SpyTalk

A Note to Readers: SpyTalk has a Brand New Blog

2008-06-25T12:51:00.003-04:00

As of this week, SpyTalk has expanded from a weekly column to a daily blog at Congressional Quarterly's new-ish CQ Politics site. I'll still be offering regular, in-depth reporting and analysis on national security issues, particularly the sprawling U.S. intelligence "community, there. But the new site will provide a more timely offering of the kind of short, insider items that proved so popular under the Backchannel Chatter banner at the end of my columns. So I hope I'll see you there, at the new SpyTalk daily blog.

We Rage, Europeans Yawn, Over Domestic Counterterrorism Ops

2008-06-21T09:14:00.004-04:00

Outside the United Kingdom, which invented civil liberties with the Magna Carta, ordinary Europeans couldn’t care less about wiretapping, national ID cards, preventive detention and police spies in mosques.

CQ Politics (06/20/2008)

Collateral Damage

2008-06-07T16:57:00.006-04:00

Bush’s Law, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau's new account of the Bush administration's legalistic contortions after 9/11, is full of mouth-drying and finger-curling horror stories.

The New York Times (06/01/2007)

Military Oversight Chairman Snyder Aims at the Fog of War

2008-06-07T16:48:00.003-04:00

When Rep. Vic Snyder, the six-term Democrat from Arkansas, begins to talk about the shortsighted military policies of the Bush administration in Iraq, I half-expect to see the tight-lipped outrage of the Vietnam veteran he is. But last week, the chairman of the revitalized House Armed Service Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee responded with the calm detachment of a physician — which he also is.

CQ Politics(06/06/2008)

Rent-a-Spy

2008-06-05T02:11:00.006-04:00

Three quarters of the U.S. intelligence budget now goes to outside contractors, Tim Shorrock says in an important new book. And that ain't good. A review of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

The Washington Post(05/29/2008)

Will a Woman Helm U.S. Intelligence Next Year?

2008-06-02T01:57:00.004-04:00

Women have run Britain's domestic counterterrorism agency, and a woman may soon run France's foreign espionage service. Three American women with similar credentials could possibly emerge from the shadows in an Obama, Clinton or McCain administration.

CQ Politics (05/30/2008)

The End Might Be Nearer Than You Think

2008-05-16T20:33:00.010-04:00

You think Iraq is a problem? How about a space rock the size of Long Island landing on your house? Go ahead and laugh, but the end may actually be near, according to a few members of Congress who think we need to move fast to head off an asteroid Armageddon.

CQ Politics (05/16/2008)

Film Exposes the Seduction of Secrecy

2008-05-10T22:50:00.004-04:00

“Secrecy is something like forbidden fruit,” former NSA official Mike Levin says in a startling new documentary, aptly named Secrecy. “You can’t have it. It’s classified. That makes you want it more.” But who should determine what a real secret is -- bureaucrats or the press?

CQ Politics (05/09/2008)

State Department Says ‘Missing’ Laptops Located

2008-05-06T23:33:00.003-04:00

The State Department says it has found the 400 laptops that were unaccounted for last week. A senior official acknowledged that managers in the Diplomatic Security service had lost track of the computers, which are destined for friendly foreign police services. But he said that they were located “within 24 hours” after CQ reported them missing over the weekend.

CQ Politics (05/06/2008)

Hundreds of State Department Laptops Missing: Audit

2008-05-03T01:41:00.004-04:00

As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, officials say, which provides counterterrorism training and equipment, including laptops, to foreign police, intelligence and security forces.

CQ Politics (05/02/2008)

Israel Might Have Many More Spies Here, Officials Say

2008-04-26T00:18:00.003-04:00

The elderly man arrested last week on charges of spying for Israel years ago was probably still working for the Jewish state’s espionage service in tandem with another, as yet unidentified spy, former U.S. intelligence officials say. The case serves as a reminder that the U.S.-Israeli intelligence relationship runs on two tracks.

CQ Politics (04/25/2008)

The CIA's Odd Man Out

2008-04-19T18:32:00.004-04:00

It’s not easy to generate a lot of sympathy for a CIA man implicated in a botched kidnapping. But I feel sorry for Bob Lady, the CIA’s man in Milan during the Abu Omar snatch. Lady has been abandoned by his agency while others who insisted on the screwy operation over his objectives get ahead.

CQ Politics (04/18/2008)

Iran’s Top Terrorist Emerges From the Shadows

2008-04-12T22:39:00.005-04:00

Brigadier Gen. Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s supersecret overseas intelligence and sabotage service, is beginning to show a little more ankle, but he remains pretty much an enigma among Iran experts in Washington — including U.S. intelligence agencies, some say.

CQ Politics (04/11/2008)

Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees

2008-04-06T12:05:00.007-04:00

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs designed to weaken the resistance of terrorist suspects to interrogation. Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques. But hard evidence that U.S. interrogators are employing hallucinogens, like the LSD the CIA tested on unwitting subjects for at least 20 years beginning in the 1940s, has yet to surface.

CQ Politics (04/04/2008)

Washington Not Ready to Add Nicaragua to the Axis of Evil

2008-03-29T15:26:00.010-04:00

Alarms have been raised about Iran’s ties to Nicaragua, but the Bush administration isn’t seeing much to get upset about — yet. Maybe it’s because the Iranians haven’t shown up with the cash for all their grandiose plans. When Nicaraguans hear about the $350 million port and other projects the Iranians are supposed to be building, they simply roll their eyes.

CQ Homeland Security (03/28/2007)

John McCain’s Polish Moment, Iranian Style

2008-03-21T23:26:00.005-04:00

The Republican candidate’s insistence, then backtracking, then his campaign’s backtracking on the backtracking, that Iran is training al Qaeda evoked President Gerald R. Ford’s declaration that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” For others, it was a reminder that we have all been here before — and we are once again exposed to the ignorance of top American officials about the Middle East.

CQ Homeland Security (03/21/2007)

Celebrated History of the CIA Comes Under Belated Fire

2008-03-15T04:53:00.005-04:00

New York Times reporter Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” hit the New York Times best-seller list last summer, riding a wave of praise from Washington’s national security writing establishment. But a growing cadre of historians, investigative reporters and others has called into question the respected Pulitzer Prize winner's handling of documents and sources, as well his book’s theme that the CIA’s record is one of almost abysmal failure.

CQ Homeland Security (03/14/2007)

Mike Chertoff Takes See-No-Evil Stance on NSA Wiretaps

2008-03-08T18:12:00.006-05:00

As more allegations of questionable wiretapping emerged last week, the former federal judge faced an unprecedented interrogation on the Homeland Security Department’s relationship with the NSA.

CQ Homeland Security (03/07/2008)

Mike McConnell’s Temporary Spokesman Has a Full-Time Job

2008-03-01T18:38:00.005-05:00

Ross Feinstein ought to get a Purple Heart for all the hits he’s taken as press agent for Mike McConnell, the serial mis-stater who runs American intelligence. It’s all the more astounding that only a few years ago, the 25-year-old was vice president of the Union College student union.

CQ Homeland Security (02/29/2008)

Indicted Former Congressman Played God's James Bond

2008-02-22T21:47:00.008-05:00

Long before he was indicted last month on charges that he rinsed money for an al Qaeda-connected charity, former Michigan Republican Rep. Mark Siljander had immersed himself in clandestine operations, according to his ill-timed and -titled memoir, “A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide,” scheduled for publication in June.

CQ Politics(02/22/2008)

Attack on Kremlin Critic Here Still Unsolved

2008-02-15T22:46:00.008-05:00

Almost a year after Kremlin critic Paul Joyal was gunned down in his suburban Maryland driveway, the case remains a mystery. The police say it was a hold-up, although nothing was taken -- in a virtually crime-free residential area. Others see the hand of the Kremlin in the attack.

CQ Politics(02/15/2008)

Pentagon Intelligence Comes Off as MAS*H in New Book

2008-02-08T23:52:00.001-05:00

Anyone who’s spent time in uniform will recognize the stories that A.J. Rossmiller tells in “Still Broken: A Recruit’s Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon.” His DIA has its own versions of Hawkeye, B.J., Colonel Potter, and of course, Frank Burns.

CQ Politics(02/08/2008)

State Secrets Abuses Come to a Boil

2008-02-02T11:52:00.000-05:00

The government's practice of fending off suits by former intelligence agents and civil rights groups by invoking the 'state secrets privilege' is coming under heavy fire.

CQ Politics(02/01/2008)

Wiretapping's Collateral Damage

2008-01-26T00:11:00.000-05:00

The strange spy tale of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright and the administration's push for open-ended electronic surveillance powers combine to create cause for worry — but not just for the reasons many people think.
See story

CQ Politics(01/25/2008)

Top U.N. Nuclear Watchdog a Russian Spy: Defector

2008-01-19T02:01:00.000-05:00

The top U.N. official responsible for monitoring the clandestine nuclear programs of Iran and Pakistan is a Russian spy, according to a new book on Moscow’s espionage operations in the United States and Canada.
See story

CQ Politics(01/18/2008)