Intelligence

Annals of Failed Intelligence

Featured image The Wall Street Journal has a feature news story in today’s edition detailing a fact long known about the success Cuban intelligence has enjoyed penetrating American government over the years, in particular their sophisticated and widespread recruitment efforts. “Cuba has ‘the best damn intelligence service in the world’ for cultivating agents, said Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who led the agency’s Latin America division,” the story notes. There is »

Biden unplugged

Featured image In his weekly NRO column yesterday, Andrew McCarthy urges readers to review the transcript of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Biden. Hur interviewed Biden in the course of his investigation last year on October 8 and October 9. The Department of Justice did not see fit to release the transcripts until the day of Hur’s congressional testimony last week. As McCarthy puts it, “the transcript is such a »

Willfully yours

Featured image Special Counsel Robert Hur found that President Biden willfully mishandled documents subject to the Espionage Act provision set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 793(e). However, Hur clouded the “willfulness” element of the offense by resting his non-prosecution recommendation in part on Biden’s present senility. Hur presents his analysis of the element of “willfulness” under section 793 in Chapter Nine of his report. The relevant question is whether Biden committed the »

Netanyahu’s negation

Featured image The Biden administration obviously seeks to depose the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The administration has released our intelligence community’s assessment that Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” is “in jeopardy,” according to the annual report on the national security threats facing the United States that was presented to Congress on Monday. I assess that the wish is father to the thought. The assessment provides: “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to »

The uses of Beau Biden

Featured image President Biden hastily called a press event this past Thursday evening to proclaim his mental competence in the teeth of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Having investigated Biden’s retention and disclosure of such documents, Hur recommended no charges. Hur predicated his recommendation on Biden’s incompetence, concluding either that the mental element of potential charges was lacking and/or that a jury would excuse his misconduct »

UNRWA: Israel’s dossier

Featured image Drawing on signals intelligence, interrogations of Hamas terrorists, and documents recovered in Gaza, the government of Israel has compiled a dossier of findings that establish UNRWA’s partnership with Hamas promoting terrorism. The Washington Free Beacon has posted it on Scribd along with its accompanying story. I have embedded it at the bottom. Following a briefing of American officials that included the dossier, the Biden administration temporarily suspended funding to UNRWA. »

CIA Versus Trump

Featured image To the many fine people of the Central Intelligence Agency who still produce, unseen by outsiders and quietly, apolitical intelligence in support of American national decision-makers. That is the dedication to Neutering the CIA: Why U.S. Intelligence Versus Trump Has Long-Term Consequences by John A. Gentry, something of a company man. He started as a CIA analyst in 1986, took “another job” with the CIA soon after, and left the »

Mitrokhin Phone Home

Featured image “Ex-CIA analyst says intel agencies to be politically active again in 2024 election: ‘Significant problem,’” proclaimed the January 2 Fox News headline. The former CIA analyst is Georgetown professor John Gentry, who cites “ideology driven analytic errors” such as diversity, equity and inclusion policies. According to Gentry, Bill Clinton launched the DEI policy, formally established by an Obama executive order in 2011. Gentry flags former CIA boss John Brennan and »

Taking out Arouri

Featured image We can infer that it was Israel that took out Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri and several of his Hamas colleagues this past Tuesday evening. JNS reports that Arouri “was one of the top Hamas leaders on Israel’s target list following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre.” The Jerusalem Post has details of the strike here. Arouri was hit by precision guided missiles that struck the Hamas office in Hezbollah’s »

13 ways of looking at disinformation

Featured image In March 2023 Tablet published Jacob Siegel’s “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.” Subhead accompanied by the profile of a blackbird’s head: “Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” (The subhead and graphic allude to the Wallace Stevens poem.) Siegel’s magnum opus runs to some 13,000 words. I meant to include Siegel’s column in my take on “The year in columns.” Indeed, I had devoted a separate post »

Our FISA-ist State

Featured image “I’m in charge of the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. We are responsible for investigating and prosecuting terrorists, spies and the wide range of threats posed by our most capable and dangerous nation-state adversaries.” Thus spake Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, back on October 5. Here are samples from his 2,000-plus-word speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law: The »

FISA Fast Forward

Featured image Congress has extended Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), The Hill reports, keeping “the nation’s warrantless surveillance powers” in place until April. Those who approved the move, including some California Republicans, might recall the case of Kevin Clinesmith, a lawyer with the FBI’s National Security and Cyber Law division. In August of 2020 Clinesmith pleaded guilty to altering an email to show that U.S. Navy veteran Carter »

CIA Laptop Dancing and Other Follies

Featured image The CIA was created after World War II to prevent another Pearl Harbor attack, writes Charles S. Faddis, a former CIA operations officer and Middle East station chief. Faddis believes the agency “no longer works,” an easy case to make but not exactly news. Al Qaeda was well known but “we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill »

Still dirty after all these years

Featured image Former CIA Director Leon Panetta was a prominent member of the Dirty 51 — the former intelligence officials who signed the lying public statement (“letter”) asserting that the New York Post’s 2020 reporting on the emails found on the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s laptop “ha[d] all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” If you need a refresher, review Natasha Bertrand’s October 19, 2020 Politico story on the »

Intelligence Failure

Featured image There appears to have been a considerable intelligence failure in the runup to the invasion some are calling “Israel’s 9/11.” While the Israelis sort it out, Americans might look back at the actual 9/11, which the vaunted Central Intelligence Agency failed to detect or prevent. The nation was “unprepared,” notes the official 9/11 Commission Report, which leaves little doubt that the CIA underperformed. After the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. »

Eyeless in Gaza

Featured image Four Washington Post reporters have bylines on the story “Hamas received weapons and training from Iran, officials say.” Two more reporters are credited with contributing to the story, whose subhead is “Iran ‘broadly complicit’ in supporting Palestinian militants, but no evidence seen of a direct role in slaughter, officials say.” The six reporters reiterate what should be the common knowledge of anyone who follows the news from the Middle East. »

How rotten is it?

Featured image Rotten apples or rotten to the core? That is the question raised about the FBI yesterday by Kim Strassel’s weekly Wall Street Journal column on the Durham report. John excerpted her column in a nearby post. John’s post really helps to bring the question into focus. In my own “Note on the Durham report” I asserted that the FBI needed to be torn down and rebuilt. I quoted the FBI’s »