Contents contributed and discussions participated by Pedro Gonçalves - Geopolitics Weekly

Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.
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Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.
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But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence.
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The American military is largely prohibited from operating inside Pakistan. And under Pentagon rules, the army is not allowed to hire contractors for spying.
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Military officials said that when Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in the region, signed off on the operation in January 2009, there were prohibitions against intelligence gathering, including hiring agents to provide information about enemy positions in Pakistan. The contractors were supposed to provide only broad information about the political and tribal dynamics in the region, and information that could be used for “force protection,” they said.
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Some Pentagon officials said that over time the operation appeared to morph into traditional spying activities. And they pointed out that the supervisor who set up the contractor network, Michael D. Furlong, was now under investigation.
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But a review of the program by The New York Times found that Mr. Furlong’s operatives were still providing information using the same intelligence gathering methods as before. The contractors were still being paid under a $22 million contract, the review shows, managed by Lockheed Martin and supervised by the Pentagon office in charge of special operations policy.
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BBC News - France's Kouchner denies Iran 'spy-deal' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8685071.stm

Iran France

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 16 May 10 - Cached

Last week, France freed an Iranian engineer whom it had detained for the alleged illegal export of electronic parts for use by Iran's military. The US had wanted to extradite Majid Kakavand, but a French court rejected the request last week and he was allowed return home.
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Brazil's Iran Diplomacy Worries U.S. Officials - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...15lula.html

Brazil US Iran Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 15 May 10 - Cached

Obama Expands Modernization of Nuclear Arsenal - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...14treaty.html

US Nuclear Weapons

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 May 10 - Cached

Eastern Europe, Seeking Energy Security, Turns to Shale Gas - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...12shale.html

Energy Europe Shale Gas

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 12 May 10 - Cached

The industrial Lublin and Podlasie basins of southeastern Poland are becoming major attractions for global energy giants hoping to tap into new sources for Europe.
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“Shale can be a way to increase the region’s energy security, depending on what the results are of all these projects,” said Richard Morningstar, U.S special envoy for Eurasian energy, during a recent visit to Poland. “It is not a question of being independent from Russia. It is a question of having overall energy security.”
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The GeoForschungsZentrum or GFZ Institute, a German research center for geosciences in Potsdam, has estimated that Europe has 510 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, perhaps 5 percent of the world’s supply. Europe contains “prime targets for shale gas exploration,” the institute said. Those targets include Poland, Germany, Hungary, Romania and Turkey, all of which have received overtures from U.S. energy companies.
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