years ago, the 25-year-old was vice president of the Union College student union.

CQ Homeland Security (02/29/2008)

Indicted Former Congressman Played God's James Bond

Long before he was indicted last month on charges that he rinsed money for an al Qaeda-connected charity, former Michigan Republican Rep. Mark Siljander had immersed himself in clandestine operations, according to his ill-timed and -titled memoir, “A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide,” scheduled for publication in June.

CQ Politics(02/22/2008)

Pentagon Intelligence Comes Off as M*A*S*H in New Book

Anyone who’s spent time in uniform will recognize the stories that A.J. Rossmiller tells in “Still Broken: A Recruit’s Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon.” His DIA has its own versions of Hawkeye, B.J., Colonel Potter, and of course, Frank Burns.

CQ Politics(02/08/2008)

State Secrets Abuses Come to a Boil

The government's practice of fending off suits by former intelligence agents and civil rights groups by invoking the 'state secrets privilege' is coming under heavy fire.

CQ Politics(02/01/2008)

Wiretapping's Collateral Damage

The strange spy tale of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright and the administration's push for open-ended electronic surveillance powers combine to create cause for worry — but not just for the reasons many people think.
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CQ Politics(01/25/2008)

Top U.N. Nuclear Watchdog a Russian Spy: Defector

The top U.N. official responsible for monitoring the clandestine nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan is a Russian spy, according to a new book on Moscow’s espionage operations in the United States and Canada.
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CQ Politics(01/18/2008)

FBI Agent Goes Public With Counterterror Critique

Breaking silence and defying warnings from his FBI bosses, the agent whose internal protests revealed the bureau’s illegal use of secret National Security Letters went public Saturday, blasting the agency for discrimination in the ranks and a lack of interest in Arab language and culture.
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CQ Politics(01/11/2008)

Who Can You Believe in the Torture Wars?

Was it just a coincidence that CIA officer John Kiriakou popped up to soft-sell the efficiency of water-boarding just as news broke that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation?
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CQ Homeland Security (12/14/2007)

Italians:Top Terrorist Could Win Damages Against CIA

Al Qaeda operative Abu Omar, kidnapped off a Milan street four years ago, could end up owning the home of a CIA officer charged with quarterbacking the badly bungled plan, Italian legal sources say.
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CQ Homeland Security 11/23/2007)

State Department Cajoles Young Diplomats Into Iraq Service

The shooting that erupted around a U.S. State Department convoy in Baghdad on Sept. 16 might only accelerate what the department’s statistics already show: Foreign service officers don’t want to go to Iraq — or any other places where it’s hot, dirty and dangerous.
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CQ Homeland Security (09/21/2007)

The CIA’s Last Man in Vietnam Looks at the Endgame in Iraq

No matter President Bush’s assurances of an “enduring relationship” with Iraq, it’s not soon to plan for a swift evacuation of Baghdad, says the CIA man at the center of the chaos when the Vietnam War ended three decades ago.
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CQ Homeland Security (09/14/2007)

DHS Intelligence Chief Reaches Out to CIA Friends

CIA veteran Charlie Allen, who has been shaking up the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence wing for the past 18 months, has brought aboard four spy agency veterans to study the mega-bureaucracy’s vulnerability to enemy penetration.
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CQ Homeland Security
(03/09/2007)

CIA Operatives Don't Have to Sweat Kidnap Charges, Despite Flurry of European Cases

Another 13 unlucky CIA operatives are going to have to revise any plans they had for European vacations anytime soon, on account of the warrants issued by a German prosecutor last week.
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CQ Homeland Security (02/02/2007)

Generals Have Poor Records as CIA Bosses, but Hayden Looks Different

If history is any judge, President Bush may soon regret he chose a military man to run the nation’s civilian spy service, the CIA.
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CQ Homeland Security (5/09/2006)

Top Former CIA Official Tells Senate Panel FBI is Failing at New Intelligence Role

A top former U.S. intelligence official told a Senate panel Tuesday that the FBI is taking too long to develop a first-rate domestic intelligence capability and that “other options” should be pursued.
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CQ Homeland Security (5/03/2006)

Plame Case Revisits an Old Battlefield

The old Washington refrain that “the coverup is worse than the crime” is in the air again. The reason: Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald faces a high legal bar in proving that the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA officer violated federal intelligence laws. Instead, he’s more likely to try to show that there was a coverup, or an attempt to obstruct his investigation, according to legal experts.
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CQ Homeland Security (10/21/2005)