Hiding all Spies in a "Central" Intelligence Agency was Just Too Obvious to Work

The Pentagon confirmed it would be establishing a new intelligence agency, the Defense Clandestine Service, meant to work with the CIA, that would establish spy networks to monitor long-term threats to U.S. national security interests, pointing to places like Iran and North Korea. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta approved the program Friday. The DCS would bring the federal government’s intelligence agency total to 17. (more)

Just for the record...
The 16 federal intelligence agencies are: the CIA, the FBI, and, in the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Marine Corps Intelligence Agency, and the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis the Coast Guard Intelligence, the Drug Enforcement Agdministration's Office of National Security Intelligence, the Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and the Energy Department's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence

Former US Marine, Accused CIA Spy, to be Re-tried in Iran

Click to enlarge.

Iran’s Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence for spying handed down to a former U.S. Marine, Amir Mirzai Hekmati, ISNA news agency reported on Monday quoting a top judiciary official.

“The sentence was overturned by the Supreme Court … The case has been sent back” to the court for retrial, prosecutor general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei told a press conference, ISNA reported. (more)

Just in time to celebrate "International Speak Like A Spy Day"

THE DICTIONARY OF ESPIONAGE: SPYSPEAK INTO ENGLISH

We use words to tell each other what we mean. Words illuminate reality. But sometimes, and it seems increasingly so in these troubled times, words can be used to conceal truth.

This is why “The Dictionary of Espionage” is so timely and will appeal to the average citizen who is made vaguely uneasy when he is told that his government is engaged in “surgical strikes” against our enemies, which on occasion, unfortunately, result in “collateral damage” - that is, the U.S. government set out to kill someone but ended up killing someone else.

In this accessibly written book, Washington author Joseph C. Goulden illuminates and defines much of the standard jargon of the intelligence community with refreshing asides about many of spying’s urban legends - many of which may or may not be true. 

Informed by remarkable access to the intelligence community, the book, first issued in 1986, has been significantly updated and contains a foreword by Peter Earnest, the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum in Washington and a former CIA operations officer. (more)

Weekend Movie Review - Safe House

by Erin Biglow...
It probably isn’t much of a spoiler to mention that the titular location featured in Safe House, a CIA action thriller starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds as an unlikely mentor-protégé dynamic duo, turns out to be anything but secure.

Despite being designed as an off-the-grid shelter in which to discreetly perform harrowing interrogation techniques or hide a suspect, the “safe house” in Safe House ends up seeing enough blazing gunfire and breaches of national security to give rookie agent Matt Weston (Reynolds) reason to reassess his stalled climb up the company ladder. (...company ladder, get it? Very funny, Biglow.) (more)

Weekend Movie Tip - Safe House

Supposedly Matt Weston is a spy for the CIA, stationed in South Africa. But in reality, he’s little more than a glorified housekeeper.

His job is to oversee a “safe house,” a secure, off-the-grid installation where other agents — the real agents — can hide a friend or brutally interrogate an enemy. Every day, Matt turns the key, turns on the lights and waits for the doorbell to ring.

Then one day it does, and all hell breaks loose. (more)

"Whaaaadt?!... Hey, why don't you go see where you gotta go."

The CIA said Friday its internal watchdog found nothing wrong with the spy agency’s close partnership with the New York Police Department.

The agency’s inspector general concluded that no laws were broken and there was “no evidence that any part of the agency’s support to the NYPD constituted ‘domestic spying’,” CIA spokesperson Preston Golson said. (more)

Movie Review - The Man Nobody Knew

William Colby was, frankly, a nerd—but a nerd with a mission. He was a lifelong spy, or, perhaps more properly, a spymaster, who rose through the ranks of the CIA to become its director and something of a martyr to the cause of not letting the right hand know what the left hand was doing. 

His son, Carl Colby, has now made a fascinating documentary that seeks to unravel the mysteries of, as his title would have it, “The Man Nobody Knew.” Good luck with that. You leave the film knowing next to nothing about the man, but with the suspicion that he was a psychopath of secrecy, a man devoted to his job, of course, but essentially friendless and utterly detached from normal human feelings. (more) (trailer)

Today in Spy History

On July 26, 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (more)

Abbottabad - How did they do it?

Revelations that American spies monitored Osama bin Laden from a safehouse for months before last Sunday's special forces raid have caused further consternation inside Pakistan, where the military is already fighting angry criticism.

CIA agents sequestered in a rented house conducted extensive surveillance on Bin Laden's hideout using an arsenal of high-tech surveillance equipment including telephoto lenses, eavesdropping equipment and radars to detect possible escape tunnels. (more)

Note to CIA

You rock!

THANK YOU

Pakistan frees CIA spy charged with murder

Raymond Davis, the CIA spy charged with murder in Pakistan, has been freed after the families of two dead men agreed to drop charges in exchange for financial compensation. (more)

NOC, NOC, Who's there? See I a...

Always look for the ring.

The history of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers landing behind bars in foreign countries dates back to 1951, when an undercover agent Hugh Redmond was caught in the Chinese city of Shanghai and charged with espionage.

According to the TIME magazine of October 27, 2003, agent Redmond was posing as an employee of a British import-export company. The CIA spy had to spend 19 years in a Chinese prison before actually dying there. In an article shedding light on the shadowy world of “Non-official Cover” spies or the NOCs, the afore-quoted edition of the TIME magazine had also mentioned another incident where the French agencies had rolled up five CIA officers, including a woman, who had been working under business cover for about five years. This incident had taken place in 1995.

Although the NOCs caught in Paris were simply sent home, a former CIA official familiar with the matter had opined,” The NOCs have no diplomatic status, so they can end up in slammers.”

Research reveals that a “Non-official Cover” is often contrasted with an official cover, where agents assume a position at a seemingly benign department of their government, such as the diplomatic service. Diplomatic service provides the secret service agents with official immunity, thus protecting them from the steep punishments normally meted out to captured spies...

A thorough peek into this subject shows that serving as NOCs, various CIA officers even pose as American businessmen in friendly countries, from Asia to Central America to Western Europe.
 

The revelations about the NOCs (pronounced “knock”) were made public a few years ago by the American media. (more) (more)

Visit the New CIA Website

The CIA has launched a revamped website with links to YouTube and Flickr to help the public better understand the spy agency's often clandestine work, officials said.

"The idea behind these improvements is to make more information about the Agency available to more people, more easily," CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a statement on Monday.

"The CIA wants the American people and the world to understand its mission and its vital role in keeping our country safe," he said.

Although the Central Intelligence Agency's mission has always hinged on secrecy, the spy service is conscious of its public image -- partly for recruiting reasons -- and in recent years has added games and links for children on its website. (more)

Are you the right kind of person for a career at the CIA? Take this fun quiz and find out. You might be surprised by the type of people we actually hire. (QUIZ)

My quiz result... "According to your responses, you are a: Thoughtful Observer."

FX's hilarious animated spy satire, "Archer," is consistently wrong on multiple levels, which accounts for much of the reason it's consistently hilarious.

Equally important, though, "Archer" doesn't regard racist, sexist, ageist and just plain impolite jokes as an end in themselves.

The tasteless humor instead just flows naturally from the dysfunctional bunch of neurotics and misfits who populate the erratic spy agency ISIS.

Amid a blizzard of appalling dialogue, the viewer becomes genuinely interested in many of the characters. That's not to be confused with liking them, but even though they look and speak like toons, they come across as rather human. Except they're funnier than most humans, because they take full advantage of the fact that toons can say things humans cannot. (more)

Odyssey of an Eavesdropper - now an e-book

Originally released as a hard cover book in 2006, Odyssey of an Eavesdropper: My Life in Electronic Countermeasures and My Battle Against the FBI by Martin Kaiser III with Robert S. Stokes is now available in an e-book version.

From Publishers Weekly 
Modesty aside," says electronic surveillance expert Kaiser, "I was to the FBI, and the CIA, and the rest of the intel community, what 'Q'—the British Secret Service technical genius—was to James Bond." And Kaiser, who consulted on the 1998 film Enemy of the State, which he says is loosely based on his story, first made his name in the late 1950s and early '60s, when he helped develop a missile-directing system. Eventually he began making "bugs" for the FBI and CIA as well as private companies. But after his 1975 testimony before the House of Representatives about his work in government intelligence, the FBI, he says, came after him. He was indicted for illegal wiretapping and other crimes, and while he was acquitted on all charges, his business was ruined and he suffered an emotional breakdown that he attributes, in part, to childhood abuse. Kaiser ends the book with a chapter about the lack of privacy in America today—and while some of his warnings seem alarmist, his background will make readers of this compelling and sympathetic book (written with journalist and novelist Stokes) think twice.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

RED - A spies-in-action comedy

A spies-in-action comedy (based on a graphic novel), populated by terrific actors and blessed with a consistently funny and occasionally hilarious script, however implausible. The acronym RED stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” and refers to Frank Moses (Bruce Willis).

A retired CIA “black ops” agent, Frank is so bored in his suburban home that he keeps calling a Social Security clerk, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) in Kansas City, pretending his check didn’t come, just to chat. When masked Ninja-like assassins break into his home, Frank demolishes them, then heads to Kansas City to protect Sarah, knowing their calls have been tapped. (more) (trailer)

The "Thousand Grains of Sand" Approach to Business Espionage

American counter-intelligence efforts are snagging more Chinese spies. This may be more because of increased spying effort by China, than more success by the FBI and CIA...

For over two decades, China has been attempting to do what the Soviet Union never accomplished; steal Western technology, then use it to move ahead of the West...

China gets around this by making it profitable for Western firms to set up factories in China, where Chinese managers and workers can be taught how to make things right. At the same time. China allows thousands of their best students to go to the United States to study. While most of these students will stay in America, where there are better jobs and more opportunities, some will come back to China, and bring American business and technical skills with them. Finally, China energetically uses the "thousand grains of sand" approach to espionage. This involves China trying to get all Chinese going overseas, and those of Chinese ancestry living outside the motherland, to spy for China, if only a tiny bit. (more)

In many societies, this activity is considered normal and patriotic. This highly organized info-harvesting for the sake of the tribe is not the norm in Western society. We have a difficult time fathoming this mentality. Our natural reaction is to treat the threat as unreal. Crime victims often mention this phenomena when describing their experience. 

Accepting the evidence is the first step in defending yourself from an international mugging. Put yourself in the other society's shoes for a moment. Think about it. Their strategy makes sense. Look around. Their strategy works. Accept the evidence. There is no reason for them to change tactics. There is every reason for it to continue and intensify.

They have a working strategy. You need a counter strategy, before your pockets are picked. Call us or the person who hosts Kevin's Security Scrapbook on their web site. Get a counterespionage strategy... while you can still afford one.

Free CIA / Google App Tells Future

Google and the CIA are both investing in a company that monitors the web in real time.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine "goes beyond search" by "looking at the 'invisible links' between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events."

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online "momentum" for any given event.

"The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases," says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science. (more) 

Want to see the future? Recorded Future will let you sign up for a free account ...but they already knew you would.

NSFW OSS FUBARs

The OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual from 1944

 "The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it."

Sample Tips

"Fuel lines to gasoline and oil engines frequently pass over the exhaust pipe. When the machine is at rest, you can stab a small hole in the fuel line and plug the hole with wax. As the engine runs and the exhaust tube becomes hot, the wax will be melted; fuel will drip onto the exhaust and a blaze will start."

"Jam paper, bits of wood, hairpins, and anything else that will fit, into the locks of all unguarded entrances to public buildings."

And, every teen's favorite... "'Misunderstand' orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can." (more)

Secret Agent Jobs - Full-time / Summer-time

The Clandestine Life  
Operations Officers and Collection Management Officers spend a significant portion of their time abroad. Typically, Operations Officers will serve 60% to 70% of their careers overseas, while Collection Management Officers will be overseas for 30% to 40% of their careers. Staff Operations Officers, although based in the Washington, D.C. area, travel overseas on a temporary basis. Language Officers also are primarily based in Washington, though short-term and some long-term foreign travel opportunities are available.

Officers in each of these careers are under cover. By the very nature of this clandestine business, officers can expect limited external recognition for themselves and their families. Instead, the Agency has its own internal promotions, awards and medals, and makes every effort to recognize the accomplishments of its personnel.

In addition to competitive pay, Officers are provided housing and receive overseas allowances and schooling benefits for their children when serving abroad. There are also other benefits, such as language pay incentives, that Officers can receive depending on their skills set and position duties. Collectively, the benefits enable Officers to make significant contributions that impact our national security, and experience a high level of job satisfaction and camaraderie throughout their career. (more) (full-time job openings) (summer jobs)