Spy Series » CIA

Four CIA Flops

Agent 0 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:57:04 +0000

I was doing my usual rounds on the internet today and came across this interesting article about the CIA ..

Most of us don’t know much about what the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) actually does. Without some degree of mystery, after all, it can’t carry out its purpose to covertly collect information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals for American policymakers. So when we do learn anything about a specific CIA program, it’s usually after the fact, and usually because it was a big enough failure to garner media attention. With the understanding that all details about the agency’s dealings are sketchy, unconfirmed, and, well, secret, here are four of the twentieth century’s biggest CIA flops.

1. Operation Acoustic Kitty
The Cold War era of the 1960s was the CIA’s heyday. Americans were so worried about what the Communists were doing and whether they had nuclear weapons that we would have done just about anything to find out. And the secret agents, glorified in spy novels and movies, who did get the dirt on the Reds were our heroes. The CIA’s carte blanche in chasing Communists led to rumors of some pretty bizarre ideas, like Operation Acoustic Kitty, which supposedly ran from 1961 to 1967, and involved the CIA’s surgically implanting cats with audio equipment to use them as bugging devices.

Though the basic idea for the plot—that a cat would go unnoticed and could easily eavesdrop on Soviet conversations—was certainly innovative, former CIA officer Victor Marchetti recalls many problems with Acoustic Kitty:

“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they’re ready. They took it out to a park bench and said, ‘Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything else—not the birds, no cat or dog—just those two guys!’”

According to lore about the program, the first cat that CIA operatives used, who underwent several surgeries and intensive training, was hit by a car, turning five years and more than $15 million into road kill. The CIA abandoned the project shortly thereafter. Perhaps because of its embarrassing failure, or for some other reason, the documents related to Operation Acoustic Kitty remain only partially declassified today. The best we’ve got is a memo from the CIA’s Science and Technology Directorate saying that “the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.”

read entire article http://www.divinecaroline.com/22354/89714-intelligent-intelligence--four-cia-flops

No related posts.

CIA’s Lost Magic Manual?

Agent 0 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:36:53 +0000

At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid $3,000 to renowned magician John Mulholland to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document — and a related paper, on conveying hidden signals — were believed to be destroyed in 1973. But recently, the manuals resurfaced, and have now been published as “The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception.” Topics include working a clandestine partner, slipping a pill into the drink of the unsuspecting, and “surreptitious removal of objects by women.”

WTF ! They hired a magician ? you mean to tell me that all the trick the CIA used were invented by a magician .... well the secret is out .. whats next ?

This wasn’t the first time a magician worked for a western government. Harry Houdini snooped on the German and the Russian militiaries for Scotland Yard. English illusionist Jasper Maskelyne is reported to created dummy submarines and fake tanks to distract Rommel’s army during World War II. Some reports even credit him with employing flashing lights to “hide” the Suez Canal.

But Mulholland’s contributions were far different, because they were part of a larger CIA effort, called MK-ULTRA, to control people’s minds. Which lead to the Agency’s infatuation with LSD, as David Hambling recounted here a few weeks ago:

full story @ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/cias-lost-magic-manual-resurfaces/

No related posts.

CIA’s Drone War

Agent 0 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:17:28 +0000

Over the past year and a half, the United States has stepped up drone strikes against militants in Pakistan — killing as many as a thousand people, by some estimates. Press accounts have largely credited the Central Intelligence Agency with running these missions. Government officials have refused to speak in public about drone attacks, just as they routinely rebuff any attempt to probe into the CIA’s operations. “I’m not going to comment on any particular tactic or technology,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told a group of Pakistani journalists
In addition, some of the Predators and Reapers are placed under the operational control of the CIA, which uses them to conduct their own strike and surveillance missions. Some of those drones take off from Jalalabad, others from within Pakistan itself, at a remote base called Shamshi. According to the New York Times, those aircraft are operated out of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

From what I can tell, these CIA missions comprise the bulk of the drone flights over Pakistan. And the military has, at times, encouraged the notion that operating the unmanned aircraft was the spy agency’s job. “The overwhelming bulk of all activity in Afghanistan since the first U.S. forces went in have been basically under the control of the Central Command,” then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters in 2002. “An exception has been the armed Predators, which are CIA-operated.”

But while the CIA’s drone flights are kept largely compartmentalized from the U.S. military’s efforts in Afghanistan, there is overlap between the two. The Air Force has a total of 39 “orbits,” or air patrols, currently operating in Central Asia and the Middle East. The CIA draws its Predators and Reapers from this pool of military drones. “There are 39 orbits, that’s it. No wink, wink,” a military officer says.

full story @ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/12/us-military-joins-cias-drone-war-in-pakistan/

How the CIA Works

The CIA vs the female spy

Agent 0 — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:49:50 +0000

Valerie Plame Wilson cannot publicize details of her work as a CIA operative, even though a government official already outed her as an agent in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a federal appeals court says Plame Wilson, who served as chief of the unit responsible for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq, argued that confidentiality agreements she signed to win her employment more than two decades ago should be nullified. The CIA has prohibited her from discussing her pre-2002 employment in her 2007 memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.

She maintained the confidentiality agreement should be set aside because government officials leaked to the press that she was an agent. Also, as part of a battle to obtain retirement benefits, her 20-year-employment status became part of the congressional record.

Given that she has been revealed as a operative, the First Amendment allows her to sidestep her confidentiality agreement, she argued.

But the appeals court, in siding with a lower court and a CIA review board prohibiting her from describing her work prior to 2002, said the nation’s national security could be compromised (.pdf) by the disclosures she’d planned in her book. In addition, the court said, it was irrelevant whether it was widely known that she was working under cover.

Full story @ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/valerie-plame-silenced/

My 10 favourite spy movies

Agent 0 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:59:05 +0000

1 . Spy Game
CIA operative Nathan Muir (Redford) is on the brink of retirement when he finds out that his protege Tom Bishop (Pitt) has been arrested in China for espionage. No stranger to the machinations of the CIA's top echelon, Muir hones all his skills and irreverent manner in order to find a way to free Bishop. As he embarks on his mission to free Bishop, Muir recalls how he recruited and trained the young rookie, at that time a sergeant in Vietnam, their turbulent times together as operatives and the woman who threatened their friendship

Starring - Robert Redford And Brad Pitt

2 . The Good Sheppard
The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man's life

Edward Wilson heads CIA covert operations during the Bay of Pigs. The agency suspects that Castro was tipped, so Wilson looks for the leak. As he investigates, he recalls, in a series of flashbacks, his father's death, student days at Yale (poetry; Skull and Bones), recruitment into the fledgling OSS, truncated affairs, a shotgun marriage, cutting his teeth on spy craft in London, distance from his son, the emergence of the Cold War, and relationships with agency, British, and Soviet counterparts. We watch his idealism give way to something else: disclosing the nature of that something else is at the heart of the film's narration as he closes in on the leak

Starring : Matt Damon ...Angelina Jolie ... Alec Baldwin ... Robert De Niro

3 . Ronin
A woman assembles a team of professional killers from all over the world to get a hold on a certain case with some mysterious content. The case is in the hands of some ex-KGB spies and there are many people and organizations that will do anything to get it.

Starring : Robert De Niro And Jean Reno

4 . The Bourne Identity
He was the perfect weapon until he became the target.

Based very loosely on Robert Ludlum's novel, the Bourne Identity is the story of a man whose wounded body is discovered by fisherman who nurse him back to health. He can remember nothing and begins to try to rebuild his memory based on clues such as the Swiss bank account, the number of which, is implanted in his hip. He soon realizes that he is being hunted and takes off with Marie on a search to find out who he is and why he is being hunted

Starring : Matt Damon

5 . Enemy Of The State
A successful lawyer finds himself the target of a treacherous NSA official and his goons after receiving evidence to a politically motivated murder, the only man that can help him is a former government operative turned surveillance expert.

Starring : Will Smith ... Gene Hackman

6 . Clear And Present Danger
CIA Analyst Jack Ryan is drawn into an illegal war fought by the US government against a Colombian drug cartel

Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst, is thrust right in the middle of a power struggle within the Colombian drug cartel after one of the President's "life long" friends is murdered, apparently in retaliation for stealing money as part of a money laundering scheme for the cartel. Jack is then appointed acting Deputy Director of Intelligence, CIA

Starring : Harrison Ford

7 . Mission Impossibe 2
A secret agent is sent to Sydney, to find and destroy a genetically modified disease called "Chimera".

IMF agent Ethan Hunt has been sent on a mission to retrieve and destroy the supply of a genetically created disease called 'Chimera'. His mission is made impossible due to the fact that he is not the only person after samples of the disease. He must also contest with a gang of international terrorists headed by a turned bad former IMF agent who has already managed to steal the cure called 'Bellerophon' and now need 'Chimera' to complete their grand plan of infecting the whole world. In order to infiltrate and locate the terrorist group he relies on the help of an international thief Nyah of whom he quickly develops a love interest. Time is not only running out for Agent Hunt to find and destroy 'Chimera' before the terrorists get their hands on it, but he must also find 'Bellerophon' so as to save his love interest who has already become infected by the disease from a terrible and rapid death.

Starring : Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton

8 . Xxx
Xander Cage is your standard adrenaline junkie with no fear and a lousy attitude. When the US Government "recruits" him to go on a mission, he's not exactly thrilled. His mission: to gather information on an organization that may just be planning the destruction of the world, led by the nihilistic Yorgi.

Starring : Vin Diesel ... Asia Argento

9 . Tommorow Never Dies
Agent James Bond 007 is on a mission which includes a media tycoon, his former lover and a Chinese agent. Elliot Carver wants to complete his global media empire, but in order for this to work., he must achieve broadcasting rights in China. Carver wants to to start up World War III by starting a confrontation over British and Chinese waters. Bond gains the helping of Wai Lin on his quest to stop him, but how will Bond feel when he meets up with his former lover, who is know Carver's wife.

Starring : Pierce Brosnan

10 . The Recruit
James Clayton is one of the top prospects in the new crop of CIA recruits. His intelligence and unconventional attitude attract the attention of veteran Walter Burke who squires him through the Agency's difficult training courses and helps him to quickly rise through the ranks. Clayton is then given a special assignment, to root out a suspected mole that has infiltrated the Agency

Starring : Al Pacino ...Colin Farrell

Top 10 favourite spy movie babes

CIA Secret ‘Torture’ Prison Found !

Agent 0 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:41:34 +0000

The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.

"The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Lithuanian officials provided ABC News with the documents of what they called a CIA front company, Elite, LLC, which purchased the property and built the "black site" in 2004.

Surprise ! Sounds like the CIA to me .. Isn't that what they do anyway ? The CIA is becoming popular again with all this media attention.

Full story @ http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cia-secret-prison-found/story?id=9115978

No related posts.

You will pay for spying on me with a coffee table !

Agent 0 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:51:07 +0000

The U.S. has agreed to pay $3 million to a former government worker who accused officials with the CIA and State Department of spying on him with a bugged coffee table.

Rather than comply with a court order to provide lawyers in the case with what the U.S. government says is classified information, the government has agreed to settle to end the 15-year-old suit

For some reason i get excited when i read stuff like this .. its like all the spy novels ive read is playing out in real life .. funny how they just labeled this person as a "former government worker" which government agency did he work for ? Were they CIA,FBI,NSA,DEA,DIA,Secret Service ? Wait isnt the CIA suppose to be banned from running operations in the US ? hmmm

A close review of the case suggests that the Justice Department also decided to pay off the plaintiff in order to quash the series of damaging legal rulings issued by the influential judge overseeing the case that would have forced them to disclose the classified information. Those decisions may have a bearing on the “state secrets privilege” that the Bush and Obama administrations have used to try and thwart a high-profile lawsuit in California over illegal wiretapping conducted in the war on terror.

The government has filed a motion to vacate the potentially damaging rulings in the coffee table case. As part of the settlement agreement, filed November 3 in the U.S. District court in the District of Columbia, the plaintiff has agreed not to oppose the government’s motion to vacate.

The CIA vs the female spy

Angelina Jolie’s Spy Film Trailer

Agent 0 — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:36:57 +0000

In Columbia Pictures' Salt, Angelina Jolie stars as Evelyn Salt, a CIA officer who swore an oath to duty, honor, and country. When she is accused by a defector of being a Russian sleeper spy, Salt goes on the run to clear her name and ultimately prove she is a patriot. Using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative, she must elude capture and protect her husband or the world's most powerful forces will erase any trace of her existence.

I must say i am not a big Angelina Jolie fan but im loving this trailer something to look forward to in 2010 .. anything that has to do with spies and you know im in !

No related posts.

How the CIA Works

Agent 0 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:43:36 +0000

The CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency. Its primary stated mission is to collect, evaluate and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior United States government policymakers in making decisions about national security. The CIA may also engage in covert action at the president's request. It doesn't make policy. It isn't allowed to spy on the domestic activities of Americans or to participate in assassinations, either -- though it has been accused of doing both.

Like other aspects of the U.S. government, the CIA has a system of checks and balances. The CIA reports both to the executive and legislative branches. During the CIA's history, the amount of oversight has ebbed and flowed. On the executive side, the CIA must answer to three groups -- the National Security Council, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Intelligence Oversight Board.

The National Security Council is made up of the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. "The NSC advises the President on domestic, foreign and military issues that relate to national security and provides guidance, review and direction on how the CIA gathers intelligence," according to the CIA Web site. The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board comprises people from the private sector who study how well the CIA is doing its job and the effectiveness of its structure. The Intelligence Oversight Board is supposed to ensure that intelligence collection is done properly and that all intelligence gathering is legal.

On the legislative side, the CIA works primarily with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. These two committees -- along with the Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees -- authorize the CIA's programs and oversee the CIA. The appropriations committees appropriate funds for the CIA and all U.S. government activities.

CIA Structure
The CIA is broken down into four different teams, each with its own responsibilities:

National Clandestine Service
This is where the so-called "spies" work. NCS employees go undercover abroad to collect foreign intelligence. They recruit agents to collect what is called "human intelligence." What kinds of people work for the NCS? NCS employees are generally well-educated, know other languages, like to work with people from all over the world and can adapt to any situation, including dangerous ones. Most people, including their friends and family members, will never know exactly what NCS employees do. Later we'll take a look at how the spies stay undercover and check out some of their cool gadgets.

Directorate of Science and Technology
The people on this team collect overt, or open source, intelligence. Overt intelligence consists of information that appears on TV, on the radio, in magazines or in newspapers. They also use electronic and satellite photography. This team attracts people who enjoy science and engineering.

Directorate of Intelligence
All of the information gathered by the first two teams is turned over to the Directorate of Intelligence. Members of this team interpret the information and write reports about it. A DI employee must have excellent writing and analytical skills, be comfortable presenting information in front of groups and be able to handle deadline pressure.

Directorate of Support
This team provides support for the rest of the organization and handles things like hiring and training. "The Directorate of Support attracts the person who may be a specialist in a field such as an artist or a finance officer, or a generalist with many different talents," according to the CIA Web site.

for more visit

Did the CIA really kill Bobby Kennedy?

Agent 0 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:13:55 +0000

I was surfing the net today and came across this interesting article .. after reading you have to ask yourself is it true .. is it even possible ?

In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder.

would they really do this just so another kennedy doesnt get into the whitehouse ?

On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver.As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin.

the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin.

No related posts.

Spies Protest After Intel-Sharing Tools Shut Down

Agent 0 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:15:38 +0000

In the finger-pointing-fest after 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community was scorched for not sharing information, and putting parochial interests ahead of good analysis. Which makes it particularly depressing to see that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is shutting down two of its more important collaboration tools, called uGov and BRIDGE.
uGov, an e-mail platform that could be used by analysts throughout the intelligence community, was “one of its earliest efforts at cross-agency collaboration,” Marc Ambinder over at The Atlantic notes. uGov “will be shut down because of security concerns, government officials said.”

[This] follows reports that another popular analytic platform called “Bridge,” which allows analysts with security clearances to collaborate with people outside the government who have relevant expertise but no clearances, is being killed.

The importance of things like uGov and BRIDGE cannot be understated. New analysts who use tools like Chirp (the IC’s version of Twitter) and Intellipedia are always surprised to hear me talk about how back in the day, if you wanted to collaborate with your peers in another agency, you had to run a deception operation against your own boss. Working with anyone outside your agency was considered disloyal. Working with someone outside the community just wasn’t done (at least not at the functional level in any meaningful way). uGov gave functionality and (more importantly) legitimacy to the idea of working together, whether driven by your own initiative or real-world events:

ODNI frequently stands up temporary analytical groups that take in analysts from agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA and the National Security Agency (NSA); the uGov domain made it easy to give all of them a common platform.

For more on this article check out wired.com

CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’

Agent 0 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:25:50 +0000

When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off.

But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.

It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more," said Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.

The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Instead of posting thoughts about the new Avenged Sevenfold album or Jessica Alba movie, CIA analysts could use A-Space to share information and opinion about al Qaeda movements in the Middle East or Russian naval maneuvers in the Black Sea.

The new A-Space site has been undergoing testing for months and launches officially for the nation's entire intelligence community September 22.

"It's a place where not only spies can meet but share data they've never been able to share before," Wertheimer said. "This is going to give them for the first time a chance to think out loud, think in public amongst their peers, under the protection of an A-Space umbrella."

Wertheimer demonstrated the program to CNN to show how analysts will use it to collaborate.

"One perfect example is if Osama bin Laden comes out with a new video. How is that video obtained? Where are the very sensitive secret sources we may have to put into a context that's not apparent to the rest of the world?" Wertheimer asked.

"In the past, whoever captured that video or captured information about the video kept it in-house. It's highly classified, because it has so very short a shelf life. That information is considered critical to our understanding."

The goal of A-Space, like intelligence analysis in general, is to protect the United States by assessing all the information available to the spy agencies. Missing crucial data can have enormous implications, such as an FBI agent who sent an e-mail before September 11, 2001, warning of people learning to fly airplanes but not learning to land them.

"There was the question, 'Was that a dot that failed to connect?' Well, that person did this via e-mail," Wertheimer said. "A-Space is the kind of place where you can log that observation and know that your fellow analysts can see that."

Even though Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites that inspired A-Space are predominantly the domain of young people, there apparently is no such generational divide on A-Space.

"We have found that participation in A-Space crosses every conceivable age line and experience line. People are excited, no matter what age group," Wertheimer said.

Of course, the material on A-Space is highly classified, so it won't be available for the public. Only intelligence personnel with the proper security clearance, and a reason to be examining particular information, can access the site. The creators of A-Space do not want it to be used by some future double agent such as Jonathan Pollard or Robert Hanssen to steal America's 21st-century secrets.

"We're building [a] mechanism to alert that behavior. We call that, for lack of a better term, the MasterCard, where someone is using their credit card in a way they've never used it before, and it alerts so that maybe that credit card has been stolen," Wertheimer said. "Same thing here. We're going to actually do patterns on the way people use A-Space."

Yes, analysts can collect friends on A-Space the way people can on Facebook. But nobody outside the intelligence community will ever know -- because they're secret.

source - http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/09/05/facebook.spies/index.html