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Global Intel Briefing
Dick Hardman has been really impressive lately in his posts about what's going on in the world. I thought I'd add to it by posting some of the basic snippets from around the globe. In no particular order:
Germany:
Quote:
German secret services are concerned that extremists in north Africa are reinforcing Al Qaeda, the country's intelligence head said in an interview.
The groups "have established themselves in north Africa without being detected and are reinforcing the network of Osama bin Laden," according to Ernst Uhrlau, head of the BND intelligence agency.
Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning warned in October of "movements" or "communications" between Islamists in north Africa and Germany. He also raised concern about alleged extremist camps in northern Mali.
In Germany, some 700 people are under surveillance by intelligence agencies, according to Mr. Uhrlau. More than a dozen suspects, including Germans who converted to Islam, are believed to have gone to training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said. [ABC/25March208]
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Al-Qaeda in Iraq (The reason to stay)
Quote:
A pummeled Al Qaeda in Iraq is switching to female suicide bombers for a new wave of strikes, which government experts fear is a sign of the group's comeback.
Since the U.S. troop surge began nearly a year ago, the most deadly suicide bombings - a hallmark of the foreign-led insurgent network - had decreased. Recently, however, Iraq has seen a return of the mass-casualty bombings that were practically a daily blight before the U.S. force was beefed up. And since November, at least six suicide blasts by women have slain scores of Iraqis.
Nimrod Raphaeli, an Iraqi-born terror expert at the Middle East Media Research Institute, said the rash of new strikes by Al Qaeda in Iraq "is a sign of new energy rather than collapse."
The use of women, who are checked less frequently by security because of Muslim sensitivities, is an alarming new twist, U.S. counterterror officials said.
Another counterterror official agreed the "recent uptick" in female suicide attacks is evidence that Al Qaeda in Iraq is not as decimated as some - including President Bush - have claimed.
The terror group is focusing on mixed Sunni-Shiite populations in Baghdad and northeast of the city in Kirkuk and Baquba. At least three female suicide terror cells have also been rolled up by coalition forces in recent weeks. [Meek/DailyNews/22March2008]
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From the Fair City of Detroit: Saddam's Spy
Quote:
A former top official with the Southfield Michigan-based Muslim charity Life for Relief and Development worked as a spy for the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein, according to federal authorities. The federal indictment against Muthanna Al-Hanooti says he received a potentially lucrative contract for the right to purchase 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil in return for his work for the Iraqi Intelligence Service.
Al-Hanooti, who was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport March 25th after returning from a trip to the Middle East, was ordered to post a $100,000 bond and wear an electronic tether by U.S. District Court Judge Paul D. Borman.
Al-Hanooti, who has a wife and three children in the Detroit area, stands charged in the 10-page grand jury indictment with conspiring to act as an agent of the Iraqi government, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by illegally obtaining the Iraqi oil contract, and three counts of making false statements to FBI agents. The most serious charge, related to breaking the embargo, carries a maximum 12-year prison sentence.
According to the indictment, Al-Hanooti worked for Life and Relief between 1994 and 2006 as its public relations coordinator and lobbyist.
He was also president of Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations, which handled many of Life for Relief's political activities, the indictment alleges.
An un-indicted co-conspirator in the case is a former officer of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and Al-Hanooti was paid by the Iraqi spy agency, the indictment alleges. That Iraqi spy asked Al-Hanooti to publicize in the United States the harmful effects of U.S. sanctions against Iraq and to bring to Iraq delegations from the U.S. Congress, the indictment alleges.
Between 1999 and 2002, Al-Hanooti gave the Iraqi Intelligence Service a strategy on how to get the sanctions lifted and in 2002 he helped organize a trip to Iraq by a delegation of members of Congress, the indictment alleges.
Al-Hanooti assigned his oil allocation to Laru Ltd., a company based in Cyprus, the indictment alleges. The indictment does not say what compensation he allegedly received, although it does detail tens of thousands of dollars in other payments Al-Hanooti allegedly received from the Iraqi government. [Egan&Krupa/DetroitNews/26March2008]
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Pay Attention to the Russian Front...
Quote:
The United States will cut staffing at its embassy in Minsk in half, bowing to Belarus' demands amid a marked worsening in relations between the two countries.
The announcement followed a Belarusian state television report that accused the embassy of setting up a spy ring in the ex-Soviet republic.
Tensions between the two nations increased following Washington's imposition of sanctions last year on the state-controlled oil-processing and chemicals company Belneftekhim. The company's assets were frozen and American companies were barred from doing business with it, due to its ties with President Alexander Lukashenko.
The United States and other European countries have labeled Lukashenko "Europe's last dictator" for his intolerance of dissent and oppression of critics.
Earlier this month, the U.S. ambassador returned to Washington under pressure from the Belarusian government, which also withdrew its ambassador and demanded the Belneftekhim sanctions be lifted.
Last week, the U.S. Embassy stopped issuing visas to Belarusians.
State Belarusian television claimed 10 Belarusians were recruited to collect information for use against Belarus and turned the information over to the FBI. It said they were provided with an apartment near the embassy and equipped with cameras, binoculars and other items. [AP/24March2008]
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And finally, the National Intelligence Estimate gets a Makeover for the Better:
Quote:
After attracting repeated controversy, a premier product of the nation's intelligence community - the National Intelligence Estimate - is getting a makeover by senior intelligence officials to improve its credibility.
The estimates are to be subjected to special internal reviews before they are finished, during which the reliability of each source of information will be examined anew, according to Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis.
Fingar, who supervises the NIE process, explained the revisions at a recent meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He said collectors of classified information used as the foundation for such estimates, which are meant to reflect the key judgments of 16 agencies, are being forced to reexamine all their sources, including electronic interceptions, satellite or aircraft imagery, and agent reports.
That process has been underway for some time for a new National Intelligence Estimate on trends in Iraq, which is slated for approval by agency heads in coming days, administration officials said.
In the forthcoming NIE, some data supplied for the assessment was withdrawn after the special scrutiny, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issues are classified.
New NIEs are also abandoning what Fingar described as the old "drive for consensus," which "has clearly a lowest-common-denominator element in it." The 2002 NIE on Iraq, for example, presented a majority CIA and Pentagon view that specialty aluminum tubes that Saddam Hussein's government was purchasing were intended to be used in centrifuges to process uranium, rather than for rocket launchers as analysts at the State Department and Energy Department had thought.
The process is not meant to decide "the credibility of an analytic judgment on the basis of how many agencies voted for it," Fingar said, "but what's the power of the argument?"
Another revision, he said, is meant to eliminate "gratuitous references to quotations of intelligence, of source reporting." He said instead of tough-minded analysis, analysts in the past would attempt to bolster a judgment or source reporting "with a quote, as if that somehow made the case."
Lurking in the background is the intelligence community's searing experience with a source code-named Curveball, the Iraqi engineer who supplied the Defense Intelligence Agency with bad information about Hussein's supposed mobile biological weapons labs - information contained in the 2002 NIE on Hussein's weapons and also in then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's February 2003 presentation at the United Nations.
In 2003, the CIA's European clandestine operatives questioned Curveball's reliability, even up to the night before Powell delivered his speech.
These changes will be incorporated in the classified NIE on Iraq, but the public probably will not have a chance to judge them. The heads of the 16 agencies, meeting as the National Intelligence Board, with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell as chairman, will make the decision on whether a declassified version of the Iraq key judgments will be released.
Criticized widely for the released key judgments late last year on Iran's nuclear program, McConnell said during a March 12 speech at Johns Hopkins University, "All future NIEs will not have unclassified key judgments if I'm persuasive enough among the decision makers." [Pincus/WashingtonPost/26March2008]
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04-01-2008, 05:21 PM
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