National Security Agency failed to heed a critical C.I.A. report on the whistleblower when they hired him
Intelligence
Declassified Docs Show Abuse in Domestic Spy Program
Newly declassified documents disclose yet more misuse of the NSA’s domestic surveillance capabilities.
A New Way of War
For more than a decade, we’ve been getting somber Pentagon emails telling us the name, hometown and age of every U.S. troop killed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Noticed something new, at least to us, in …
Iran Unplugged: Preview of Coming Attractions?
Iran’s nuclear-energy chief said Monday that his nation’s most heavily defended nuclear-enrichment plant had been unplugged with extreme prejudice last month.
Thar She Floats!
The Army has finally got its football-field-sized Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) airborne over the Jersey coast. The huge unmanned spy platform is designed to give the U.S. military “more than 21 days of unblinking stare,” contractor Northrop Grumman says.
Not all of its numbers are so stupendous: it boasts a …
The Rebels: We Need Intel More Than Arms
It took Twitter five years to hire a Washington lobbyist. That was quick compared to Apple, which took 25 years to begin paying someone to represent its interests in the capital.
Violence had been raging in Syria for 14 months …
New Air Force Mission: Cyberwar Belongs to Us
The Wall Street Journal noted last Friday about how the “Pentagon digs in on cyberwar front.” Bit misleading, as it’s really the Air Force that’s desperate to corner that market. You know the general story of Big War Blue (Navy, …
Courage Services, Inv. (as in, Invisible)
The outsourcing of what used to be thought of as vital governmental functions continues. Public Intelligence posted this last week on its website. It’s basically a 2009 intelligence report done for the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity by an outfit calling itself Courage Services, Inc. Its nifty corporate logo appears on the …
Cyber Warfare Treaty: DOA, Thanks to President and Pentagon
Misha Glenny making a smart case in the New York Times for a cyber arms control treaty, but it won’t happen.
Why?
For the same reason why the U.S. has refused – for many years now – to engage other great powers on a treaty …
Fans of the Terror Hunters
Virginians living just outside of Washington, D.C., are up in arms because of the constant drone of 230 high-velocity fans atop an unmarked office building on the fringe of their neighborhood. The CIA originally occupied the three-story building, but the spies left, only to be replaced by the FBI.
The FBI’s landlord gutted the …
“Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map!”
Army Major Michael Yeager has deployed three times to Afghanistan and Iraq, most recently to Afghanistan in 2010 as a special operations planner for the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command.
But in this recently-posted March interview with the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he spoke mostly about …
The Powers That Be
This Friday, the Air Force will award Francis Gary Powers – the pilot of the ill-fated U-2 spy plane shot down by the Soviets in 1960 and held captive for 21 months – a posthumous Silver Star. It’s the latest in a series of sorrys the U.S. has offered Powers’ family following his poor treatment at the hands of the the government he …
“Lights! Camera! GAO?”
Battleland recalls when Government Accountability Office reports were issued with light-blue covers, not the dark-blue ones they’ve been sporting for a couple of decades. And when G.A.O. stood for General Accounting Office, until Congress decided that sounded too meek (GAO works only for Congress; for years reporters called it the …