First off is another confirmation that US and UK forces are planning to expand their special operations activities inside Pakistan, with US forces authorized to fight along side Pakistan forces when dealing with key targets hiding in the tribal areas of Pakistan:

The U.S. is to send about 100 trainers to work with a Pakistani paramilitary force fighting the Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in the restive tribal areas, American military officials have said, The New York Times reported over the weekend.

The U.S. Central Command is considering a plan to help train the Frontier Corps, an 85,000 strong paramilitary force recruited from ethnic groups on the border with Afghanistan.

This drastically expands the existing programme under which small teams of U.S. Special Operations forces have been training their Pakistani counterparts in counterinsurgency tactics, the paper said.

Initially, U.S. trainers would be restricted to training compounds, but could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions against the militants, a senior U.S. military official said. Britain is also considering a similar training mission in Pakistan, according to the Times.

We are definitely going after al-Qaeda in a big way. And the Pakistan security forces are still on the hunt rounding up terrorists, as this story indicates:

Pakistani officials say police have arrested three men suspected of planning suicide attacks in the eastern city of Lahore.

Lahore’s police chief Malik Iqbal says the suspects were detained in the city Thursday after they got off a bus from a tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

He says police seized a range of explosives from the suspects, including four suicide jackets. The police chief says the men confessed to being members of a terrorist group and to plotting attacks on government installations and personalities in Lahore.

To be able to pick these folks up as they got off their bus from the terrorist enclaves implies some serious intelligence capabilities. And al-Qaeda is hurting for fighters as they put out the call for help:

The leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan has urged more Muslims to join and finance the group’s war there, saying Western troops are close to defeat.

“Your brothers in Afghanistan are waiting for you and longing to (welcome) you,” Mustafa Abu al-Yazid said in an audio recording posted on an Islamist Web site.

“The time for reaping the fruit of victory and empowerment has come … The infidel enemy has been badly wounded at the hands of your brothers and is close to its demise so assist your brothers to slaughter him,” added the militant leader, speaking with an Egyptian-sounding accent.

Yeah, right. Defeat is imminent, but it is not the US who will be facing extinction. On the Iraq front US forces have captured another Iranian military operative which clearly shows Iran is at war with the US and Iraq:

he U.S.-led coalition has captured a senior Iranian operative who helped finance and equip Shi’ite militias.

U.S. Army paratroopers detained the suspected senior leader of the Iranian-sponsored Special Groups network during an operation in Baghdad’s Beida neighborhood on Feb. 27, Middle East Newsline reported.

Officials said the Special Groups was trained and equipped by Iran. They said the organization, believed to comprise a series of cells, introduced the Explosively-Formed Penetrator, designed to destroy U.S. — and other Western origin main battle tanks.

I still say some cruise missiles would be a good signal to send to the mad mullahs of Iran to back off. And finally we have to face the fact that certain liberals in the US have taken to working for the terrorists as they continue to expose classified operations to our enemies so that these enemies can stop our actions:

The Bush administration is prolonging the hunting season against journalists. The latest victim is James Risen, The New York Times reporter for national security and intelligence affairs. About three months ago, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena against him, ordering Risen to give evidence in court. A heavy blackout has been imposed on the affair, with the only hint being that it has to do with sensitive matters of “national security.”

But conversations with several sources who are familiar with the affair indicate that Risen has been asked to testify as part of an investigation aimed at revealing who leaked apparently confidential information about the planning of secret Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad missions concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

The treasonous leaking must be stopped. And if it requires setting the example of what kind of punishment awaits the leakers, then so be it.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

Forget the NY Times spin. The fact is Mary McCarthy admitted to leaking information about the CIA detention and interrogation program. And McCarthty worked in the Inspector General’s Office, which is why her crime was so terrible. The office meant to enforce, laws ethics and general policies was found to be violating those very things. And we know this is going to be leading to a much wider cabal of ‘former and current’ CIA rogues because these same people are conveniently – again – the source for the NY Times spin.

Current and former intelligence officials said the inquiry had involved formal interviews with at least some of the inspector general’s staff and was perceived by some agency employees as an “investigation,” a label Mr. Gimigliano rejected.

Several current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the inquiry.

Does this include the Wilsons? How about Rand Beers who admitted Jow Wilson was on Kerry’s campaign when he started the lies about the Niger Forgeries (in his wife’s office safe in the CIA at some point)? The same Rand Beers who came to the defense of Mary McCarthy after she outted herself?

The fact is something is brewing and it is clear it is big. Why else do a story on an investigation inside the CIA that has not uncovered anything? Yet. Looks like a classic attempt to get ahead of the news to try and cover for a scandal. But honestly I don’t know what is going on except the NY Times is worried enough to write about it And is it any big surprise the NY Times was running McCarthy’s PR defense when the story broke? I strongly recommend reading through my posts around the initial event. They include links to others with a lot of good speculation and informaiton as well.

Update: Interestingly enough the LA Times story is not available right now. But here is a version of it in the Baltimore Sun. Wonder what caused that?

The juror is partially right. Libby was caught up in the investigation – and it was an investigation that should have ended long before Libby and Rove were called to the stand. In the end, rather than admit there was nothing and that it had been a wild-goose chase, Patrick Fitzgerald chose to ruin the life of Scooter Libby.

A pardon may be called for if an appeals court cannot overturn this absurd verdict.

The CIA failed to see the coming storm of 9-11. They failed to raise the alarm on Bin Laden and push for his capture, especially after the Embassy bombings in 1998. The CIA missed the threat from Atta and his band of terrorists in Hamburg, even though they were monitoring them with the German intelligence agency. The CIA “lost the trail” of the 9-1 highjackers as they made their way here to the US, even though the NSA was probably sending them intel that we had been invaded by cells ssociated with Bin Laden (which is all the NSA could do pre 9-11, since the FBI and FISA were off limits). The CIA dissed the Able Danger effort which simply supported their general concerns with hard connection collected at warp speed through data mining of public, commercial data.

The CIA missed all of this and they missed Pakistan’s nukes, North Korea’s nukes, Libya’s nukes etc. The Bush administration forced the issue by demanding the elimination of AQ Kahn’s nuclear technology black market ring. The CIA, under Clinton, GAVE Iran the keys to nuclear weapons by sending them designs on nuclear triggers in a disasterous campaign to trick Iran! We only ended up tricking ourselves into arming the most virulent Islamo Fascist state out there. There are indications the CIA assisted Al Qaeda during the Clinton years instead of trying to take them down.

But the worst was still to come. In the run up to Iraq the CIA held onto forged documents that supposedly illustrated purchase of uranium yellow cake by Iraq from Niger. They held these documents in their safe as the debate was raging in Congress and the UN, only releasing them at the optimal partisan time around the State of The Union when we made the case to take on Hussein. And then, from the same group that held back the documents for so long, came the husband of a CIA agent with uncommon knowledge of these forgeries (since he knew the people who supposedly signed the documents, and interacted with them in his first CIA supported trip to Niger) who claimed the administration knew these were forgeries and lied to the American people. The CIA group this man’s wife worked for knew about the documents and apparently leaked them to the IAEA to make a big oolitical splash. But the administration had relied on other intelligence – and never once mentioned Niger.

The CIA leaked the prison stories from their office of professional conduct – the Office of Inspector General. And the NSA leaks and the SWIFT leaks, etc. There is a reason the CIA has no credibility – they earned it. They couldn’t abide by our democratic process and so they went on a covert effort to undermine our elections in three cycles now. Instead of worrying about Iran, Iraq and Bin Laden all the CIA’s energy seem focused on getting George Bush. So someone tell me, with a record like this, why America should trust the CIA? My guess is all the serious analysts and officers have been moved to the other, now elevated, intelligence groups while the CIA attempts to finish cleaning house and re-focusing their minds. But right now the CIA is on parole and needs to demonstrate they have any credibility left.

A federal judge has ordered an investigation into how reporters learned that two pro-Israel lobbyists were under federal investigation before they were formally charged, creating even more scrutiny of the media in a case with broad First Amendment implications.

The order by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria came in the case against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who are charged with receiving and disseminating national defense information. Legal experts say the case could lead to criminal prosecutions of reporters or newspapers that print information the government has classified.

…

The case has alarmed First Amendment advocates and some lawyers, who say it criminalizes the type of information exchange that happens every day among journalists, lobbyists and others in Washington. Prosecutors have argued that disclosing sensitive defense information could harm national security.

Just because people in DC break the rules doesn’t mean the rules are important. In fact, typically those who had the information only publicized it to stop something serious. But what has happened since Bush has been in office is leaking for partisan purposes. But the idea people can leak to the media under the guise of a whistleblower is ludicrous. While leaking today is rampant or partisan reasons, what happens if a terrorist sympathizer is in a position to dismantle our defenses one media leak at a time?

I have worked on classified programs and it irresponsible to leave wide open back door for classified information to become public and therefore be transferred through the media between source and consumer. What is to stop anyone from exposing information in return for some form of compensation? How would we know if a NY Times reporter is not getting some exclusive information from a commercial entity in return for exposing telecom companies’ NSA relationships?

We cannot allow these information brokers, whose power is based on what controlled information they have in hand, to dictate how exposed the rest of will be terrorist attacks.

Terrorists were planning to unleash a series of deadly mid-air explosions on flights between London and America on August 16, it has been revealed today.

…

United Airline tickets dated next Wednesday were found by police at the home of one of the raided addresses.

The details seemed to have come from arrests in Pakistan, which should be a reminder to everyone that Pakistan – with all its faults and internal problems – is a solid ally of the West. Pakistan probably just saved hundreds and maybe thousands of lives. These arrests in Pakistan seemed to have exposed the details of the plot:

Two British Muslims arrested eight to ten days ago in Lahore and Karachi gave vital information about the alleged plot to detonate chemical suicide bombs on US-bound passenger jets, officials in Pakistan claimed today.

…

Last night US officials told reporters that substantial sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to two of the alleged ringleaders in Britain, so that they could purchase airline tickets.

One report said they were planning a “dry run” to see if the mechanics of the plot worked – and hinted that this was what decided the security services and Special Branch to move in, ending a huge surveillance operation that had lasted a year.

Emphasis mine. Well, I guess these terrorists forgot to read the NY Times or they would have known their money transfers were not safe. Who knows what would have happened if they had adjusted their actions in light of the NY Times declaring an end to the war on terror and exposing the SWIFT financial surveillance. While Pakistan may have just saved hundreds of lives, the NY Times just came close to helping kill hundreds of people. Note that the US was the one pushing for the us of SWIFT. It may not have been possible for the UK to accomplish this feat.

It is clear now the NY Times was horribly wrong to expose the terrorist surveillance efforts of the US and the West. The media needs to sit down, stop complaining about the criticism being heaped on them (rightfully) and admit they have been used by partisan operatives to cripple our efforts and these partisans nearly got a lot of people killed. Would we have caught this without the financial transaction lead? You are either with us, or killing us it seems.

Update: This is how the left deals with terrorist threats – they make fun of it.

A report by columnist Sidney Blumenthal in Salon claims that Israel is receiving intelligence from the US’s National Security Agency.

Blumenthal claims to be in touch with “a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation” to supply Israel with signals intelligence from American assets to help it monitor armament transfers from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah. He states that President Bush has approved the intelligence sharing.

Maybe he sees this as a big career move to garner headlines – and in that he would be right! But whatever idiotic Walter Mitty fantasies that are running through this loser’s head it is clear he just alerted Iran and Syria and Hezbollah to the fact their activities are being monitored, giving them clear warning to change tactics if they want to remain undetected. When did the left become so overwhelmed with Bush Derangement Syndrome that they would help terrorists move military supplies into the battle field so more Israeli civilians can die? Here is the original Salon article.

After exposing the intelligence to our enemies, Sick Sid goes on a wild liberal fantasy run based on information fed to him by someone who also clearly has wild liberal fantasies. Whatever strange, paranoid-driven monsters inhabit Sid’s head, he is not going to be cleared of publicizing classified material on an insanity plea (which seems to be his best hope). Sid and his source disagree with policy positions taken by Bush. Too bad. They were not voted into office twice now and these liberals need to learn to accept political defeat and not break laws in a fit of frustration. Time for Sid to meet the Grand Jury. This effort is not illegal, is not exposing Americans to civil rights abuse, is not aimed at anything but stopping the flow of weapons to Israelis enemies on their northern border. People will die if this news helps the Syrians and Iranians successfully adjust their tactics.

My position has been that there is plenty of evidence in statements and reporting that the big change post 9-11 was the flow of leads to the FBI from NSA overseas surveillance. There is plenty of indications that NSA leads on people in contact with terrorists overseas, once bottled up, were now flooding the FBI and the FIS Court. I had based this conclusion on information I found on the Church Committee and its view of the NSA during the time the committee was crafting the FISA statutes. My speculation was that the NSA never passed leads to the FBI because of some historic policy. I am prepared to say maybe I missed something, and it leads us back to the CIA.

My mistake was in forgetting which agency led the anti-Al Qaeda intelligence effort. The CIA was of course the lead and it failed miserably in that charter. Not only did it not capture or kill Bin Laden, it found and then lost 9-11 highjacker Mohamed Atta when he and his terrorists were in Hamburg (see this longish post on the Able Danger timeline). The German government had Atta and company in their sites and report CIA efforts to infiltrate the group there. The CIA knew of 9-11 pilots Midhar and Hamzi being in San Diego, but alerted no one. All these opportunities and the CIA kept quiet. What does that have to do with the NSA? Check out this IBD article on the CIA and 9-11 and phone calls:

Lawrence Wright, author of a soon-to-be-published history of al-Qaida, detailed in The New Yorker magazine this month how the CIA knew for more than a year and half before 9-11 that two of the hijackers were living in the U.S. The agency refused to share that information with the FBI unit investigating al-Qaida.

…

According to Wright, the concern then was about overly zealous FBI surveillance. In a recent interview, Wright said, “There was a fear in the Justice Department that FBI agents would be tempted to label cases as being related to foreign intelligence rather than as criminal cases because it would be far easier to gain permission to surveil suspects. So the Justice Department erected The Wall.”

This mutated into “a straitjacket” for FBI investigators, writes Wright. “Intelligence agents were warned that sharing such information with criminal agents could mean the end of their careers.” Even members of the same squad couldn’t share information.

The CIA embraced The Wall and kept information about international phone calls and al-Qaida meetings from the FBI’s al-Qaida unit.

Emphasis mine. Sorry folks, but it never occured to me there could be another agency in between the NSA and the FIS Court. I have been reporting on how NSA leads now go to the FBI, what I failed to appreciate is the NSA could have been passing leads to the CIA pre 9-11 since it was the CIA that would be in charge of interfacing to local law enforcement. It makes sense that the US will designate one center to be the prime interface the two domains. That way the NSA and DIA (Able Danger) and CIA don’t conflict in their interactions with the FBI and DoJ. Prior to 9-11 the CIA was the lead agency on Al Qaeda and all intel went through them. There are enough ex-spooks and military Intelligence out there to confirm my suspicions. The lead FBI and DoJ offices were in New York. And the Gorelick Wall barred them from comparing notes (on threat of being fired). Clearly it was the CIA’s decision whether to bring in the FBI.

I often wondered why the NSA seemed so non-plussed over all this mess. Why Hayden gladly discussed the fact that intel was shut off from the FBI if the terrorists made it here in the US. Why the NSA never detected Hamzi and Midhar in San Diego (which apparently they did) and felt like they dropped the ball. Now I see why. They didn’t drop the ball. The one agency at the nexus of all the leaks and attempts to throw elections against Bush has been the CIA. The CIA was the lead agency that allowed our defences to falter, ignored Able Danger and probably blocked the NSA leads from getting to the FBI. The picture may have just cleared up immensely. Because we know, being a military unit, the NSA probably won’t leak, but we all know the CIA does and does it regularly. We may be understanding how much a deterrant the CIA was – a deterrant to our protection. If the CIA was the organization that held NSA leads back and let 9-11 transpire, then it was not NSA, FBI DoJ and FISA which were dysfunctional. No, not at all. If the CIA was being pushed aside after 9-11 and now the NSA was interfacing directly with the FBI, the CIA agents who were losing their clout and authority would have plenty of axes to grind and have motive to leak to the NY Times. We all know the CIA has the access to the media. Was the NY Times leak payback from a now marginal CIA for being sidelined? Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

More on the Lawrence Wright article here at The New Yorker.

There are also indications from at least one Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), that the FBI is asking Members about comments of theirs that appeared in other publications regarding the NSA program.

The interviews, which came about after extensive negotiations this spring between the Justice Department and the counsels for the House and Senate, are taking place in Members’ Congressional offices, usually with two FBI agents and one Justice Department lawyer in attendance. Members are also permitted to have a House or Senate counsel on hand if they wished.

Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have already been interviewed. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) is expected to be interviewed soon.

I hope Roll Call, which has the full story behind a subscription barrier, will see fit to publicize their full reporting. Either way, this is good news that the leaks are being taken seriously and serious measures are being invoked.

The NSA policy directs agency employees to “actively monitor the media for the purpose of identifying unauthorized disclosures” of classified information. It requires that all divisions within the agency produce annual reports on the number of classified leaks they uncover.

Such directives create pressure to identify more leaks, said Matthew Aid, a former NSA analyst who is writing a multivolume history of the agency.

“Instead of hunting for spies within the agency, now you’re hunting for disenchanted employees who may know somebody who knows a reporter,” he said. “It’s bound to divert resources and focus.”

See, if you have a disgruntled employee or a spy/mole spilling the beans to get back at someone that is fair game to investigate and prosecute. But if you are a source for a liberal hit piece that is not? Well, the interesting thing is you do not know the motives until you catch the leaker and investigate! So we have to detect all leaks and sort them out as we find them. The concern about people doing their work is a red herring. People get permission a priori to contact media people on subjects. If the job requires the contact it will be sanctioned.

But this brings up another angle the news media better face and soon. Al Qaeda is as smart as any other group (most if not all their leaders were educated in the West). Intelligence and subversion imply embedding people in organizations that can get information and raise havoc. The Iraq coverage is constantly being challenged as infiltrated by the enemy to plant stories and flame violence. The news media here in the US could also be leveraged to publicize secrets by elements within the media who actually have ulterior motives. What is there to say Risen and Lichtblau of the NY Times are not being used by very smart people to cripple our defenses in a way untraceable back to Al Qaeda? I am not saying that is the case. I am saying the goal of creating this situation, where our news media cripples our national efforts, is an obvious goal of intelligence agents and spies. It is a classic covert op.

The media is so obsessed with BDS they are the easiest dupes in the world to get to do Al Qaeda’s dirty work. Naive and driven by emotion our media may be the weakest link in our defenses.

Just some wild speculation to ponder on this Sunday.

One audience member asked about the role of media leaks. Raines opted not to go in-depth since he no longer is a working journalist, but offered a bit of a leak of his own:

“Almost all leakers are lawyers. That’s the bottom line.”

It is a well known fact that most elected leaders in Congress are Lawyers, as are their staff. So Raine’s has at least increased the probabilities that the leaks of our national security did indeed come from the halls of Congress and a severely desparate minority party willing to do anything to win an election.

We here in the US debate things initially in the open, and then many times we take them into the classified world to make them work. In attempting to make an excuse for exposing the actual, operational details of America’s Terrorist surveillance program Pincus goes back to the ‘what if’ days to show the final solution was one of those options originally openly discussed.

n February 2002, Jeffrey P. Neubert, president and chief executive of the New York Clearing House Association LLC, described the intelligence-gathering system at a hearing of the House Financial Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations. Neubert said under the proposed system, government agencies would electronically send the names of suspected terrorists or terrorist organization to financial institutions “seeking account and/or transaction ‘hits’ which would be returned to the respective [government] organizations.”

Yeah Walter, Neubert and others proposed all sorts of ideas to detect terrorists back then. Everyone wanted to help. The good news was back then no one knew which methods would be put into action. That is like saying we plan to monitor organize crime verses exposing exactly where the monitoring is being done – for example AT&T phones in NY City.

But to Walter, that is enough of a supposed cover to dismiss the fact the NY Times exposed our actual defenses (not theoretical future ones) and possibly caused the NY City tunnel bombing investigation to move too soon and miss 4 out of 7 suspects. But Pincus’ example is as dumb as all the other proffered excuses from the liberal media:

Neubert’s New York Clearing House runs the CHIPS payment system, which describes itself as “the leading private-sector payment system infrastructure for clearing and settling U.S. dollar payments.” Providing payment services to more than 1,600 financial institutions worldwide, CHIPS handles $1.5 trillion through about 8 million domestic and international transactions each day. Neubert told the subcommittee how a task force of government and financial industry personnel was also focused “on the issue beyond our borders” and proposed to “work globally to remove obstacles to the flow of information” to government entities.

What is wrong with this example from 2002? Simpe, CHIPS was an infrastructure for dealing with dollar payments. Any terrorist worth their salt would avoid using dollars until here in the US. So this example doesn’t compare to the SWIFT program which overseas all denominations. So any terrorist reading this might conclude it was OK to transact business in local currencies moving through Europe. But Pincus is openly misinforming his readers, which is supposed to be a sin of journalism (but seems to a badge of liberal ‘reporting’):

The testimony was one of several examples where government and industry officials have publicly described how counterterrorism agencies access financial records to track terrorists and shut down their funding, leading some lawmakers and counterterrorism specialists to doubt assertions that the most recent revelations have significantly helped al-Qaeda or other terrorists by disclosing valuable new information.

Emphasis mine. The change in what happened in 2002 from the first paragrpaphs to this one in the middle shows either duplicity or desperation. The 2002 hearings were on proposals, not the actual implementations like the recent NY Times stories. These were NOT descriptions of how it is done, they were ideas on what could be done. All Pincus has done in this lame attempt was re-publish information best left out of the current newspapers. Even if there were open discussions in 2002, why alert the terrorists to them and help them find the valuable information within the sea of information that is on the web? Oh yeah – to cover those exposed backsides of the liberal media who have made it much, much harder for us to protect our citizens from attack. Bush is trying to protect us and the media is trying to protect themselves.

]]> http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2136/feed 4