Salon.com > Espionage

Did the CIA spy on Iraq war critic Juan Cole?

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:17:00 +0000

The New York Times is reporting a former CIA officer's claim that the Bush White House and the CIA asked operatives to spy on university professor, blogger (and frequent Salon contributor) Juan Cole in 2005 and 2006.

From James Risen's Thursday morning Times piece:

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on [Professor Cole]. ...

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

“A Covert Affair”: Julia Child, spy girl

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:01:00 +0000

Shrewd marketing and its online equivalent, SEO (search engine optimization), dictate that Julia Child's name gets top billing in both the title of Jennet Conant's new nonfiction spy saga and in the headline for my review of the same. Yes, the famous French chef of cookbook and public television fame did work for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a U.S. intelligence agency, during World War II, as did Paul Child, the man she would eventually marry. However, Julia Child's war was not so exciting as Jane Foster's, and if Conant's "A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS" is somewhat of a bait-and-switch, providing more of Foster's story than Child fans will expect, it's hard to complain: Foster is such a remarkable, engaging, ambiguous character.

Foster and Julia McWilliams (Child's maiden name) were part of a cohort of women (invariably referred to as "girls" by their colleagues) who signed up to work for William "Wild Bill" Donovan's OSS during the war. They wanted to serve their country, but most of them -- Julia especially -- were looking for adventure, too. Foster's ability to speak Malayan (the legacy of a brief marriage to a Dutch diplomat in her early 20s) and Julia's superior administrative skills made them desirable recruits. So did their backgrounds.

Tiny spy planes mimic birds and insects

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:11:00 +0000

You'll never look at hummingbirds the same again.

The Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into the development of tiny drones inspired by biology, each equipped with video and audio equipment that can record sights and sounds.

They could be used to spy, but also to locate people inside earthquake-crumpled buildings and detect hazardous chemical leaks.

The smaller, the better.

Besides the hummingbird, engineers in the growing unmanned aircraft industry are working on drones that look like insects and the helicopter-like maple leaf seed.

Researchers are even exploring ways to implant surveillance and other equipment into an insect as it is undergoing metamorphosis. They want to be able to control the creature.

The devices could end up being used by police officers and firefighters.

Their potential use outside of battle zones, however, is raising questions about privacy and the dangers of the winged creatures buzzing around in the same skies as aircraft.

For now, most of these devices are just inspiring awe.

White House denies WikiLeaks’ spying charges

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 13:37:26 +0000

President Barack Obama's spokesman is labeling as "ridiculous" an assertion by the founder of WikiLeaks that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should resign if she was involved in asking U.S. diplomats to gather intelligence at the United Nations.

In an online interview with Time magazine from an undisclosed location, founder Julian Assange on Tuesday called on Clinton to resign "if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations" in violation of international agreements.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that Assange's statements "are both ridiculous and absurd." Clinton, he said, has done nothing wrong, and U.S. diplomats do not engage in spying. He spoke in an interview on NBC's "Today" show.

State Department officials said Tuesday that secret instructions to American diplomats to gather sensitive personal information about foreign leaders originated from the U.S. intelligence community but did not require diplomats to spy. Requests for DNA and biometric data on foreign officials were contained in leaked classified cables published by WikiLeaks.

"Secretary Clinton is doing a great job," Gibbs said. "The president has great confidence in and admires the work that Secretary Clinton has done."

How to catch a Taliban impostor

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Today the New York Times reports that a still-unidentified Afghan man was posing as a Taliban leader in secret peace talks with Afghanistan officials. It's unclear whether this individual was a con man out to line his pockets, a Taliban agent out to sabotage the talks, or a plant from Pakistani intelligence. The writers, Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall, note that the incident "could have been lifted from a spy novel." Regrettably, they may be right. The days when writers of espionage fiction conceived of impostor spies who called themselves Julian or Raoul seem to have passed in favor of writers who are less interested in the glamour of international intrigue than in impostors who don't drink and call themselves Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.

Further reports on the story are sure to observe that the entire episode might have been plucked from the movies. This is incorrect. Plucked from films, yes. The story is half-ready for the art house. Strip the tale of glamour, remove any potential for excitement and you've not only got a greenlight, but guaranteed analysis in Cineaste, and a panel accompanying the New York opening consisting of Naomi Klein, a New York University expert on the Middle East, and any film critic dextrous enough to use "hegemony" in a sentence.

U.S. man pleads guilty to spying for China

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:07:00 +0000

A Michigan man has pleaded guilty to accepting $70,000 from Chinese spies as he attempted to secure jobs with the CIA and U.S. Foreign Service that would have allowed him to expose American government secrets.

Glenn D. Shriver, 28, of Detroit, acknowledged Friday in U.S. District Court that he sought the jobs with the intent of selling classified information to Beijing. He pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to provide national defense information to Chinese intelligence officers.

Under a plea deal, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to recommend a four-year prison term at a scheduled Jan. 21 sentencing.

Authorities say Shriver was approached by Chinese officers while living in Shanghai in 2004 after previous study trips to China.

“Red”: Cynical, idiotic — and a total blast

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:30:00 +0000

Film critics always run the risk of digging for deeper meanings below the surface of crap entertainment products (although heaven knows I would never do anything like that). In the case of a campy, clever, intentionally dumb espionage caper like "Red," which is based on an obscure DC Comics graphic novel, it's safe to say that ideology is beside the point. Still, "Red" arrives in the same year as "Salt," "The A-Team" and "Knight and Day," and tells a strikingly similar story: The military-intelligence complex has become a nexus of bureaucratic evil, and only the outcasts, retirees and traitors are fighting for truth and justice. (Yes, of course this is just this year's model of the age-old tale about individuals battling a corrupt system.)

Iran-held U.S. woman returns home

Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:53:00 +0000

An American woman who was held in Iran for more than 13 months and accused of spying returned Sunday to the United States.

Sarah Shourd arrived at around 6:30 a.m. at Dulles International Airport near Washington, accompanied by her mother and an uncle, according to a statement released by her family and relatives of two other Americans who are still in custody in Iran.

Shourd and her mother, Nora, were on their way to New York for a news conference later Sunday with the mothers of the other detained Americans, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the families said.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also is due to arrive in the city Sunday to attend the U.N. General Assembly.

Shourd, Bauer -- her fiance -- and Fattal, a friend of the couple, were detained in July 2009 along the Iran-Iraq border. Iran has issued espionage-related indictments, which could bring trials for the two men and proceedings in absentia for Shourd.

The Americans' families say they were hiking, and if they crossed the border, they did so accidentally.

Shourd was freed Tuesday after officials in Oman -- an ally of both Iran and the United States -- mediated a $500,000 bail.

“Salt”: Angelina Jolie’s dazzling action spectacle

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:01:00 +0000

"Salt" is a well-greased, smoothly functioning machine that drives forward with tremendous momentum, elevating your pulse rate and relieving you of the need to think for more than a second or two at a stretch. Now, am I talking about "Salt" the spy thriller, directed by the capable genre veteran Phillip Noyce? Or am I talking about Evelyn Salt, the renegade CIA agent played by Angelina Jolie, who must shed her Manolos and sex-bomb designer suit to become an unstoppable force of pistol-packing vengeance? Well, the wonder of this would-be summer action hit, which manages the neat trick of being slippery and deceptive without possessing the least intellectual ambition, is that the description fits both flavors of Salt.

Into the cold: Swapped spies face uncertain lives

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:30:00 +0000

They are abruptly entering radically different lives -- 10 spies for Russia who hid in suburban America bartered for four agents imprisoned by Moscow in the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

Family dramas unfolded behind the scenes Friday as the fiction of ordinary American life was replaced by the realities of modern Russia -- and early indications were that the spy ring did not get a hero's welcome.

"They obviously were very bad spies if they got caught. They got caught, so they should be tried," said Sasha Ivanov, a businessman walking by a Moscow train station.

The four Russians who spied for the West were sprung from dismal Russian prisons and flown to Britain and the U.S; it was unclear where they planned to live.

A White House official said Friday the Obama administration began thinking about a possible spy swap as early as June 11, well ahead of the arrests of the 10 suspects on June 27.

White House officials were first briefed on the Russians' covert activities in February and President Barack Obama was made aware of the case on June 11, the official said. It was then that the idea of a spy swap was raised.

Justice says Russians will release 4 in spy swap

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:20:00 +0000

The Russian government will release four people accused of betraying Russia to the West, the Justice Department said in a letter Thursday outlining the international spy swap.

"The key provision of the United States-Russia agreement is that the Russian Federation has agreed to release four individuals who are incarcerated in Russia for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies," said the letter to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in New York.

Some of the Russian prisoners worked for the Russian military, and some worked for both the military and various Russian intelligence agencies.

On the U.S. end of the spy swap, Wood ordered 10 defendants who admitted acting as Russian spies deported from the United States.

The letter did not name the four, describing three of them as having been "convicted of treason in the form of espionage on behalf of a foreign power" and serving lengthy prison terms.

"The Russian prisoners have all served a number of years in prison and some are in poor health," the letter added.

The family members of the four will leave with them for resettlement.

Three of the four were accused by Russia of contacting Western intelligence agencies while they were working for the Russian or Soviet government, the letter stated.

11 formally charged in Russian espionage bust

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:10:00 +0000

The 11 people accused of spying for Russia were formally charged in a federal indictment unsealed Wednesday, more than a week after the FBI announced their arrests.

The indictment charged all the defendants with conspiring to act as secret agents and also charged nine of them with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The indictment, a charging document that can be used during a trial or if the defendants enter a plea, contains far fewer details of the alleged crimes than were inside two criminal complaints filed last week. The defendants must appear before a judge to enter pleas to the indictment.

Prosecutors released a copy of the indictment the same day that federal judges in Boston and Alexandria, Va., signed orders directing that five defendants arrested in Massachusetts and Virginia be transferred to New York, where the charges originated.

The legal developments came amid reports that American officials were meeting with the Russian ambassador in Washington and a claim by the brother of a convicted spy in Russia that his brother has been told he will be swapped for Russians arrested in the United States.

Janice Oh, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, declined to comment on speculation about a spy swap.

Suspect in Russian spy ring vanishes in Cyprus

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:10:00 +0000

An alleged member of a Russian spy ring that authorities say operated under deep cover in America's suburbs vanished in Cyprus on Wednesday, a day after being released on bail.

The man, who had gone by the name Christopher Metsos and was wanted in the U.S. on charges he supplied money to the spy ring, had been arrested Tuesday in the Mediterranean island nation as he tried to board a flight for Budapest, Hungary.

On Wednesday, after a Cypriot judge had freed him on $32,500 bail, he failed to show for a required meeting with police, and authorities began searching for him.

The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI -- which spent nearly a decade gathering evidence against some of the defendants in the case -- refused to comment on Metsos' disappearance.

On Monday, 10 other people, most of them believed to be Russians living under assumed names, were arrested across the Northeast, accused of gathering information for Moscow on American business, scientific and political affairs while leading what appeared to be utterly ordinary suburban lives, right down to their well-kept lawns and the barbecues they threw on the Fourth of July.

10 alleged Russian secret agents arrested in U.S.

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:24:00 +0000

Ten people have been arrested for allegedly serving as secret agents of the Russian government with the goal of penetrating U.S. government policymaking circles.

The Justice Department announced the arrests Monday.

According to court papers in the case, the U.S. government intercepted a message from Russian intelligence headquarters in Moscow to two of the defendants. The message states that their main mission is "to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US" and send intelligence reports.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Ten people have been arrested for allegedly serving as secret agents of the Russian government in the United States, the Justice Department said Monday.

Eight of 10 were arrested Sunday for allegedly carrying out long-term, deep cover assignments in the United States on behalf of Russia.

Two others were arrested for allegedly participating in the same Russian intelligence program within the United States.

Their job, according to the court papers in the case, was "to search and develop ties in policymaking circles" in the United States.

Inside the Ikea police state

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:13:00 +0000

Der Spiegel has corrected this story since it was published.

The founder of Ikea, the international Swedish home furnishing chain, is one of the richest men in the world. Yet Ingvar Kamprad is widely considered to be something of an average guy who lives a modest life. He's just like his furniture; simple, honest and a little wooden.

Anecdotes that support that image abound. The Swede from Smaland reportedly still has a 30-year-old "Klippan" sofa in his living room, along with another early classic developed by the furniture giant, the "Billy" bookshelf. These sorts of stories not only illustrate Kamprad's modesty, they also testify to the long-lasting quality of his modestly priced furniture.

The man who wants to turn this pleasant image on its head is Johan Stenebo. Stenebo, who comes from Stockholm, started working at Ikea more than 20 years ago as a trainee in the Kaltenkirchen warehouse just north of the German city of Hamburg. His career trajectory took him right to Ikea's highest management level. He was managing director of Ikea's subsidiary GreenTech and he even worked as Kamprad's personal assistant.

No country for human beings

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:35:00 +0000

Focus Features

Brad Pitt, left, and George Clooney in "Burn After Reading."

Here's the right word to describe Joel and Ethan Coen's star-studded, pack-of-maroons spy comedy "Burn After Reading": It's patchy. Of course that sounds like I'm dismissing it, but I don't exactly mean it that way. The film is hilarious in patches, shocking in patches, utterly convincing in patches and close to brilliant in patches. As with the much-laureled "No Country for Old Men," the Coens seem to be Mixmastering themes and elements of their earlier films; there are traces of "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Blood Simple" in the DNA of "Burn After Reading." But those comparisons aren't likely to benefit this work of lightweight inside-the-Beltway misanthropy, which possesses neither the morbid, cinematic gravity of their better crime films nor the absurd delirium of their best comedies.

More evidence of Bush’s spying

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:20:00 +0000

For almost three years now, the Bush administration has insisted that the nation's security depends on keeping secret a part of its war on terror that was first exposed in the media back in 2005: its extralegal spying inside the United States. Bush lawyers have relied on the state secrets privilege to block numerous lawsuits challenging the administration's reported spying on Americans and others without warrants, claiming that even to acknowledge such allegations would put the country's security in jeopardy.

A cornerstone case in this legal battle is that of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc., an Oregon-based charity group, in which there appears to be the most known evidence of such spying. And, as it turns out, one need look no further than the FBI's official Web site to find irrefutable evidence that surveillance of the group occurred -- and that the government's persistent claims of maintaining secrecy about it have been spurious.

“Honeypots” need not apply

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Given that the cover of any twinkling, tuxedoed white guy packing a martini has long been blown, British spy agency M16 is reportedly actively seeking new recruits fluent (natively) in Mandarin, Arabic, Persian and the Afghan languages, including especially women, mothers included. "Call it covert affirmative action," says the CBC. (Oldish news, but 10 Moneypennys say it's still accepting résumés.) The agency has offered express assurance that female agents will not be used as "honeypots" to seduce a target. OK, but posing as an Avon lady apparently doesn't hurt.

Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:00:00 +0000

The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Former high-ranking Bush officials enjoy war profits

Thu, 29 May 2008 19:02:00 +0000

Richard L. Armitage, who served from 2001 to 2005 as Deputy Secretary of State, was a rarity in the Bush administration: an official who delighted in talking to the press. Reporters loved him for his withering criticism of the neoconservative zealots around President George W. Bush and in part because he fed them tidbits about the White House they could obtain nowhere else. His accidental disclosure to conservative columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, was working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency remains one of the most notorious leaks of the Bush era.

But perhaps because of his cozy ties to the Washington press corps and the media's obsession with Plamegate, very little has been written about Armitage's extensive business dealings. In fact, Armitage is one of the most successful capitalists in Washington. He has successfully parlayed his experience in covert operations and secret diplomacy into a thriving career as a consultant and adviser to some of the biggest players in America's Intelligence Industrial Complex -- corporations that are working at the heart of U.S. national security and profiting handsomely from it.