
A former employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency filed a discrimination suit against the agency this week, alleging that his security clearance was revoked because of his wife's ties to a Muslim charity.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed "Curveball" by German and American intelligence officials, now admits he made up tales of mobile biological weapons trucks and clandestine weapons factories in Iraq, information that was used by the Bush White House to press the case for war. He also says he'd do it again.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)The FBI told the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) back in the early 80s that they would appreciate a heads-up next time he met with the Chinese.
As Reuters reports, the FBI file posted by the bureau this morning included the senator's contacts with a diplomat from the Chinese Embassy in 1982. The FBI requested that he inform them when he met with the Chinese in the future.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The Washington Post's big story on the country's sprawling intelligence system and the military contractors it employs -- the same story that caused the State Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence concern over what it reveals -- was published today.
The two-year project, compiled from public records, finds that the U.S. intelligence system has grown so much since Sept. 11, 2001, that it has become too big to manage or even fully understand.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (3)More than a month after Republicans started attacking President Obama for prosecuting the attempted Christmas bombing suspect in federal court, two top Senate Dems have finally come out to back Obama in strong terms.
Patrick Leahy and Diane Feinstein, chairs of the Judiciary and Intelligence committees, respectively, write in a letter to the president today that federal criminal courts -- not military commissions -- should be used to prosecute terrorists.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Stan Dai, the accused Landrieu phone tamperer who penned an anti-feminist parody called The Penis Monologues as a conservative activist in college, went on to work for a program designed to get women and minority students interested in espionage work.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (4)The Washington Post reports today that, during 2005, Dick Cheney sat in on several of those CIA torture briefings, in an effort to persuade wavering lawmakers to keep backing the torture program.
The news doesn't really come as a shock -- indeed, some close observers had already guessed that the then-veep was involved in the briefings. But it does add to the picture of Cheney embarking during the middle years of the Bush administration on a focused, stealthy campaign to make sure the US didn't give up what he saw as its right to torture.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (11)The journalist Mark Danner has obtained the entire report on torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which he published excerpts from last month. The report has been posted on the website of the New York Review of Books. Danner's new writeup of it is here.
The major new revelation concerns the active participation of medical officers in the interrogation of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons. The report, written in 2007, concludes that these officers committed gross violations of medical ethics, and in some cases participated in torture. The report called the CIA program "inhuman."
Did U.S. intelligence listen in on the personal phone calls of Tony Blair and former Iraqi president Ghazi Al-Yawer?
That's what David Murfee Faulk, a former Arab linguist who worked at a secret NSA facility, has told ABCNews.com. Murfee Faulk says he saw and read a file on Blair's "private life" and heard "pillow talk" exchanged between Al-Yawer and his then-fiancee.
The U.S. and Britain have pledged not to collect information covertly on each other, several former intelligence officials told ABCNews.com -- though this would by no means be the first time the U.S. was found to have done so.
Last month, Murfee Faulk and another former worker at the NSA facility revealed to the news network that the agency had listened in on private calls made by American journalists, aid workers, and soldiers stationed in Iraq. A Senate panel has said it is investigating those claims.
Former Chief Spook Tapped For House Ethics Review BoardFrom The Hill:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday announced joint appointments to a landmark ethics review board that for the first time will allow private citizens to review allegations against members.PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)Still, four out of six members of the board for the newly created Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) will be former members of Congress, including former CIA Director Porter Goss (R-Fla.), who will serve as co-chairman.
The other board members include Rep. David Skaggs (D-Colo.), who will serve as chairman of the board, former Rep. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (D-Calif.), former Rep. Karan English (D-Ariz.), former House Chief Administrative Officer Jay Eagen and Allison Hayward, the former chief of staff to Bradley Smith, a Republican-appointed former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
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The OCE will conduct preliminary reviews of ethics complaints and make recommendations to the full ethics committee for further investigation and action. Some watchdogs have criticized its lack of subpoena powers.

