Group items tagged

A secret FBI study found that anger over U.S. military operations abroad was the most commonly cited motivation for individuals involved in cases of “homegrown” terrorism. The report also identified no coherent pattern to “radicalization,” concluding that it remained near impossible to predict future violent acts. The study, reviewed by The Intercept, was conducted in 2012 by a unit in the FBI’s counterterrorism division and surveyed intelligence analysts and FBI special agents across the United States who were responsible for nearly 200 cases, both open and closed, involving “homegrown violent extremists.” The survey responses reinforced the FBI’s conclusion that such individuals “frequently believe the U.S. military is committing atrocities in Muslim countries, thereby justifying their violent aspirations.” Online relationships and exposure to English-language militant propaganda and “ideologues” like Anwar al-Awlaki are also cited as “key factors” driving extremism. But grievances over U.S. military action ranked far above any other factor, turning up in 18 percent of all cases, with additional cases citing a “perceived war against Islam,” “perceived discrimination,” or other more specific incidents. The report notes that between 2009 and 2012, 10 out of 16 attempted or successful terrorist attacks in the United States targeted military facilities or personnel.

The report is titled “Homegrown Violent Extremists: Survey Confirms Key Assessments, Reveals New Insights about Radicalization.” It is dated December 20, 2012. An FBI unit called the “Americas Fusion Cell” surveyed agents responsible for 198 “current and disrupted [homegrown violent extremists],” which the report says represented a fraction of all “pending, U.S.-based Sunni extremist cases” at the time. The survey seems designed to look only at Muslim violent extremism. (The FBI declined to comment.) Agents were asked over 100 questions about their subjects in order to “identify what role, if any,” particular factors played in their radicalization — listed as “known radicalizers,” extremist propaganda, participation in web forums, family members, “affiliation with religious, student, or social organization(s) where extremist views are expressed,” overseas travel, prison or military experience, and “significant life events and/or grievances.” Among the factors that did not “significantly contribute” to radicalization, the study found, were prison time, military service, and international travel. Although, the report notes, “the FBI historically has been concerned about the potential for prison radicalization,” in fact, “survey results indicate incarceration was rarely influential.” The report ends with recommendations that agents focus their attention on web forums, social media, and other online interactions, and step up surveillance of “known radicalizers” and those who contact them.

The study echoes previous findings, including a 2011 FBI intelligence assessment, recently released to MuckRock through a public records request, which concluded that “a broadening U.S. military presence overseas” was a motivating factor for a rise in plotted attacks, specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That study also found “no demographic patterns” among the plotters. “Insofar as there is an identifiable motivation in most of these cases it has to do with outrage over what is happening overseas,” says John Mueller, a senior research scientist with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University and co-author of “Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism.” “People read news reports about atrocities and become angry,” Mueller said, adding that such reports are often perceived as an attack on one’s own in-group, religion, or cultural heritage. “It doesn’t have to be information from a jihadist website that angers someone, it could be a New York Times report about a drone strike that kills a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan.”

Snowden Archive——The SidTodayFilesSIDtoday is the internal newsletter for the NSA’s most important division, the Signals Intelligence Directorate. After editorial review, The Intercept is releasing nine years’ worth of newsletters in batches, starting with 2003. The agency’s spies explain a surprising amount about what they were doing, how they were doing it, and why.

The Intercept’s first SIDtoday release comprises 166 articles, including all articles published between March 31, 2003, when SIDtoday began, and June 30, 2003, plus installments of all article series begun during this period through the end of the year. Major topics include the National Security Agency’s role in interrogations, the Iraq War, the war on terror, new leadership in the Signals Intelligence Directorate, and new, popular uses of the internet and of mobile computing devices.Along with this batch, we are publishing the stories featured below, which explain how and why we’re releasing these documents, provide an overview of SIDtoday as a publication, report on one especially newsworthy set of revelations, and round up other interesting tidbits from the < em=""> files.<>

SIDtoday is the internal newsletter for the NSA’s most important division, the Signals Intelligence Directorate. After editorial review, The Intercept is releasing nine years’ worth of newsletters in batches, starting with 2003. The agency’s spies explain a surprising amount about what they were doing, how they were doing it, and why.

Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, has often used his perch on the Senate Intelligence Committee to ask national-security officials if they're misbehaving. He typically focuses on abuses that are actually happening, so his latest exchange with CIA Director John Brennan demands wider attention. Udall asked if the CIA is engaged in domestic spying or searches on American citizens. An idle question? One wouldn't think so. And the CIA director appeared to evade the question. For that reason, I suspect, but certainly cannot prove, that the intelligence agency is, in fact, engaged in this behavior. But don't take my word for it. Look at the transcript and judge for yourself:&nbsp; UDALL: This committee was created to address a severe breach of trust that developed when it was revealed that the CIA was conducting unlawful domestic searches. The Church Committee went to work, found that to be true.

I want to be able to reassure the American people ... that the CIA and the director understand the limits of their mission and authorities. We're all aware of executive order 12333. That order prohibits the CIA from engaging in domestic spying and searches of US citizens within our borders. Can you assure the committee that the CIA does not conduct such domestic spying and searches?&nbsp; BRENNAN: I can assure the committee that the CIA follows the letter and the spirit of the law in terms of what the CIA's authorities are, in terms of its responsibilities to collect intelligence that will keep this country safe. Yes, Senator, I do.&nbsp; Hmm. Reframing the question. Answering indirectly. Concluding with syntax that doesn't fit. It all seems suspicious. When Udall asked, "Can you assure the committee that the CIA does not conduct such domestic spying and searches?" Brennan could've replied, "Yes." But that isn't what he said at all. Why, do you think? There could be an explanation I'm missing, but Udall doesn't typically mislead with questions. This is a subject to watch.

Appearing last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that he could not say the threat from al-Qaeda is any less today than it was ten years ago. It was a shocking admission. Does he mean that the trillions of dollars spent fighting the war on terrorism have resulted in no gains? That those who urged us to give up some of our liberties to gain security have, as Benjamin Franklin warned, lost both?

One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps. The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens&nbsp; all without a court order or judicial warrant.

The power of KARMA POLICE was illustrated in 2009, when GCHQ launched a top-secret operation to collect intelligence about people using the Internet to listen to radio shows. The agency used a sample of nearly 7&nbsp;million metadata records, gathered over a period of three months, to observe the listening habits of more than 200,000 people across 185 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

GCHQ’s&nbsp;documents indicate&nbsp;that the plans for KARMA POLICE were drawn up between 2007 and 2008. The system was designed to provide the agency with “either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet.” The origin of the surveillance system’s name is not discussed in the documents. But KARMA POLICE is also the name of a&nbsp;popular song&nbsp;released in 1997 by the Grammy Award-winning British band Radiohead, suggesting the spies may have been fans. A verse repeated throughout the hit song includes the lyric, “This is what you’ll get, when you mess with us.”

There is a new entrant in the already crowded field of Israeli Lobby funded groups opposed to an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. It is the “wounded warriors” and their families denouncing the perfidious Persians. The first salvo was fired on August 4th in a letter to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post from the daughter of an Army Lieutenant Colonel killed in Iraq by “Iranian weapons,” who concluded that “we are already at war with Iran.” After the letter ads began to appear in television markets where congressmen considered to be vulnerable to pressure from Israel’s friends were located. The ads were produced by a group called “Veterans Against an Iran Deal,” whose executive director is Michael Pregent, a former adviser to General David Petraeus who is also an “Expert” affiliated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spin off. The group has a website which claims that “the Iranian regime murdered and maimed thousands of Americans” but there is no indication who exactly supports it and is providing funding or what kind of following it has. The group’s first ad featured as a spokesman a retired army Staff Sergeant named Robert Bartlett. In the video, Bartlett, whose face bears the scars resulting from being on the receiving end of an improvised explosive device in Iraq, claims he was “blown up by an Iranian bomb.” In addition to blaming Iran for providing Iraqi insurgents with the weapons that were used to maim him and kill his colleagues he also tells how Iranians would “kidnap kids” and kill them in front of their parents. Per Bartlett, those who deal with Iran will have “blood on their hands” and will be responsible for funding Iranian terror.

Bartlett’s anger is nevertheless understandable, but his claim that he was maimed by Iranian provided weapons should not go unchallenged. In actual fact, it is a lie. In 2005 the Bush Administration began to claim that Iran had been “interfering” in Iraq. The claim, rarely backed up by an substance, was based on suppositions about Tehran’s likely interests regarding its predominantly Shi’ite neighbor and it was little more than an excuse to explain the persistence and intensity of Iraqi resistance to the American invasion. Sophisticated roadside bombs using shaped charges, initially referred to as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and subsequently as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004. Initial reports on the weapon in June 2005, stated that it was being used by Sunni insurgents and was likely produced by ordnance experts from the disbanded Iraqi Army. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a large army with a sophisticated if limited ability to produce some weapons in its own armories. When the army was foolishly disbanded by the Coalition Provisional Authority, skilled workers who had been employed in the weapons shops were made redundant and took with them the knowledge to make any number of improvised weapons using the materiel that remained in Iraq’s arms storage depots.

The indictment of Iran as the source of weapons being used by insurgents continued and intensified as the security situation in Iraq deteriorated. Some media coverage attributed the killing of hundreds of American soldiers to Iranian supplied weapons because any death by EFP was immediately attributed to Iran. In spite of the lack of any solid evidence, the largely neoconservative supporters of pre-emptive action against Iran stated specifically that Iran was “killing American soldiers” through its provision of sophisticated weaponry. A nearly hysterical progress report given to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on April 8, 2008 went even farther, claiming that Iran was responsible for most of the violence occurring in Iraq. But the argument about Iranian involvement in Iraq was itself logically inconsistent, something that Crocker and Petraeus should have understood. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni and hostile to Iran. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would have sought such aid was implausible.

For decades, the world has known that the massive Israeli facility near Dimona, in the Negev Desert, was the key to its secret nuclear project. Yet, for decades, the world—and Israel—knew that Israel had once misleadingly referred to it as a “textile factory.” Until now, though, we’ve never known how that myth began—and how quickly the United States saw through it. The answers, as it turns out, are part of a fascinating tale that played out in the closing weeks of the Eisenhower administration—a story that begins with the father of Secretary of State John Kerry and a familiar charge that the U.S. intelligence community failed to “connect the dots.

In its final months, even as the Kennedy-Nixon presidential race captivated the country, the Eisenhower administration faced a series of crises involving Cuba and Laos. Yet, as the fall of 1960 progressed, President Dwight D. Eisenhower encountered a significant and unexpected problem of a new kind—U.S. diplomats learned and U.S. intelligence soon confirmed that Israel was building, with French aid, a secret nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert. Soon concluding that the Israelis were likely seeking an eventual nuclear weapons capability, the administration saw a threat to strategic stability in the Middle East and a nuclear proliferation threat. Adding fuel to the fire was the perception that Israel was deceitful, or had not “come clean,” as CIA director Allen Dulles put it. Once the Americans started asking questions about Dimona, the site of Israel’s nuclear complex, the Israelis gave evasive and implausible cover stories.&nbsp;

This article, recounting the Dimona discovery and its implications, is based on a special collection of declassified documents published on Wednesday by the National Security Archive, the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.

On Tuesday, news site The Register published a story containing explosive "above top secret" information about Britain's surveillance programs, including details of a "clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East." Reporter Duncan Campbell, who wrote the story, said it was based on documents "leaked by fugitive NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden" that other news outlets had declined to publish.&nbsp; However, it's not necessarily clear how Campbell got his hands on Snowden's document stash.&nbsp; Glenn Greenwald, who published the first stories based on Snowden's documents in The Guardian, told Business Insider on Tuesday that Snowden has "no source relationship" with Campbell. "Snowden has no source relationship with Duncan (who is a great&nbsp;journalist), and never provided documents to him directly or indirectly,&nbsp;as Snowden has made clear," Greenwald said in an email. "I can engage in informed speculation about how Duncan got this document —&nbsp;it's certainly a document that several people in the Guardian UK&nbsp;possessed — but how he got it is something only he can answer."

For his part, Campbell is not interested in discussing how he got the documents used for his story. "Journalists in the UK — just as in the US — do not reveal their sources, or respond to questions as to confidential sources. We protect them. That is our obligation and our duty," Campbell wrote in an email to Business Insider. This isn't the first story Campbell has published allegedly based on Snowden documents. Last August, Campbell wrote a piece for The Independent about the secret British surveillance base. In that article, Campbell suggested The Guardian "agreed to the Government’s request not to publish any material contained in the Snowden documents that could damage national security," including the existence of the surveillance base.

Greenwald responded with a column that included a statement from Snowden saying he had not worked with Campbell and speculating the documents were actually by the British government as part of an attempt to make the case his leaks were "harmful." In addition to Snowden's theory that Campbell may have obtained documents from a government source, it also seems possible he was leaked information by a Guardian staffer with access to the documents. Business Insider asked Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger about this possibility on Tuesday and received a response from a representative for the paper who said they have no idea how Campbell obtained any of Snowden's documents.&nbsp; "We don't know who Mr Campbell's source is. We have always been open and transparent about all of our reporting partners," the representative &nbsp;said.

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first definitive evidence that the NSA has for years made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies. Planning documents for ICREACH, as the search engine is called, cite the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration as key participants. ICREACH contains information on the private communications of foreigners and, it appears, millions of records on American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Details about its existence are contained in the archive of materials provided to The Intercept by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Earlier revelations sourced to the Snowden documents have exposed a multitude of NSA programs for collecting large volumes of communications. The NSA has acknowledged that it shares some of its collected data with domestic agencies like the FBI, but details about the method and scope of its sharing have remained shrouded in secrecy.

ICREACH has been accessible to more than 1,000 analysts at 23 U.S. government agencies that perform intelligence work, according to a 2010 memo. A planning document from 2007 lists the DEA, FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency as core members. Information shared through ICREACH can be used to track people’s movements, map out their networks of associates, help predict future actions, and potentially reveal religious affiliations or political beliefs. The creation of ICREACH represented a landmark moment in the history of classified U.S. government surveillance, according to the NSA documents.

Documents published with this article: CIA Colleagues Enthusiastically Welcome NSA Training Sharing Communications Metadata Across the U.S. Intelligence Community CRISSCROSS/PROTON Point Paper Decision Memorandum for the DNI on ICREACH Metadata Sharing Memorandum Sharing SIGINT metadata on ICREACH Metadata Policy Conference ICREACH Wholesale Sharing Black Budget Extracts

The CIA and Signals Intelligence Formerly Top-Secret Multi-Volume History Details Spy Agency’s Conflicts with NSA and Military over SIGINT Role Additional Declassified Documents Describe CIA Domestic and Foreign SIGINT Activity CIA Role Often Put It in Direct Competition with NSA, but Recent Cooperation Made Possible Controversial Exploits Uncovered by Edward Snowden National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 506

Top Secret Minutes of Politburo discussion show Soviets learned the lessons of Chernobyl Open U.S.-Soviet communication regarding the accident on the eve of the Reykjavik summit of Reagan and Gorbachev

Thirty years ago, a Soviet nuclear submarine with about 30 nuclear warheads on board sank off U.S. shores north of Bermuda as Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan were preparing for their historic summit in Reykjavik, Iceland.&nbsp; But instead of Chernobyl-style denials, the Soviet government reached out to the Americans, issued a public statement, and even received offers of help from Washington, according to the never-before-published transcript of that day’s Politburo session, posted today by the National Security Archive. The submarine, designated K-219, suffered an explosion in one of its missile tubes due to the leakage of missile fuel into the tube on October 3.&nbsp; The 667-A project Yankee-class boat was armed with 16 torpedoes and 16 ballistic missiles. After the initial explosion, the crew members heroically put out fire and were forced to shut down the nuclear reactors manually because the command-and-control equipment had been damaged.&nbsp; Three crew members died in the blast and fire. Senior Seaman Sergey Preminin stayed in the reactor compartment to shut down reactors, and could not be evacuated.&nbsp; The rest escaped safely. Initially, it seemed the submarine could be salvaged; it was attached to the Soviet commercial ship Krasnogvardeisk for towing.&nbsp; However, the tow cord broke for unknown reasons and the submarine sank.&nbsp; Submarine Commander Captain Second rank Igor Britanov stayed with the sub until its final moments.&nbsp; He initially came under investigation at home but all charges were removed in 1987.&nbsp; According to statements by U.S. Vice Admiral Powell Carter, the submarine did not present a danger of nuclear explosion or radioactive contamination, as was reported by the New York Times.[1]

The Politburo also heard a report from Deputy Defense Minister Chief of Navy Admiral Vladimir Chernavin.&nbsp; Other members present express concerns about a possible U.S. effort to salvage parts of the submarine and gain access to design information.&nbsp; But Chernavin assures them that the boat design is outdated and therefore is not of any interest to the Americans.&nbsp; Another major concern raised is the possibility of a nuclear explosion or radioactive contamination due to water pressure at extreme depths.&nbsp; Chernavin cites Soviet Navy commission experts who ruled out the possibility of a nuclear detonation and concluded that contamination would happen over a long period and would not reach the surface.