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CIA Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 18, 2018 145 Comments
The pace of media frenzy and #TheResistance howling has picked up lately, particularly in the wake of the firing of Andrew McCabe. But this frenzy is just a variation on a theme.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 16, 2018 11 Comments
After President Donald Trump nominated CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to takeover as director, stories from a year ago circulated about how she was in charge of a secret CIA prison in Thailand that tortured al-Qaeda suspects. The reports contained claims that she even participated. I even blogged about it, mainly because I was curious how Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and others would vote to confirm her due to her supposed past. After it caught on, ProPublica issued a correction that Haspel did NOT oversee the waterboarding of suspect Abu Zubaydah.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 13, 2018 35 Comments
President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this morning and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take over that role. He also nominated CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel to lead the spy agency. If confirmed, Haspel will become the first woman CIA director. However, she may face a rocky road to confirmation due to her role in torture sessions at a secret prison in Thailand.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 17, 2018 20 Comments
A former CIA officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, has been charged with "unlawful retention of national defense information." Lee allegedly had in his possession notebooks containing the details and identities of current CIA operatives and is suspected of identifying both spy recruits and CIA agents to the Chinese government. The New York Times reports:

A former C.I.A. officer suspected by investigators of helping China dismantle United States spying operations and identify informants has been arrested, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The collapse of the spy network was one of the American government’s worst intelligence failures in recent years.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 01, 2017 5 Comments
The CIA has released thousands of documents, videos, computer files, and pictures that U.S. forces captured during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan in May 2011. FDD's Long War Journal (LWJ) has been pressing the agency to release these items, which have given us insight into al-Qaeda and the man responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed over 3,000 Americans. This includes bin Laden's journal and more recent images of his son Hamza bin Laden.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on June 24, 2017 14 Comments
For the debut of his MSNBC show this morning, Hugh Hewitt scored the first news network interview with CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Debunking an assertion made by some, Pompeo said he couldn't "imagine a statement that is anymore false" than the notion that Trump isn't interested in intel. Pompeo stated that he personally meets with Trump for 35-40 minutes virtually every day, that Trump is an "avid consumer" of intel, and asks great questions.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 22, 2017 23 Comments
Between 2010-2012, the Chinese government murdered or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA agents after it demolished America's spying operations within the country. The CIA has been investigating how this happened, whether a mole leaked information to Beijing or the Chinese managed to break our codes. The New York Times reported:
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 04, 2017 17 Comments
Unless there are more facts that come out, the charges that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians during the campaign should go down as one of the most preposterous and dangerous conspiracy theories in recent political history. It is a theory pushed relentlessly in the media and by Democrats to try to undermine our political institutions, including the Electoral College. It is the foam coming out of the mouths of Democrats and #NeverTrump Republicans. It is spread with reckless abandon by Twitter and social media personalities you never heard of until they started shouting that Trump and his cohorts had committed treason; now they have hundreds of thousands of followers who retweet by the thousands every innuendo. I wrote about this back in February, The fact-free Intelligence Community-Media trial of Trump by innuendo. Yet what evidence is there even now to support the conspiracy theory? As of this moment, apparently none.

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 21, 2017 14 Comments
Sources have disclosed to the media that federal prosecutors have started to consider pressing changes against Julian Assange and other members of WikiLeaks. The case against the whistleblowing organization spans all the way back to 2010 when it published "diplomatic cables and military documents" to present day when it published the CIA's hacking operations in March. The other day, officials told CBS News that the FBI and CIA have started an investigation into those leaks in March.

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 20, 2017 13 Comments
CBS News has reported that the FBI and CIA have started an investigation to find the person who provided WikiLeaks with secret documents. The investigation is linked to the WikiLeaks publication of almost 9,000 pages that detailed the CIA'S hacking operations. According to the documents, the CIA uses its own malware to hack into anyone's electronics and spy on them. The agency even has malware from Russia, and other countries, which means agents can make an attack look like it came from that country.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 13, 2017 25 Comments
During a forum Thursday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo debunked a prevalent myth about Trump's engagement with intelligence briefings. "How do you describe where the relationship is between the White House and the Intelligence Community?" Pompeo was asked. "It's fantastic," he replied to a room full of chuckles. "No, don't laugh, I mean that."

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 25, 2017 12 Comments
If you're an Apple snob like me, I'm pretty sure you became concerned when Wikileaks published documents about the hacking tools the CIA used to sneak into Apple products. A person could not disable the tools even by resetting their phone. But Apple has come out to assure customers that the company has fixed the vulnerabilities in its newer products.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 08, 2017 10 Comments
Officials within the CIA and FBI will open an investigation to find out how Wikileaks almost 9,000 pages that details the CIA's hacking operations:
The investigation is looking into how the documents came into WikiLeaks' possession and whether they might have been leaked by an employee or contractor. The CIA is also trying to determine if there are other unpublished documents WikiLeaks may have.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 07, 2017 15 Comments
Wikileaks has published almost 9,000 documents from the CIA about the agency's own malware used to hack into anyone's electronics and spy on them. Most concerning? The CIA has malware from Russia, and other countries, so it looks like an attack came from that country:
The CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.
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