SpyTalk: March 21, 2010 - March 27, 2010

Career spy Robert Harding's covert op on Obama

Maj. Gen. Robert A. Harding, prepare for your Weekend Update Moment! And Jon Stewart. And Colbert, Letterman, Leno and all the rest. You’ve been done in by the gang that can’t vet straight. Nobody laughed about your undisclosed Homeland Security...

By Jeff Stein  | March 27, 2010; 6:15 PM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (2)
Tags:  Abu Ghraib, Camp Slayer, DIA, Defense Contract Audit Agency, Defense Department, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI, Guantanamo, HUMINT, Harding Security Associates, Iraq Survey Group, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Obama, Pentagon, Robert A. Harding, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Susan Collins, TSA, U.S. Army, Weekend Update  
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Osama tape has intelligence officials fuming

U.S. counterterrorism officials seemed to have a hard time making up their minds on how to respond to Osama bin Laden’s latest tape. On the one hand, the Qaeda leader’s threat to kill American captives was “so ridiculous” that it...

By Jeff Stein  | March 26, 2010; 12:00 PM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (7)
Categories:  Intelligence  | Tags:  Al Jazeera, Alec Station, Anthony Cordesman, Bowe Bergdahl, Brian Jenkins, CIA, CNN, CSIS, Egypt, Eric Holder, Haqqani, Intelcenter, KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Michael Scheuer, Obama, Osama, Paul R. Pillar, Peter Bergen, Qaeda, RAND, Saudi, UBL  
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Backchannel chatter: NSA's split personality

Noah Shachtman, who helms the always interesting national security blog Danger Room, makes a provocative argument in the new issue of Wired that the National Security Agency should be cleaved in two. It's “actually home to two different agencies under...

By Jeff Stein  | March 25, 2010; 12:00 PM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (0)
Tags:  Danger Room, NSA, National Security Agency, Noah Shachtman, Wired Magazine  
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Backchannel chatter: Jane Mayer v. Marc Thiessen

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen smacked Jane Mayer in his recent book defending the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and now the New Yorker’s national security writer is hitting back. In “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and...

By Jeff Stein  | March 25, 2010; 10:00 AM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (1)
Categories:  Backchannel chatter  | Tags:  Bush, CIA, Jane Mayer, Marc Thiessen, New Yorker magazine  
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Whitehurst’s legacy still haunts the FBI lab

A dozen years ago he was the central figure in the exposure of fraud and incompetence in the FBI’s crime lab. Now, with his original revelations reverberating far beyond Washington in state and local police departments, his name is rarely...

By Jeff Stein  | March 25, 2010; 9:00 AM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (3)
Tags:  Bethel, DC police crime lab, Department of Justice, FBI lab, Frederic Whitehurst, IG, NC, inspector general  
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Israeli intelligence, our constant companion

Another big week for Israeli spies – new and old. In the latest chapter of the Dubai assassination drama, Britain gave the boot Tuesday to an Israeli diplomat, asserting that Israel was involved in the forgery of U.K. passports...

By Jeff Stein  | March 24, 2010; 1:00 PM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (5)
Categories:  Intelligence  | Tags:  AIPAC, American Israel Public Affair Committee, Binyamin Netanyahu, CIA, Dan Halpern, David Miliband, Dubai assasination, FBI, Grant T. SmithGad Shimron, International Trade Commission, Israel, Jane Harman, Jonathan Pollard, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad, President Reagan, Stewart D. Nozette, the same powerful group implicated in that long ago spy scandal and others since  
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CIA official's rape case headed to June trial

Criminal cases involving CIA officers are commonly settled quietly out of court, for the obvious reason that the spy agency doesn’t want windows opened into its secret business, much less the capers of its bad actors. But it looks like...

By Jeff Stein  | March 23, 2010; 11:20 AM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (10)
Categories:  Intelligence  | Tags:  Algeria, Algiers, Andrew Warren, CIA, Department of Justice, Diplomatic Security Service, Jackie Collins, Mark David Hunter, Scott Banker  
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Ex-spies still agitated over CIA's Afghan losses

Nearly four months after an al-Qaeda double agent obliterated an important CIA team in Afghanistan, veteran spies remain agitated over the incident and the agency’s seeming inability to fix longtime operational flaws.

By Jeff Stein  | March 22, 2010; 1:10 PM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (58)
Categories:  Intelligence  | Tags:  Alec Station, CIA, Charles Faddis, Dianne Feinstein, GQ, George Clooney, John Brennan, Khost, Leon Panetta, Margaret Henoch, Michael Scheuer, Obama, Paul Gimigliano, Robert Baer, Stephen R. Kappes, Syriana  
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About Jeff Stein

SpyTalk columnist Jeff Stein is a longtime investigative reporter specializing in U.S. intelligence, defense and foreign policy issues. An Army Intelligence case officer in Vietnam, Stein has authored three highly regarded books and has been a frequent contributor to periodicals...

By  | March 22, 2010; 1:00 PM ET  |  Permalink  |  Comments (4)
 
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