NewsTrust - CIA - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

More Secrets on Growing State Surveillance: Exclusive Part 2 With NSA Whistleblower, Targeted Hacker

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez - Apr. 23 (Interview) - In part two of our national broadcast exclusive on the growing domestic surveillance state, we speak with National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney, and two targeted Americans: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Laura Poitras, and hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who has volunteered for WikiLeaks and now works with Tor Project, a nonprofit organization that teaches about internet security. Binney left the NSA after the 9/11 attacks over his concerns about the agency’s widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens. He describes how the FBI later raided his home and held him at gunpoint and notes there is still no effective way of monitoring how and what information the NSA is gathering on U.S. citizens, and how that data is being used. "Click here to watch part one of our special report.":democracynow.org/shows/2012/4/20 [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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AP Wins Pulitzer for Exposing NYPD's CIA-Linked Intel Program, Leading Widespread Spying on Muslims

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 17 (Interview) - We speak with Matt Apuzzo, co-author of the Associated Press series that revealed the New York City Police Department has extensively spied on Muslim Americans not only in the tri-city area, but throughout the eastern United States. The series won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. Beginning last August, the AP detailed how the NYPD established a vast operation to monitor Muslim neighborhoods after the 9/11 attacks. Hundreds of mosques, businesses and Muslim student groups were investigated, monitored and, in many cases, infiltrated. Police observed and cataloged daily life in Muslim communities, from where people ate and shopped to where they worked and prayed. Police used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even without any evidence of wrongdoing. Also falling under NYPD’s scrutiny were imams, cab drivers and food cart vendors. According to the AP, many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans.

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Former CIA Agent Glenn Carle Draws Agency Censorship With Chronicle of "War on Terror" Interrogation

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jun. 22 (Interview) - We speak with Glenn Carle, who served 23 years in the Clandestine Services of the Central Intelligence Agency. Carle's book, "The Interrogator," has just been published and tells the story of one of the most secret and sensitive CIA interrogations during the "war on terror." Carle says he took part in the interrogation of a "high-value" al-Qaeda target kidnapped off the streets at an undisclosed site in the Middle East. The book chronicles this interrogation and Carle says that CIA censors initially tried to redact nearly half of the book's first draft, which was still published with significant blacked-out omissions.

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My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death

Sat, 07 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Noam Chomsky - May. 07 (Opinion) - 'We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's, and he is not a 'suspect' but uncontroversially the 'decider' who gave the orders to commit the 'supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole' (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

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Terrorism Concerns After bin Laden

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Richard N. Haass - May. 02 (Opinion) - The killing of Osama bin Laden constitutes a significant victory over global terrorism. But it is a milestone, not a turning point, in what remains an ongoing struggle without a foreseeable end.

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A more militarized CIA for a more militarized America

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - It's rare for American media outlets to list all of our "wars" this way, including the covert ones (and that list does not even include the newest one, in Libya, where drone attacks are playing an increasingly prominent role as well). But Barack Obama does indeed preside over numerous American wars in the Muslim world, including some that he started (Libya and Yemen) and others which he's escalated (Afghanistan and Pakistan). Because our wars are so often fought covertly, the CIA has simply become yet another arm of America's imperial war-fighting machine, thus making it the perfect fit for Bush and Obama's most cherished war-fighting General to lead (Petraeus will officially retire from the military to take the position, though that obviously does not change who he is, how he thinks, and what his loyalties are).

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Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern: Petraeus Will Expand Pro-War Agenda As New CIA Director

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - Apr. 28 (Interview) - President Obama is expected to announce a major shuffling of his national security team today. Under his plan, CIA Director Leon Panetta will move to the Pentagon to replace the retiring Robert Gates. Gen. David Petraeus will become the new head of the CIA. U.S. Marine General John Allen will be nominated to become the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, a position currently held by Petraeus. And Ryan Crocker will be nominated to be U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. Leon Panetta has headed the CIA for the past two years and has led a massive escalation of the use of unarmed drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many analysts say the nomination of David Petraeus to head the CIA will further increase the militarization of the spy agency. We speak with Ray McGovern, former senior CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

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Obama’s Missionless War

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - By Mark Steyn - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - The “Arab Spring” turns out to be a bit more complicated than it looks on CNN, and a CIA that failed to see the bankruptcy of its own pension plan looming is unlikely to be a very useful guide to the various forces in play. For the Western powers to be bogged down in the least consequential Arab dictatorship’s low-grade civil war desultorily providing air support to incompetent al-Qaeda sympathizers may be an artful if expensive piece of misdirection.

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CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

theonion.com - Mar. 23 (Comedy News) - The CIA's invention of Facebook has saved the government millions of dollars.

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Behind the Arab Revolt Is a Word We Dare Not Speak

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

truth-out.org - By John Pilger - Feb. 24 (Opinion) - "How did they get away with it?" I asked. "The press allowed the crazies to get away with it." "Who are the crazies?" "The people running the [Bush] administration have a set of beliefs a lot like those expressed in 'Mein Kampf,'" said McGovern. "These are the same people who were referred to, in the circles in which I moved at the top, as 'the crazies.'" I said: "Norman Mailer has written that he believes America has entered a pre-fascist state. What's your view of that?" "Well ... I hope he's right, because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode."

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CIA Chief Based Congressional Testimony On Mubarak Departure On Media

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

MediaIte - By Colby Hall - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - CIA Director Leon Panetta testified to Congress today of a strong likelihood that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would step down by the end of the day. The report of his impending resignation was only eclipsed by the news that Mubarak would NOT be stepping down as Panetta had indicated to congress.

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The War on WikiLeaks: John Pilger's Investigation and Interview With Julian Assange

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

truth-out.org - By John Pilger - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are a response to an information revolution that threatens old power orders in politics and journalism. The incitement to murder trumpeted by public figures in the United States, together with attempts by the Obama administration to corrupt the law and send Assange to a hell-hole prison for the rest of his life, are the reactions of a rapacious system exposed as never before.read more

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Something is Rotten

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Dave Lindorff - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - In most countries, including the US and UK, these would not pass the test to be considered a crime, much less qualify as a category of “rape," but Swedish authorities, who in all of this year have only submitted one other request to Interpol for assistance in capturing a sex crimes suspect, asked the international police agency to issue a so-called Red Alert for Assange, who was subsquently asked by police in the UK, where he was staying, to turn himself in or face arrest. (The other Interpol Red Alert sought by Swedish prosecutors this year was for Jan Christer Wallenkurtz, a 58-year-old Swedish national wanted on multiple charges of alleged sex crimes and sex crimes against children.)

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Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa on WikiLeaks, the September Coup, U.S. Denial of Climate Funding, and Controversial Forest Scheme REDD

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Rafael Correa, Amy Goodman - Dec. 09 (Interview) - Secret U.S. diplomatic cables recently published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks revealed new details about how the U.S. manipulated last year’s U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen. Ecuador was one of the nations that lost funding after it refused to sign on to the U.S.-led Copenhagen Accord. Democracy Now! asks Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa about the latest WikiLeaks revelations on how the United States denied his country aid, the failed coup against him earlier this year, and his support for the controversial carbon market-based forest protection scheme known as REDD.

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Time to Apologize to Plame/Wilson

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - Official Washington's "Fair Game" abuse of CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband Joe Wilson went beyond the White House.

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Obama 'angst' ridden over intelligence leaks

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Arned Forces Press - By Dan De Luce - Oct. 06 (Speech) - James Clapper, the new chief of the country's spy services, said that intelligence agencies would have to be more restrained about sharing information with each other as a result of the leaks, citing the recent release of secret files on the Afghan war by the WikiLeaks website. In comments only days after media reports quoted security sources about a possible terror plot against European cities, Clapper slammed US officials who he said were exposing classified information.

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Google and CIA Plough Millions Into Huge ‘Recorded Future’ Monitoring Project

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

infowars.com - By Steve Watson - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - Google’s cosy relationship with the U.S. spy network has once again been thrust into the spotlight as the company is reported to have jointly invested with the CIA in an Internet monitoring project that scours Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information, and can also “predict the future”.

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The secret private-sector government

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 21 (Opinion) - The irony here is that the decision to declare enemy fighters in Afghanistan as "unlawful enemy combatants" -- which is what, in turn, "justified" denial of Geneva Conventions protections for them (at least until the Supreme Court ruled otherwise) -- was grounded in the fact that they do not, as Mukasey put it, "wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly." That's what made them, in the U.S. lexicon, not only "unlawful combatants" but even Terrorists. But, of course, exactly the same is true for our countless private contractors who are acting as combatants for the U.S. in multiple parts of the world

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Tim Shorrock Asks Why It Took the _Washington Post_ So Long to Investigate the US Intelligence System

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Tim Shorrock - Jul. 19 (Interview) - "With all due respect to the Washington Post, Dana Priest and Bill Arkin are very good reporters, we have to ask, why did it take them seven years to do this story?" says Tim Shorrock, an investigative journalist and author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. "Anyone who's been covering intelligence or national security in Washington knows that intelligence has been privatized to an incredible extent."

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Obama Shies from Real Intel Reform

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Melvin A. Goodman - Jun. 11 (Opinion) - Obama Shies from Real Intel ReformEditor's Note: President Obama has sought to counter right-wing and Republican attacks on him as soft on national security by staffing top positions with retired senior military officers, but the shortage of civilian experts has created an imbalance in how geopolitical problems are viewed.

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Dirty Linen Gets Intel Chief Fired

Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - May. 23 (Opinion) - An incompetent manager? Seems so. But Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral, also demonstrated a strain of integrity. And that can often be the kiss of death in Official Washington. On substantive issues, like Iran’s nuclear program, Blair did not show the malleability that is desired by those who are out to zap Iran; I believe it likely that these get-Iran hawks helped to zap Blair.

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The Pentagon's Stringers

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:10:56 -0700

Mother Jones - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - But one of the companies established by Pelton and Jordan, International Safety Networks (ISN), offered to do more than just information gathering. It pitched services that merged reporting, intelligence, connection-peddling, and strategic

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Obama threatens to veto greater intelligence oversight

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - One of the principal weapons used by the Bush administration to engage in illegal surveillance activities -- from torture to warrantless eavesdropping -- was its refusal to brief the full Congressional Intelligence Committees about its activities.

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The Hippocratic Oath Applied to Intelligence

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Barry Eisler - Jan. 28 (Review) - I'm just about finished with Tim Weiner's phenomenal "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA." Two themes are at the heart of the book. First, the Agency has been incompetent from its inception. The roster of incompetence includes subversion operations that cost the lives of hundreds of agents and accomplished nothing; CIA-managed coups that backfired, the Bay of Pigs and many others. Even operations that "succeeded" were pyrrhic.

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Why Counter-Terrorism Is in Shambles

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley. - Jan. 06 (Opinion) - The debate over who's to blame for missing the Christmas Day bomb plot misses the point. ... there is no getting around the necessity to address the root causes of terrorism or, in the vernacular, “why they hate us.”

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