Judge says former intelligence officer who exposed aspects of use of torture should have been jailed for longer

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou leaves a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced Friday to more than two years in prison, by a federal judge who rejected arguments that he was acting as a whistleblower when he leaked a covert officer’s name to a reporter. A plea deal required the judge to impose a sentence of two and a half years. US district judge Leonie Brinkema said she would have given Kiriakou much more time if she could.

Kiriakou’s supporters describe him as a whistleblower who exposed aspects of the CIA’s use of torture against detained terrorists. Prosecutors said Kiriakou was merely seeking to increase his fame and public stature by trading on his insider knowledge. The 48-year-old Arlington resident pleaded guilty last year to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. No one had been convicted under the law in 27 years.

Kiriakou was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1990 until 2004. He served overseas and at headquarters in Langley. In 2002, Kiriakou played a key role in the agency’s capture of the al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded by government interrogators, revealed information that led to the arrest of “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla and exposed Khalid Sheikh Mohamed as the mastermind of the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

Accounts conflict, however, over whether the waterboarding was helpful in gleaning intelligence from Zubaydah, who was also interrogated conventionally.

Kiriakou, who did not participate in the waterboarding, expressed ambivalence in news media interviews about waterboarding, but ultimately declared it was torture. His 2007 interviews about the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah were among the first by a CIA insider confirming reports that several detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded.

…

Associated Press in Alexandria, Virginia
guardian.co.uk, Friday 25 January 2013 16.00 GMT

Find this story at 25 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

How a discovery in a Gitmo detainee’s cell led to charges against ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou.

On Monday, the Justice Department charged former CIA officer and author John Kiriakou [1] with repeatedly “disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee in classified activities.” (Read the criminal complaint.)

Kiriakou began making the media rounds in late 2007, when he went on the record [2] about waterboarding techniques used in the War on Terror, particularly in connection to the torture of Abu Zubaydah in a secret prison in Thailand. (It was later revealed [3] that Kiriakou was not actually present for that interrogation, as he had previously implied.)

If you’ve been reading Mother Jones, a lot of the content in the criminal complaint against Kiriakou [4] will seem familiar. The main charges stem from a bizarre episode we reported on a [5] couple years ago: In 2008 or early 2009, attorneys for alleged 9/11 conspirators held at Guantanamo Bay obtained—and showed to their clients—photo lineups that included pictures of CIA officers and contractors. The source of the photos was John Sifton [5], a private investigator working for the American Civil Liberties Union’s John Adams Project, an outfit set up to provide civilian defense lawyers to the Gitmo defendants. In some cases, Sifton clandestinely photographed CIA officers who were thought to have been involved in the brutal interrogations of the 9/11 defendants.

The purpose of presenting the photo lineups to the detainees was to identify the alleged torturers in order to make the case that the detainees’ statements were coerced. As multiple sources told Mother Jones in 2010, the defense lawyers didn’t know which of the individuals in the photo lineups were believed to be CIA officers. The detainees, meanwhile, would have no way of knowing which of the people were CIA employees unless they recognized them from interrogations. The lineups were “double blind,” a fact confirmed in the criminal complaint.

But there was still the issue of how Sifton identified the people he thought were involved in the interrogations. That’s where Kiriakou comes in: He’s accused of providing the identities of several CIA officers to journalists, one of whom passed information on to a “defense investigator” whose activities match Sifton’s. (The complaint specifically mentions investigators “interviewing” the “defense investigator” and uses the phrase “learned from the defense investigator.”) Here’s the key paragraph of the criminal complaint:

No law or military commission order expressly prohibited defense counsel from providing their clients with the photographic spreads in question under these circumstances. However, the fact that a defense investigator had learned the classified information, including the information necessary to take and/or assemble these photographs, suggested that the information may have been either deliberately or inadvertently disclosed, without authorization, in a manner that ultimately resulted in the defense team’s possession of the classified information.

The CIA didn’t take long to find out about Sifton’s work. In the spring of 2009, some of the photos were discovered in the cell of Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi, an accused Al Qaeda financier and one of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s four co-defendants. The criminal complaint against Kiriakou also indicates that a defense filing in early 2009 contained classified information that the government hadn’t provided to the defense.

When the CIA found out about the photos, top intelligence officials were furious, believing the defense lawyers had potentially placed the lives of covert officers at risk. The CIA’s then-general counsel John Rizzo demanded an investigation [6]. He later described the incident [6] as “far more serious than Valerie Plame,” referring to the Bush-era leak of an operative’s covert status. Rizzo wasn’t alone in his concerns. “This is an agency that has reasons to be concerned as to whether or not somebody’s got their back,” another high-ranking former intelligence official told Mother Jones [7]. “It’s always operating out there on the edge, not unlawfully, but generally at the farthest reaches of executive prerogative.”

In response to the CIA’s complaints, the Justice Department launched a probe, but the agency and congressional Republicans were unhappy with the results of the first investigation, which looked likely to clear the Gitmo defense lawyers of wrongdoing. Then the Obama administration called in famed US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who handled the Plame investigation and prosecuted former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, to take over the probe.

Sifton and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

The charges are just the latest crackdown by the Obama administration on alleged leakers. This is the sixth time during the Obama administration that prosecutors have filed charges pertaining to the unauthorized disclosure of classified national security information to media outlets. (In the previous four decades, the US government has pursued such cases on only three occasions [8].) Under the Espionage Act, the Obama administration has gone after media sources including Stephen Kim [9], an arms expert accused of passing along classified information to a Fox News reporter; NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake (who was profiled in an exhaustive New Yorker story by Jane Mayer [10]), and alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning [11], among others.

…

By Nick Baumann and Asawin Suebsaeng | Mon Jan. 23, 2012 2:23 PM PST

Find this story at 23 January 2013

Copyright ©2013 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. All Rights Reserved.

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

Mr. Kiriakou, 48, earned numerous commendations in nearly 15 years at the C.I.A., some of which were spent undercover overseas chasing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He led the team in 2002 that found Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist logistics specialist for Al Qaeda, and other militants whose capture in Pakistan was hailed as a notable victory after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He got mixed reviews at the agency, which he left in 2004 for a consulting job. Some praised his skills, first as an analyst and then as an overseas operative; others considered him a loose cannon.

Mr. Kiriakou first stumbled into the public limelight by speaking out about waterboarding on television in 2007, quickly becoming a source for national security journalists, including this reporter, who turned up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment last year as Journalist B. When he gave the covert officer’s name to the freelancer, he said, he was simply trying to help a writer find a potential source and had no intention or expectation that the name would ever become public. In fact, it did not surface publicly until long after Mr. Kiriakou was charged.

He is remorseful, up to a point. “I should never have provided the name,” he said on Friday in the latest of a series of interviews. “I regret doing it, and I never will do it again.”

At the same time, he argues, with the backing of some former agency colleagues, that the case — one of an unprecedented string of six prosecutions under President Obama for leaking information to the news media — was unfair and ill-advised as public policy.

His supporters are an unlikely collection of old friends, former spies, left-leaning critics of the government and conservative Christian opponents of torture. Oliver Stone sent a message of encouragement, as did several professors at Liberty University, where Mr. Kiriakou has taught. They view the case as an outrage against a man who risked his life to defend the country.

Whatever his loquaciousness with journalists, they say, he neither intended to damage national security nor did so. Some see a particular injustice in the impending imprisonment of Mr. Kiriakou, who in his first 2007 appearance on ABC News defended the agency’s resort to desperate measures but also said that he had come to believe that waterboarding was torture and should no longer be used in American interrogations.

Bruce Riedel, a retired veteran C.I.A. officer who led an Afghan war review for Mr. Obama and turned down an offer to be considered for C.I.A. director in 2009, said Mr. Kiriakou, who worked for him in the 1990s, was “an exceptionally good intelligence officer” who did not deserve to go to prison.

“To me, the irony of this whole thing is, very simply, that he’s going to be the only C.I.A. officer to go to jail over torture,” even though he publicly denounced torture, Mr. Riedel said. “It’s deeply ironic under the Democratic president who ended torture.”

John A. Rizzo, a senior C.I.A. lawyer for three decades, said that he did not believe Mr. Kiriakou set out to harm national security or endanger anyone, but that his violation was serious.

“I think he wanted to be a big shot,” Mr. Rizzo said. “I don’t think he was evil. But it’s not a trivial thing to reveal a name.”

The leak prosecutions have been lauded on Capitol Hill as a long-overdue response to a rash of dangerous disclosures and have been defended by both Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. But their aides say neither man ordered the crackdown, and the cases appear to have resulted less from a conscious policy change than from the proliferation of e-mail, which makes it possible to trace the origin of some disclosures without pressuring journalists to identify confidential sources.

When Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty on Oct. 23 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., David H. Petraeus, then the C.I.A. director, issued a statement praising the prosecution as “an important victory for our agency, for our intelligence community, and for our country.”

“Oaths do matter,” he went on, “and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.”

Less than three weeks later, e-mails tripped up Mr. Petraeus himself. He resigned after F.B.I. agents carrying out an unrelated investigation discovered, upon examining his private e-mail account, that he had had an extramarital affair.

Neil H. MacBride, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, hailed Mr. Kiriakou’s conviction in a statement: “The government has a vital interest in protecting the identities of those involved in covert operations. Leaks of highly sensitive, closely held and classified information compromise national security and can put individual lives in danger.”

The leak case is a devastating turn for Mr. Kiriakou, a father of five who considers himself a patriot, a proud Greek-American from Pennsylvania steel country whose grandfather, he recalls, “always talked as if F.D.R. personally admitted him to this country.” Discovering a passion for international affairs, he scrounged scholarships to go to George Washington University, where he was recruited by a professor, a former C.I.A. psychiatrist who spotted talent for the agency.

After he was charged last January, his wife, though accused of no wrongdoing, resigned under pressure from her C.I.A. job as a top Iran specialist. The family had to go on food stamps for several months before she got a new job outside the government. To make ends meet, they rented out their spacious house in Arlington, Va., and moved to a rented bungalow a third the size with their three young children (he has two older children from his first marriage).

Their financial woes were complicated by Mr. Kiriakou’s legal fees. He said he had paid his defense lawyers more than $100,000 and still owed them $500,000; the specter of additional, bankrupting legal fees, along with the risk of a far longer prison term that could separate him from his wife and children for a decade or more, prompted him to take the plea offer, he said.

Despite his distress about the charges and the havoc they have wrought for his family, he sometimes still speaks with reverence of the C.I.A. and its mission.

But the same qualities that worked well for him in his time as a risk-taking intelligence officer, trained to form a bond with potential recruits, may have been his undoing in his post-C.I.A. role as an intelligence expert sought out by reporters.

“Your job as a case officer is to recruit spies to steal secrets — plain and simple,” Mr. Kiriakou said. “You have to convince people you are their best friend. That wasn’t hard for me. I’d say half the people I recruited I could be lifelong friends with, even though some were communists, criminals and terrorists. I love people. I love getting to know them. I love hearing their stories and telling them stories.

“That’s all great if you’re a case officer,” he said. “It’s not so great, it turns out, if you’re a former case officer.”

Mixed Feelings

After Mr. Kiriakou first appeared on ABC, talking with Brian Ross in some detail about waterboarding, many Washington reporters sought him out. I was among them. He was the first C.I.A. officer to speak about the procedure, considered a notorious torture method since the Inquisition but declared legal by the Justice Department in secret opinions that were later withdrawn.

While he had spent hours with Abu Zubaydah after the capture, he had not been present when Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded, a fact he made clear to me and some other interviewers. But based on what he had heard and read at the agency, he told ABC and other news organizations that Abu Zubaydah had stopped resisting after just 30 or 35 seconds of the suffocating procedure and told interrogators all he knew.

That was grossly inaccurate — the prisoner was waterboarded some 83 times, it turned out. Mr. Kiriakou believes that he and other C.I.A. officers were deliberately misled by other agency officers who knew the truth.

Mr. Kiriakou, who has given The New York Times permission to describe previously confidential conversations, came across as friendly, courteous, disarmingly candid — and deeply ambivalent about what the C.I.A. called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

He spoke about his career: starting as an analyst on the Middle East at headquarters in Virginia; later being stationed in Bahrain; making the unusual switch to the “operations” side of the C.I.A.; and serving stints as a counterterrorism officer under cover, first in Greece and later in Pakistan (he speaks fluent Greek and Arabic).

When terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 American servicemen, the blast blew out his apartment windows in Bahrain 16 miles away across the water. Twice overseas, he had close calls with terrorists who were trying to kill Western officials.

He said he had been offered the chance to be trained in the harsh interrogation methods but turned it down. Even though he had concluded that waterboarding was indeed torture, he felt that the C.I.A.’s critics, inflamed by the new revelation that videotapes of the interrogations had been destroyed, were being unduly harsh in judging actions taken in the hectic months after Sept. 11 when more attacks seemed imminent.

“I think the second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair,” he said in our first conversation. “2002 was a different world than 2007. What I think is fair is having a national debate over whether we should be waterboarding.”

His feelings about waterboarding were so mixed that some 2007 news reports cast him as a critic of C.I.A. torture, while others portrayed him as a defender of the agency. Some human rights activists even suspected — wrongly, as it turned out — that the intelligence agency was orchestrating his public comments.

Mr. Kiriakou seemed shellshocked, and perhaps a little intoxicated, by the flood of publicity his remarks on ABC had received and the dozens of interview requests coming his way. We met for lunch a couple of times in Washington and spoke by phone occasionally. He recounted his experiences in Pakistan — the C.I.A. later allowed him to include much of that material in his 2009 memoir, “The Reluctant Spy” — and readily answered questions about agency lore or senior officials with whom he had worked.

But he occasionally demurred when the subject was too sensitive. I could use information he gave me “on background” — that is, without mentioning him. But we would have to agree explicitly on anything I attributed to him by name, standard ground rules for such relationships.

In 2008, when I began working on an article about the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, I asked him about an interrogator whose name I had heard: Deuce Martinez. He said that they had worked together to catch Abu Zubaydah, and that he would be a great source on Mr. Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He was able to dig up the business card Mr. Martinez had given him with contact information at Mitchell Jessen and Associates, the C.I.A. contractor that helped devise the interrogation program and Mr. Martinez’s new employer.

Mr. Martinez, an analyst by training, was retired and had never served under cover; that is, he had never posed as a diplomat or a businessman while overseas. He had placed his home address, his personal e-mail address, his job as an intelligence officer and other personal details on a public Web site for the use of students at his alma mater. Abu Zubaydah had been captured six years earlier, Mr. Mohammed five years earlier; their stories were far from secret.

Mr. Martinez never agreed to talk to me. But a few e-mail exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou as I hunted for his former colleague would eventually turn up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment; he was charged with revealing to me that Mr. Martinez had participated in the operation to catch Abu Zubaydah, a fact that the government said was classified.

Tensions Over Secrecy

Nothing about my exchanges with Mr. Kiriakou was unusual for a reporter covering intelligence agencies, though he was certainly on the candid end of the spectrum of former C.I.A. officers. Current officials are almost always less willing to speak than retirees. And former rank-and-file officers are usually more reluctant to speak than their bosses, who are more confident in walking up to — or occasionally crossing over — the borders protecting classified information.

Why do officials talk about ostensibly secret programs? Sometimes the motive is self-aggrandizement, or to promote a personal or political agenda. But many officials talk because they feel Americans have a right to know, within limits, what the government is doing with their money and in their name.

There is wide agreement in the government that too much information is classified, and even senior officials are sometimes uncertain about what is secret.

In Senate testimony last July, for example, Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director from 2006 to 2009, admitted that he was perplexed by the “dilemma” over what he was or was not permitted to say, in this case about the targeted killing of Qaeda operatives using drones — officially classified but reported in the news media every day and occasionally discussed by Mr. Obama.

“So much of that is in the public domain that right now this witness, with my experience, I am unclear what of my personal knowledge of this activity I can or cannot discuss publicly,” Mr. Hayden said. “That’s how muddled this has become.”

The trade-offs and tensions over government secrets in a democracy are nothing new. In 1971, when the Nixon administration went to court to try to stop The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam War, Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief for The Times, filed an affidavit on how officials and reporters exchange secrets.

“Without the use of ‘secrets’ that I shall attempt to explain in this affidavit, there could be no adequate diplomatic, military and political reporting of the kind our people take for granted, either abroad or in Washington, and there could be no mature system of communication between the government and the people,” Mr. Frankel wrote 42 years ago.

Before Mr. Obama took office, prosecutions for disclosing classified information to the news media had been rare. That was a comforting fact for national security reporters and their sources, but a lamentable one for intelligence officials who complained that leaks damaged intelligence operations, endangered American operatives and their informants and strained relations with allied spy services.

By most counts, there were only three cases until recently: against Daniel Ellsberg and a colleague for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971; against Samuel Loring Morison, a Navy intelligence analyst, for selling classified satellite photographs to Jane’s, the military publisher, in 1985; and against Lawrence Franklin, a Defense Department official, who was charged in 2005 with passing secrets to two officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, who shared some of them with reporters.

Thus Mr. Obama has presided over twice as many such cases as all his predecessors combined, though at least two of the six prosecutions since 2009 resulted from investigations begun under President George W. Bush. An outcry over a series of revelations last year — about American cyberattacks on Iran, a double agent who infiltrated the Qaeda branch in Yemen and procedures for targeted killings — prompted Mr. Holder to begin new leak investigations that have not yet produced any charges.

The resulting chill on officials’ willingness to talk is deplored by journalists and advocates of open government; without leaks, they note, Americans might never have learned about the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods or the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping. But for supporters of greater secrecy, the chill is precisely the goal.

Revealing a Name

From court documents and interviews, it is possible to piece together how the case against Mr. Kiriakou took shape. When he first spoke on ABC in 2007, the C.I.A. sent the Justice Department a “crimes report” — a routine step to alert law enforcement officials to an apparent unauthorized disclosure of classified information. At least half a dozen more referrals went to Justice as he continued to grant interviews covering similar ground.

Shortly after he became a minor media star, Mr. Kiriakou lost his job in business intelligence at Deloitte, the global consulting firm he joined after leaving the C.I.A. He had also begun working with Hollywood filmmakers — visiting Afghanistan, for instance, before advising the producers of “The Kite Runner” that its young male actors should probably be relocated outside the country for their own safety. He was working with a veteran journalist, Michael Ruby, on his memoir and battling the agency’s Publications Review Board, as many C.I.A. authors have, over what he was permitted to write about and what was off limits.

Mr. Rizzo, then a top C.I.A. lawyer, said he recalled some colleagues being upset that Mr. Kiriakou had begun speaking so openly about the interrogation program. “It was fairly brazen — a former agency officer talking on camera,” Mr. Rizzo said. “He started being quoted all over the place. He was commenting on everything.”

Of course, Mr. Kiriakou had plenty of company. More and more C.I.A. retirees were writing books, speaking to reporters or appearing on television. Mr. Rizzo himself became the subject of a Justice Department referral after he spoke to a Newsweek reporter in 2011 about drone strikes, and his own memoir, “The Company’s Man,” is scheduled for publication next year.

Mr. Rizzo said he did not believe that Mr. Kiriakou’s media appearances spurred a serious criminal investigation. “There really wasn’t a campaign against him,” he said.

Then, in 2009, officials were alarmed to discover that defense lawyers for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had obtained names and photographs of C.I.A. interrogators and other counterterrorism officers, including some who were still under cover. It turned out that the lawyers, working under the name of the John Adams Project, wanted to call the C.I.A. officers as witnesses in future military trials, perhaps to substantiate accounts of torture or harsh treatment.

But initial fears that Al Qaeda might somehow be able to stalk their previous captors drew widespread coverage. This time there was a crimes report, Mr. Rizzo said, that was taken very seriously, both at the C.I.A. and the Justice Department.

F.B.I. agents discovered that a human rights advocate hired by the John Adams Project, John Sifton, had compiled a dossier of photographs and names of the C.I.A. officers; that Mr. Sifton had exchanged e-mails with journalists, including Matthew A. Cole, a freelancer then working on a book about a C.I.A. rendition case in Italy that had gone awry; and that Mr. Cole had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Kiriakou. The F.B.I. used search warrants to obtain access to Mr. Kiriakou’s two personal e-mail accounts.

According to court documents, F.B.I. agents discovered that in August 2008, Mr. Cole — identified as Journalist A in the charging documents — had asked Mr. Kiriakou if he knew the name of a covert officer who had a supervisory role in the rendition program, which involved capturing terrorism suspects and delivering them to prisons in other countries.

Mr. Kiriakou at first said he did not recall the name, but followed up the next day with an e-mail passing on the name and adding, “It came to me last night,” the documents show. (Mr. Sifton, Mr. Cole and federal prosecutors all declined to comment.)

In recent interviews, Mr. Kiriakou said he believed that the covert officer, whom he had last seen in 2002, had retired; in fact, the officer was then working overseas. He had no idea that the name would be passed on to the Guantánamo defense lawyers and end up in a government file, as it did, he said.

When the F.B.I. agents invited Mr. Kiriakou to their Washington office a year ago “to help with a case,” he said, they repeatedly asked him whether he had knowingly disclosed the name of a covert officer. He replied that he had no recollection of having done so; he still insists that was the truth.

“If I’d known the guy was still under cover,” Mr. Kiriakou said, “I would never have mentioned him.”

The officer’s name did not become public in the four years after Mr. Kiriakou sent it to Mr. Cole. It appeared on a whistle-blowing Web site for the first time last October; the source was not clear.

Preparing for Prison

On a chilly recent afternoon, Mr. Kiriakou, in a Steelers jersey, drove his Honda S.U.V. to pick up his son Max, 8, and his daughter Kate, 6, from school, leaving the 14-month-old Charlie at home with a baby sitter.

He and his wife had struggled with how to explain to the children that he is going away, probably in mid-February. They settled on telling the children that “Daddy lost a big fight with the F.B.I.” and would have to live elsewhere for a while. Max cried at the news, Mr. Kiriakou said. He cried again after calculating that his birthday would fall on a weekday, so it would be impossible to make the trip to prison to share the celebration with his father.

The afternoon school pickup has become his routine since he has been out of work. A stint as an investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ended before he was charged; two hedge funds that had him on retainer to provide advice on international security issues dropped him when the charges were filed.

Only Liberty University, the conservative Christian institution founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. in Lynchburg, Va., where Mr. Kiriakou was hired by former C.I.A. officers on the faculty to teach intelligence courses, actually increased the work it offered him when he got in trouble.

“They say torture is un-Christian,” Mr. Kiriakou said, who notes wryly that his fervent supporters now include both the Liberty Christians and an array of left-wing activists.

Last summer, Mr. Kiriakou was teaching a practical course on surveillance and countersurveillance to a group of Liberty students in Washington and had them trail him on foot on the eastern edge of Georgetown, he said. After several passes, the students excitedly told him that they had detected several cars that were also following him — his usual F.B.I. minders, he figured.

When Mr. Kiriakou pleaded guilty in October to sharing the covert officer’s name, the government dropped several other charges, including the disclosure to The Times and a claim that he had lied to the C.I.A.’s Publications Review Board, though those violations remain in an official statement of facts accompanying the plea.

…

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 5, 2013

A summary that appeared with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the former C.I.A. operative. He is John C. Kiriakou, not Kiriako.

January 5, 2013
By SCOTT SHANE

Find this story at 5 January 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Kathryn Bigelow given classified information by high ranking official
She was also briefed by CIA and military officials and Navy Seals
Campaign group said the White House has acted improperly

The director of an Oscar-nominated film about the killing of Osama bin Laden was given classified information about the operation by United States intelligence chiefs.

Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow and her screenwriting partner Mark Boal were provided with a complete ‘roadmap’ of how the raid was planned during a 45 minute meeting with Michael Vickers – the country’s highest ranking civilian intelligence official.

The filmmakers also received briefings from top CIA and military intelligence officers and Navy Seals who carried out Operation Neptune Spear – attacking bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in May 2011.

Secrecy: Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were given classified information

The transcript of the interview, which took place three months after the terrorist leader’s death, has this week been published by the National Security Archive (NSA) at George Washington University in Washington.

Classified: Intelligence chief Michale Vickers gave information to the filmmakers during an interview

It follows a freedom of information request by campaign group Judicial Watch. Its president Tom Fitton had said the White House acted improperly by giving ‘politically-connected filmmakers extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information’

Following the raid, the White House and Pentagon held a series of contradictory briefings and the NSA argues that an authoritative account of the operation has never been published.

The group accused the Obama administration of sharing the ‘intimate details’ to help the filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ last year’s re-election campaign.

The NSA said much of the operation in Abbottabad is still ‘shrouded in secrecy’, with many details of the raid having never been released.

Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, told The Independent: ‘Either you admit you gave special excess to your pet film directors, or you make the information available to everyone.’

A statement on the Judicial Watch website said that the film pushed the Obama narrative, and added: ‘Barack Obama comes off as a hero character.

‘We see him morally preening on a news program and hear him described as ‘thoughtful and analytical.’

Oscar nominated: Navy SEALs prepare to breach a locked door in bin Laden’s compound in Dark Zero Thirty

Raid: Pakistani security officials stand guard as workers demolish the compound in Abbottabad

‘Boal and Bigelow seemed to have gone out of their way (short of producing a two-hour campaign commercial) to project the Obama administration as ‘gutsy’ for ordering the raid.’

Hunted: Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in May 2011

An investigation into whether Mr Vickers broke any rules by briefing Ms Bigelow and Mr Boal has been launched by the Department of Defense.

Mr Boal and Ms Bigelow, who spent several years working on the film, have insisted that they went through the proper official channels in the intelligence community and did not have access to any classified information.

Zero Dark Thirty opened across the U.S. on January 11 and has been nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actress for Jessica Chastain and Best Original Screenplay. It was nominated for four Golden Globes, with Chastain winning Best Actress.

Mr Boal and Ms Bigelow have both won Oscars fro the Hurt Locker. Ms Bigelow has defended her latest film’s torture scene, saying criticism of the practices might be better directed towards government policymakers.

After bin Laden – who was hunted by the US since the 9/11 terrorist attacks – was killed, the Obama administration said his body was buried at sea off the USS Carl Vinson in accordance with Islamic tradition.

The raid was completed shortly after 1am local time when he was shot once in the chest and once in the head by a Navy Seal who announced, ‘For God and country Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo’, because Geronimo was the code-name given to the al-Qaeda leader.

…

By Alex Gore

PUBLISHED: 17:53 GMT, 19 January 2013 | UPDATED: 09:00 GMT, 20 January 2013

Find this story at 19 January 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Oscar contender is triggering growing criticism from US senators that the movie supports ‘waterboarding’

It has received five Oscar nominations and created a buzz among movie fans around the world.

But Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, which recounts the operation that traced and killed Osama bin Laden, is at the centre of growing controversy over the unprecedented access to classified information granted to the director and her screenwriter colleague, while most of these details remain unavailable to the general pubic.

Documents collected, collated and published this week by the National Security Archive of George Washington University in Washington show that only a portion of information about Operation Neptune Spear, the codename for the CIA-led, decade-long hunt for Bin Laden, has so far been declassified.

In contrast, Ms Bigelow and her colleague Mark Boal received briefings from high-ranking CIA and military intelligence officers, Navy SEALs who took part in the operation and other officials. A CIA spokeswoman said at the time, the agency had decided to support the director because “it makes sense to get behind a winning horse. Mark and Kathryn’s movie is going to be the first and the biggest”.

The attacks of 9/11 on New York and Washington traumatised the US and led to various policy decisions whose ramifications are still being felt. The vow of then US President George Bush to capture the al-Qa’ida leader “dead or alive” led to the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan and a hunt for Bin Laden that concluded in May 2011 when US Special Forces raided a walled compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where he had been hiding.

In the hours and days after the raid, White House and Pentagon officials briefed the media about aspects of the raid. Yet there were a number of contradictions contained within those briefings, and more than 18 months later many details remain unknown. Photographs of Bin Laden, for instance, supposedly taken after he was shot dead and when his body was buried at sea from aboard the USS Carl Vinson have not been made public, and the Obama administration has refused media requests under the Freedom of Information Act to release them.

Indeed, the National Security Archive said much of the operation was still “shrouded in secrecy”. It added: “The government’s recalcitrance over releasing information directly to the public about the 21 century’s most important intelligence search and military raid, and its decision instead to grant the film’s producers exclusive and unprecedented access to classified information about the operation, means that for the time being – for bad or good – Hollywood has become the public’s account of record for Operation Neptune Spear.”

Even before its release, Ms Bigelow’s film had already created controversy because of a scenes showing torture that the film suggests were essential to obtaining information that led the CIA to the garrison town of Abbottabad.

Such has been the furore that senior US senators Diane Feinstein and John McCain publicly complained the film was supporting the use of techniques such as “waterboarding”. Ms Bigelow has defended her film, recently telling the BBC: “It’s part of the story. To omit it would have been whitewashing history.”

Yet others say, the issue of the access given to the 61-year-old director is equally controversial. Chris Farrell, of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based non-profit organisation, said it had been involved in extensive litigation with the authorities to obtain withheld documents. He claimed the government was trying to have it both ways. “Either you admit you gave special access to your pet film director, or else you make the information available to everyone,” he said.

What has added to the perception that Ms Bigelow received special treatment are various moves by the authorities to halt other people releasing information about Operation Neptune Spear. The NSA said last November, seven US special forces soldiers involved in the Abbottabad operation were reprimanded for providing classified material to a video game manufacturer.

…

Andrew Buncombe
Friday, 18 January 2013

Find this story at 18 January 2013

© independent.co.uk

Action against al-Qa’ida in North Africa could last decades, PM warns

The West faces a decades-long battle to defeat al-Qa’ida in North Africa, David Cameron warned today, as he signalled a dramatic shift in the UK’s fight against terrorism.

The heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the Chief of the Defence Staff will gather on Tuesday to begin planning Britain’s response to the burgeoning terror threat from Saharan Africa.

Britain will offer money, military co-operation and security training to African states to head off the advance of Islamist radicalism.

Special forces are understood to be preparing to hunt down the jihadist leader behind the siege and hostage killings in Algeria, Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Britain will use its chairmanship of the G8 to focus militarily and diplomatically on the Sahara region, following the hostage crisis which claimed the lives of up to six Britons. One Middle East expert likened the long-term impact of the atrocity in Algeria to the 9/11 attacks.

Following the end of the four-day stand-off at the BP gas plant at In Amenas, Algerian forces discovered 25 more bodies and took five militants alive. The death toll had previously been put at 23 hostages and 32 captors.

Three Britons have been confirmed among the dead and another three are feared to have been killed during the siege, which ended with a shoot-out on Saturday. Tonight 46-year-old Paul Thomas Morgan was the first British victim to be named by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Kenneth Whiteside, an engineer from Glenrothes in Fife, and Garry Barlow, a BP systems supervisor from Merseyside, are also understood to be among the dead. Another UK resident was also believed to have been killed.

Twenty-two other British nationals have arrived home, many with chilling stories of how they evaded capture by jihadists belonging to an al-Qa’ida splinter group styling themselves Those Who Sign In Blood.

Alan Wright, from Aberdeenshire, told of how he hid in an office for 24 hours before joining Algerian workers who cut their way through a perimeter fence and fled.

Mr Cameron will update MPs on the attack today and hold a meeting of Whitehall’s emergency Cobra committee to consider the implications of the attack.

French forces – with support from Britain – are attempting to oust insurgents from northern Mali, amid fears that neighbouring countries including Niger and Mauritania could fall under their influence.

As the French Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, described the hostage-taking as an “act of war”, Belmokhtar was reported to be “ready to negotiate” in return for an end to the action in Mali.

Last night Mauritanian news website Sahara Media said Belmokhtar had claimed responsibility in the name of al Qa’ida for the hostage-taking in a video. He had said: “We in al Qa’ida announce this blessed operation. We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali’s Muslims. We had around 40 jihadists, most of them from Muslim countries and some even from the West.”

A BP spokesman would not comment on reports in Algeria that Belmokhtar’s men had infiltrated the gas plant as drivers, cooks and guards working on short-term contracts.

Mr Cameron spelt out the scale of the challenge posed by al-Qa’ida-affiliated groups operating in the region. “It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months,” he said. “And it requires a response that is painstaking, that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron resolve. And that is what we will deliver over these coming years.

“What we face is an extremist, Islamist, al-Qa’ida-linked terrorist group. Just as we had to deal with that in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, so the world needs to come together to deal with this threat in North Africa… We need to work with others to defeat the terrorists and to close down the ungoverned spaces where they thrive with all the means that we have.”

The Government has not ruled out giving extra help to the French-led operation in Mali.

However, Whitehall sources said the terrorist threat in the region would ultimately be best tackled by diplomatic means. Britain is to beef up its presence in nations where the UK historically had a limited presence and to liaise more closely with Paris over the challenges faced by the traditionally Francophone area.

Abdelasiem el-Difraoui, an al-Qa’ida expert with the Berlin Institute for Media and Communications Studies, told a French newspaper that the hostage-taking would for France make as “a huge bang as strong as September 11”.

The French Government distanced itself from suggestions among other nations caught up in the hostage crisis that Algeria’s response was “heavy-handed”.

President François Hollande said: “When so many hostages have been taken and when the terrorists are ready to murder them in cold blood, I think the Algerian approach was the best one.”
Britons in the desert

Garry Barlow: Semtex was strapped to his chest

Garry Barlow, 49, was a systems supervisor for BP Exploration Algeria, Statoil and Sonatrach JV. He lived in the Mossley Hill area of Liverpool with his wife Lorraine, and sons Scott, 17, and Paul, 15.

He had been working in In Amenas since October 2011, and had worked previously for Addax Petroleum and Shell EP on the west coast of Central Africa.

He was captured with some of his colleagues including 29-year-old project services contracts administrator Mark Grant, who is believed to have survived the ordeal.

Initial reports suggested Mr Barlow was safe and well and was being repatriated by the Foreign Office, but he is now thought to have died as Algerian troops tried to regain control of the compound.

The last his wife heard from him was a message in which he said: “I’m sitting here at my desk with Semtex strapped to my chest. The local army have already tried and failed to storm the plant and they’ve said that if that happens again they are going to kill us all.”

Paul Morgan: Former soldier died fighting

The first British victim of the Algerian hostage crisis was described last night as a “true gentleman” who “loved life and lived it to the full”.

Paul Morgan, 46, from Liverpool, a former soldier with the French Foreign Legion, reportedly “went down fighting” when the bus he was travelling in was attacked by the kidnappers last Wednesday.

His mother Marianne and partner Emma Steele, 36, paid tribute to him: “Paul died doing the job he loved. We are so proud of him and so proud of what he achieved in his life. He will be truly missed.”

Kenneth Whiteside: Shot as army stormed compound

Kenneth Whiteside had been living in Johannesburg with his wife and two daughters but was originally from Glenrothes in Fife.

An Algerian colleague at the plant is said to have witnessed the BP project services manager “being shot” by his captors as commandos stormed the compound.

The 59-year-old was educated at Auchmuty High School and studied engineering at Glenrothes Technical College between 1970 and 1974.

Friends posted tribute messages on his Facebook account on Saturday. Steward Goodwin in South Africa wrote: “How will we understand this? My heartfelt condolences go to the family and friends who are trying to come to terms with this senseless murder.”

Billy Hunter wrote: “We’ll always remember him and his bagpipes.” “It’s hard to understand such senseless waste of life,” added Joe McMahon.

…

Nigel Morris, John Lichfield
Monday, 21 January 2013

Find this story at 21 January 2013

© independent.co.uk

WASHINGTON — The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

The move is an indication of the priority Africa has become in American antiterrorism efforts. The United States military has a limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in the country of Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of Mali.

A new drone base in northwest Africa would join a constellation of small airstrips in recent years on the continent, including in Ethiopia, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft.

If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali. The American military’s Africa Command, or Africom, is also discussing options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso, officials said.

The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.

The Africa Command’s plan still needs approval from the Pentagon and eventually from the White House, as well as from officials in Niger. American military officials said that they were still working out some details, and that no final decision had been made. But in Niger on Monday, the two countries reached a status-of-forces agreement that clears the way for greater American military involvement in the country and provides legal protection to American troops there, including any who might deploy to a new drone base.

The plan could face resistance from some in the White House who are wary of committing any additional American forces to a fight against a poorly understood web of extremist groups in North Africa.

If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.

Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”

“What’s happening in northern Mali is a big concern for us because what’s happening in northern Mali can also happen to us,” Mr. Issoufou said in an interview at the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger’s capital, on Jan. 10, the day before French troops swept into Mali to blunt the militant advance.

Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Africa Command, who visited Niger this month to discuss expanding the country’s security cooperation with the United States, declined to comment on the proposed drone base, saying in an e-mail that the subject was “too operational for me to confirm or deny.”

Discussions about the drone base come at a time when the French operation in Mali and a militant attack on a remote gas field in the Algerian desert that left at least 37 foreign hostages, including 3 Americans, dead have thrown a spotlight on Al Qaeda’s franchise in the region, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and forced Western governments and their allies in the region to accelerate efforts to combat it.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”

According to current and former American government officials, as well as classified government cables made public by the group WikiLeaks, the surveillance missions flown by American turboprop planes in northern Mali have had only a limited effect.

Flown mainly from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, the missions have faced stiff challenges as militant leaders have taken greater precautions in using electronic communications and have taken more care not to disclose delicate information that could be monitored, like their precise locations.

General Ham said in an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.

“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”

…

January 28, 2013
By ERIC SCHMITT

Find this story at 28 January 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Missile manufacturer, police forces and golf video company among more than 130 groups licensed to use technology

A surveillance drone used by Merseyside police, one of three forces that have permission to use UAVs. Photograph: John Giles/PA

Defence firms, police forces and fire services are among more than 130 organisations that have permission to fly small drones in UK airspace, the Guardian can reveal.

The Civil Aviation Authority list of companies and groups that have sought approval for the use of the unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, has not been published before – and it reflects the way the technology is now being used. The BBC, the National Grid and several universities are now certified to use them – as is Video Golf Marketing, which provides fly-over videos of golf courses.

Including multiple or expired licences, the CAA has granted approval to fly small UAVs more than 160 times.

“People are going to see more and more of these small vehicles operating around the country,” said John Moreland, general secretary of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVS), a trade body with more than 100 members. “There are any number of uses for them, and the technology is getting easier to use and cheaper all the time. These vehicles can operate anywhere in the UK, within reason.”

However, privacy campaigners have grave concerns about the proliferation of the technology and want an urgent review of regulations. “The increasing use of drones by private companies and government bodies poses a unique set of problems,” said Eric King, head of research at campaign group Privacy International.

“The CAA considers health and safety issues when deciding whether or not to grant licences to operate drone technology, but this is a very low bar. We need new regulation to ensure privacy and other civil liberties are also taken into account during the decision-making process.”

In the last two years the CAA has required anyone who wants to fly a small UAV in British airspace to apply for permission. The aircraft must weigh less than 20kg and operators have to abide by certain rules. These include not flying them higher than 122 metres (400ft), or further away from the operator than 500 metres – this is deemed the pilot’s “line of sight”.

The CAA list shows that three police forces, Merseyside, Staffordshire and Essex, have permission to use UAVs, as do three fire services, Dorset, West Midlands and Hampshire.

Some of Europe’s biggest defence companies can also fly them, including BAE Systems, Qinetiq and missile manufacturer MBDA. A company that supplies UAVs and other equipment to the Ministry of Defence, Marlborough Communications, is also registered, along with crime-scene and counter-terrorism specialist GWR & Associates.

Shane Knight, a spokesman for Marlborough, said: “If you can put these systems up in the sky, and they are safe, then they have many uses. If you are a police force, a fire or ambulance service, and, for instance, you are responding to a large fire, then you have a choice of sending out your people to do reconnaissance of an area, or you could use one of these small UAVs. Why put people in danger when you can use one of these systems? These UAVs are getting much better, and much smaller.”

The National Grid uses them to inspect power lines, while the Scottish Environment Protection Agency wants one to patrol and photograph remote areas, said Susan Stevens, a scientist in the agency’s marine ecology department. “The UAV equipment is currently being trialled,” she said.

“As an operational service it will have many uses, such as capturing aerial imagery of estuaries, wetlands and riverbanks, and to provide a snapshot of the environment before and after development work,” she said.

Moreland said the unmanned systems suffered from the perception that they were all “killer robots” flying in the sky, but he thought this would diminish as the public got used to seeing them.

“We are going to see all sorts of systems coming out over the years,” he said. “The operating bubble is going to expand like mad. Some of these systems will be able to look after themselves, and others will rely on the quality of the operators.

“You don’t have to be a qualified pilot … The person could come from a modelling background, or he may be a video game player. There are plenty of people you could imagine being able to control these systems in a delicate way.”

Gordon Slack, who owns Video Golf Marketing, said he had taught himself to use his UAV. “Once you know how to operate it, it is not too complicated. We’ve done six videos for golf courses, with a few more in the pipeline.”

…

(Owner ID number/Company name)

1 HoverCam

2 Meggitt Defence Systems

3 EagleEye (Aerial Photography) Ltd

4 Remote Services Limited

5 High Spy RC Aerial Photography

6 Magsurvey Limited

7 Pi In The Sky

8 Qinetiq

9 Eye In The Sky

10 AngleCam

11 Helicam Ltd

12 Flying Minicameras Ltd

13 S & C Thermofluids Ltd

14 Remote Airworks (pty) Ltd

15 National Grid

16 Dragonfly Aerial Photography

17 BlueBear Systems Research

18 William Walker

19 European UAV Systems Centre Ltd

20 In-House Films Ltd

21 MBDA UK Ltd

22 European UAV Systems Centre

23 Dorset Fire & Rescue Service

24 Conocophillips Limited

25 Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service

26 West Midlands Fire Service

27 Advanced Ceramics Research

28 UA Systems Ltd (Swisscopter)

29 Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd

30 Flight Refuelling Limited

31 BAE Systems (Operations) Ltd

32 Lindstrand Technologies Ltd

33 Upper Cut Productions

34 Cranfield University

35 Peregrine Media Ltd

36 Horizon Aerial Photography

37 Rory Game

38 Alan Stevens

39 Helipix LLP

40 Re-use*

41 Mike Garner

42 Cyberhawk Innovations Ltd

43 Staffordshire Police TPU

44 Merseyside Police

45 Health and Safety Laboratory

46 David Hogg

47 MRL Ltd

48 MRL Ltd

49 Re-use*

50 Dominic Blundell

51 Re-use*

52 Re-use*

53 Skylens Aerial Photography

54 Bonningtons Aerial Surveys

55 Small UAV Enterprises

56 British Technical Films

57 CARVEC Systems Ltd

58 Flying-Scots’Cam

59 Pulse Corporation Ltd (t/a Overshoot Photography)

60 Motor Bird Ltd

61 Advanced Aerial Imagery

62 AM-UAS Limited

63 Re-use*

64 Gatewing NV

65 Questuav Ltd

66 Advanced UAV Technology Ltd

67 Air 2 Air

68 MW Power Systems Limited

69 Re-use*

70 Roke Manor Research Ltd

71 Re-use*

72 NPIA

73 Pete Ulrick

74 Re-use*

75 SSE Power Distribution

76 University of Worcester

77 Re-use*

78 Rovision Ltd

79 Callen-Lenz Associates Ltd (Gubua Group)

80 SKM Studio

81 GWR Associates

82 Phoenix Model Aviation

83 Copycat

84 HD Skycam

85 Re-use*

86 Gary White

87 Aerial Target Systems Ltd

88 Aerial Target Systems

89 Re-use*

90 Video Golf Marketing Ltd

91 Re-use*

92 Helivisuals Ltd

93 Essex Police

94 Marlborough Comms Ltd

95 Re-use*

96 Siemans Wind Power A/S

97 Altimeter UK Ltd t/a Visionair

98 T/A Remote Imaging

99 Re-use*

100 Daniel Baker

101 Sky Futures

102 Aerovironment Inc

103 Spherical Images Ltd

104 Flying Camera Systems

105 Highviz Photography

106 ESDM Ltd

107 Flying Camera Systems Limited

108 Edward Martin

109 Digital Mapping and Survey Ltd

110 EDF NNB GenCo Ltd

111 EDF

112 Re-use*

113 AerialVue Ltd

114 Minerva NI Limited

115 Flying Fern Films Ltd

116 Out Filming Ltd

117 Hexcam Ltd

118 McKenzie Geospatial Surveys Ltd

119 Resource UAS

120 Plum Pictures

121 Jonathan Malory

122 Mas-UK Ltd

123 Bailey Balloons Ltd

124 David Bush

125 Southampton University

126 Helipov

127 Costain Ltd

128 Sky-Futures

129 Jonathan Blaxill

130 Roke Manor Research Ltd

131 Colin Bailie

132 British Broadcasting Corp

133 Simon Hailey

134 Re-use*

135 Trimvale Aviation

136 PSH Skypower Ltd

137 Aerosight Ltd

171 Re-use*

173 Colin Bailie

174 Simon Field

175 Re-use*

176 Aerial Graphical Services

177 Think Aerial Photography

178 Hedge Air Limited

179 Scottish Environment Protection Agency

180 Skypower Limited

181 Elevation Images

182 Universal Sky Pictures

183 MBDA UK Ltd

184 Helicammedia

185 Oculus Systems Ltd

186 MASA Ltd

187 Doozee Aerial Systems Ltd

188 Selex Galileo

189 Whisperdrone

190 Z-Axis

191 Rotarama Ltd

192 Re-use*

193 BBC (Natural History Unit)

194 Flying Camera Company

195 Flying Camera Company

* Short-term approval that was granted, but now no longer applies

Source: CAA

Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013 20.02 GMT

Find this story at 25 January 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

The ARGUS-IS can view an area of 15 sq/miles in a single image
Its zoom capability can detect an object as small as 6in on the ground
Developed by BAE as part of a $18million DARPA project
System works by stringing together 368 digital camera chips

A sinister airborne surveillance camera gives the U.S. military the ability to track movements in an entire city like a real-time Google Street View.

The ARGUS-IS array can be mounted on unmanned drones to capture an area of 15 sq/miles in an incredible 1,800MP – that’s 225 times more sensitive than an iPhone camera.

From 17,500ft the remarkable surveillance system can capture objects as small as 6in on the ground and allows commanders to track movements across an entire battlefield in real time.

Scroll down for video

Beat that, Google: An image taken from 17,500ft by the U.S. military’s ARGUS-IS array, which can capture 1,800MP zoomable video feeds of an entire medium-sized city in real time

‘It is important for the public to know that some of these capabilities exist,’ said Yiannis Antoniades, the BAE engineer who designed the system, in a recent PBS broadcast.

The aerospace and weapons company developed the ARGUS-IS array as part of a $18.5million project funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

In Greek mythology, Argus Panoptes, guardian of the heifer-nymph Io and son of Arestor, was a primordial giant whose epithet, ‘Panoptes’, ‘all-seeing’, led to his being described with multiple, often one hundred, eyes.

Like the Titan of myth, the Pentagon’s ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) works by stringing together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips.

An airborne processor combines the video from these chips to create a single ultra-high definition mosaic video image which updates at up to 15 frames a second.

All-seeing: This graphic illustrates how the U.S. military’s ARGUS-IS array links together images streamed from hundreds of digital camera sensors to watch over a huge expanse of terrain in real time

What it looks like: The ARGUS-IS (a backronym standing for Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Imaging System) strings together an array of 368 digital camera imaging chips into a single unit

That tremendous level of detail makes it sensitive enough to not only track people moving around on the ground thousands of feet below, but even to see what they are doing or carrying.

The ARGUS array sends its live feed to the ground where it connects to a touch-screen command room interface.

Using this, operators can zoom in to any area within the camera’s field of view, with up to 65 zoom windows open at once.

Each video window is electronically steerable independent of the others, and can either provide continuous imagery of a fixed area on the ground or be designated to automatically keep a specified target in the window.

Sinister: The system tracks all moving objects in its field of view, highlighting them with coloured boxes, allowing operators to track movements across an area as and when they happen

The system automatically tracks any moving object it can see, including both vehicles and individuals on foot, highlighting them with coloured boxes so they can be easily identified.

It also records everything, storing an approximate million terabytes of data a day – the equivalent of 5,000 hours of high-definition video footage.

‘So you can go back and say I’d like to see what happened at this particular location three days, two hours [and] four minutes ago, and it will actually show you what happened as if you were watching it live,’ said Mr Antoniades.

iPad next? The feed from the ARGUS is transmitted to a touch-screen command and control interface

Windows: Operators can open a window to zoom in to any area within the camera’s field of view, with up to 65 open and running at once

Total surveillance: The view of Quantico, Virginia, highlighted in the PBS film

For the PBS programme reporting the technology, Mr Antoniades showed reporters a feed over the city of Quantico, Virginia, that was recorded in 2009.

…

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 14:56 GMT, 28 January 2013 | UPDATED: 19:56 GMT, 28 January 2013

Find this story at 28 January 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Multimillion-pound plans by three police forces to outsource services to the firm at the centre of the Olympics security debacle have collapsed.

Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner David Lloyd said the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Strategic Alliance had discontinued negotiations with G4S.

The three forces were looking in to working with G4S in a bid to save £73 million by outsourcing support functions.

The proposals involved switching 1,100 roles, including human resources, IT and finance to the security contractor.

But doubts were raised after the company was forced to admit severe failings over the Olympics security contract last summer, which led to police officers and 3,500 extra troops being deployed to support the operation.

In a statement, Mr Lloyd said: “I have always said that I would make my decision once the evidence was received and assessed.

“It is now clear that the G4S framework contract through Lincolnshire Police was not suitable for the unique position of the three forces.”

But he added that outsourcing to other companies would still be considered.

Mr Lloyd said: “I am already in discussion with other market providers and will continue to talk with G4S about how they can assist policing support services in Hertfordshire. My clear position is that all elements of support work will be considered for outsourcing or other use of the market.

“I made my decision based on evidence and on the recommendations from the Chief Constables. I still believe that substantial elements of policing support services will be best delivered by the private sector and will ensure that this option is immediately pursued.

“We will now move forward looking at organisational support services, as before.”

Police and Crime Commissioner for Bedfordshire, Olly Martins, said: “The concerns that I had about this proposal are on record but I am pleased that following the evaluation and subsequent discussions, the three Police and Crime Commissioners have ended up in agreement with a shared view that this contract does not deliver what we need.

“However, we do still have to save money. Strengthening the ways in which we collaborate with Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire is a crucial element of our on-going investment in all our police services.

“I now look forward to working with my fellow commissioners to develop new and innovative ways in which we can progress our collaborative approach.”

The force’s Chief Constable Alf Hitchcock said: “As an Alliance we have been working together to explore a range of options for making savings at a time when all three forces are facing significant financial challenges.

“Along with my Chief Constable colleagues in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire and the three commissioners, we are continuing to explore other opportunities, whilst in Bedfordshire we are using the Option 10 and Lean processes to achieve savings in-house and protect front line policing.”

Kim Challis, chief executive of G4S Government and outsourcing solutions, said: “We have put forward a compelling proposition to the police forces of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire which would have guaranteed them savings of over £100 million over the next ten years, allowing them to meet the financial challenge of the Comprehensive Spending Review without compromising on efficiency or public safety.

“Our proposition was to operate back office services at the volume and scale required to deliver significant savings to forces, enabling them to concentrate their resources on frontline roles: it was never about replacing police officers. This has already proved to be the case in Lincolnshire, where we have a successful partnership which, in less than a year, has seen us deliver savings in running costs of around 16%.

…

Jennifer Cockerell
Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Find this story at 30 January 2013

© independent.co.uk

ALMERE / JITSKE BOKHOVEN – D66 Almere vindt het gebruik van de Raven, onbemande vliegtuigjes (drones) die sinds enige tijd worden ingezet om inbrekers te pakken, een vergaande inbreuk op de privacy van Almeerders. Fractievoorzitter Jan Lems heeft dan ook schriftelijke vragen aan het college van burgemeester en wethouders gesteld om erachter te komen wat hier de argumenten voor zijn.

De drones zijn door Defensie beschikbaar gesteld. Met behulp van de vliegtuigjes kunnen agenten live beelden van een hoogte van 300 meter bekijken. ,,Ik vind het op z’n zachts gezegd opmerkelijk dat je hier ineens vliegtuigjes ziet vliegen die je boven Afghanistan verwacht’’, reageert Lems. ,,Ik vraag me af wat hier de argumenten voor zijn.’’

Lems vindt het ook opmerkelijk of Almeerders niet vooraf geïnformeerd hadden moeten worden. ,,Dat moest bij het cameratoezicht wel, vanwege de wet op de privacy. Had dat niet hier ook gemoeten? Ik hoor het graag’’

Gepubliceerd op 01 februari 13, 12:00 Laatst bijgewerkt op 01 februari 13, 20:42

Find this story at 01 February 2013

© 2013 Almere Vandaag

De Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) leest niet elke e-mail die wordt verstuurd, ook al is dit een hardnekkige mythe die blijft bestaan, zo liet de dienst onlangs weten. Toch wordt mogelijk dit jaar de wet aangepast waardoor de AIVD meer bevoegdheden krijgt om internetverkeer te onderscheppen.

Tijdens de NCSC Conferentie in Den Haag sprak Sebastian Reyn van de AIVD over de rol die de inlichtingendiensten op internet spelen en welke risico’s Nederland bedreigen. Dit om meer inzicht in de werking van de diensten te geven en waar die zich mee bezighouden, voor zover het grote publiek dit mag weten.

“Ik kan jullie niets over onze bronnen, werkwijze en huidige informatiepositie vertellen. Dit vereist geen verdere uitleg”, liet Reyn de zaal weten. Hij begon met het ontzenuwen van populaire mythes, zoals de mythe dat de AIVD al het e-mailverkeer zou afluisteren. “Dat is niet het geval.”

Dreigingen
“Het is belangrijk dat burgers begrijpen wat we doen en waarom wat we doen van belang is voor hun veiligheid.” Volgens Reyn zijn cybercrime en cyberspionage in dat licht twee van de grootste dreigingen voor de nationale veiligheid. “Er is geen twijfel dat cyberspionage, samen met cybercrime, de grootste dreiging is waar we in het cyberdomein mee te maken hebben.”

Vanwege de omvang van de dreiging is het belangrijk dat partijen samenwerken. “Deze dreiging is te groot om alleen aan te pakken.” Daarin spelen ook internetgebruikers een rol. Volgens Reyn gedragen veel mensen zich nog altijd op onveilige wijzen en zijn zich niet van de risico’s bewust. Zo wordt software niet gepatcht, worden wachtwoorden nauwelijks gewijzigd en laat men overal persoonlijke informatie op het web slingeren.

Voorbeelden hiervan verschijnen dagelijks in de media. Het probleem met cyberspionage is dat het onzichtbaar is. “Het is een feit dat buitenlandse inlichtingendiensten op geheime wijze toegang tot belangrijke informatiesystemen proberen te krijgen.” Veel van deze aanvallen worden door bestaande beveiligingssystemen nauwelijks gedetecteerd.

E-mail
“We zijn niet geinteresseerd in elke e-mail of verstuurd sms-bericht, of elk cyberincident. Onze focus ligt bij dreigingen voor de nationale veiligheid.” Cyberspionage en cybercrime ziet de AIVD als serieuze dreigingen, dat geldt echter niet voor cyberterrorisme. Cyberterroristen vormen nog geen grote bedreiging voor de nationale veiligheid, aldus Reyn. “De mogelijkheden die cyberterroristen hebben zijn op dit moment beperkt.”

Terroristen zouden dan ook nog niet bij grote cyberaanvallen betrokken of hiervoor verantwoordelijk zijn geweest. Ook voor hacktivisten is Reyn niet bang. Hij vergeleek ze met het digitale equivalent van demonstrerende mensen.

De grootste dreiging komt dan ook van andere staten. Reyn stelt dat in veel landen het de juridische taak van de overheid is om andere landen te bespioneren om hun eigen positie in de wereld te versterken. “Elke dag proberen duizenden mensen die voor legio inlichtingendiensten werken toegang tot de informatie van andere landen te krijgen. En je kunt ervan uitgaan dat een aantal in Nederland is geinteresseerd.”

En Nederland is voor deze landen een interessant doelwit op zowel economisch, technologisch als wetenschappelijk gebied. Volgens Reyn is er nog een te groot vertrouwen in de veiligheid van ICT-systemen.

Spionage
Cyberspionage is voor veel landen aantrekkelijk, ging Reyn verder. “Het is een goedkope manier om in korte tijd een grote hoeveelheid data te verzamelen en is voor een groot aantal doelen te gebruiken. Daarnaast is het risico op detectie klein en is ‘attributie’ lastig.” Het is bijna onmogelijk voor aangevallen landen om te bewijzen wie de dader is. “Landen zoeken bewust naar lekken in software en systemen”, stelt Reyn.

Volgens Reyn worden soms agenten gebruikt die USB-sticks op systemen aansluiten die niet op het internet zijn aangesloten. Daarnaast worden ook bekendere tactieken toegepast. “We zien vaak valse e-mails met verborgen malware.” Om ervoor dat te zorgen dat het slachtoffer deze e-mails ook opent, gebruiken staten klassieke spionagetactieken. “Ze zoeken naar menselijke kwetsbaarheden.”

Aftappen
Aan het eind van de lezing stelde Simone Halink van digitale burgerrechtenbeweging Bits of Freedom nog een vraag over de transparantie en openheid die de AIVD wil uitdragen, terwijl de bevoegdheden waaronder de dienst opereert mogelijk verder worden uitgebreid. Daardoor kan de dienst wel elke e-mail onderscheppen, zowel van Nederlandse als buitenlandse internetgebruikers.

Nederlandse veiligheidsdiensten hebben op dit moment de bevoegdheid om “ongericht” communicatie te onderscheppen. Ze mogen onder bepaalde voorwaarden de recorder aanzetten. Het gaat dan om “ongericht ontvangen en opnemen van niet-kabelgebonden telecommunicatie”.

Op dit moment is er een wijzigingsvoorstel voor de Wet op de Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten (Wiv) in de maak, waardoor die bevoegdheid wordt uitgebreid naar het aftappen van communicatie via kabels.

“De wet is in 2002 gemaakt en sindsdien heeft de technologie zich verder ontwikkeld. De meeste communicatie verloopt tegenwoordig via de kabel. Het is belangrijk dat de wet de spelregels beschrijft waar de inlichtingendiensten aan moeten voldoen, maar dat de wet zelf niet afhankelijk van technologie is”, aldus Reyn.

…

Vrijdag,11:38 doorRedactie

Find this story at 01 February 2013

© 2001-2013 Security.nl – The Security Council

Most law enforcement agencies refuse to reveal the surveillance technologies they use, claiming doing so could threaten national security. But authorities in Germany have shown it’s possible to be transparent without the sky falling in—by disclosing how they’ve spent millions on spy tools to help monitor Skype, email, and mobile phones.

Earlier this year, German politician Jan Korte submitted a series of written questions to the country’s federal ministry of home affairs regarding surveillance tools. The request was prompted by a scandal about how police had paid a private company to develop a controversial spy trojan to infiltrate and monitor suspects’ computers—a tactic that in most circumstances violates the German constitution. The answers Korte received were published in German in July, but have only this month been translated into English. (Update, Nov. 14: Thanks to blogger Anne Roth for the translation.)

What the answers revealed is the technology used by some of the country’s federal agencies and the companies contracted to provide it. Between 2005 and 2011, for instance, the Federal Office of Administration, which carries out work for all of Germany’s federal ministries, spent more than €1.9 million ($2.5 million) on telecom and internet surveillance gear provided by the companies TU München and Syborg, plus €158,000 ($204,000) on facial recognition software from the firm Cognitec.

Some police and intelligence agencies declined to provide Korte with the requested information, claiming it was restricted or classified. But others did not show the same concern. Customs authorities, for one, released details about the sophisticated surveillance tools they purchased, including spending more than €100,000 ($130,000) on software to monitor Skype, Gmail, Hotmail, AIM, Yahoo Mail, and Bit Torrent. The customs authorities, tasked with tackling drug crime in Germany, also paid a company called Schönhofer €1.8 million ($2.3 million) for equipment such as “ICT vehicles” designed to help gather data from target areas using “signal interrogator” technology. They additionally splashed out €170,000 ($220,000) on a cellphone-tracking tactic described as “stealthping,” which involves sending a covert signal to a phone in order find out its nearest location tower to discover the whereabouts of a person.

…

By Ryan Gallagher
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, at 5:04 PM ET Slate.com

Find this story at 31 October 2012

The answers Korte received were published in German in July, but have only this month been translated into English.

All contents © 2013 The Slate Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu criticizez the government for not addressing the issue of illegal recordings and locating the perpetrators of these crimes

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), speaks during a breakfast with Ankara media bureau chiefs.
The leader of the main opposition party likened the wiretapping of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the Uludere tragedy, in which 34 civilians mistaken for terrorists were killed, and accused the ruling party of practicing a double standard with regard to unlawful eavesdropping.

“In democratic countries, the political power should decidedly address and resolve these kinds of problems. They have to find the perpetrators and bring them to the justice. Did this happen? No. If the political power does not address the issue – which does not target itself – that is, if it applies a double standard, then it cannot obtain results,” Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), told Ankara media bureau chiefs on Dec. 26. “The incident took place a year ago and if the perpetrators cannot be found yet, then we have to find those responsible for it. Then this is another Uludere incident,” he said, referring to failed attempts since early 2012 to ascertain who gave the order of the attack against the civilians.

“What we have observed with this unlawful eavesdropping is the double standard the government is practicing. It feels disturbed when the prime minister is wiretapped but gloats when others are monitored. This is not right. At the end of the day, Mr. Prime Minister, whatever goes around comes around,” he said.

Stressing that Erdoğan’s political rivals have been frequent victims of wiretapping and many politicians’ privacy have been violated through video recordings in the past, Kılıçdaroğlu criticized the government for not addressing the issue and locating the perpetrators of these crimes. “This is a crime that we should all react against together. The victim can be the prime minister or a citizen. But we should denounce it altogether,” he said.

Yet there is a graver situation with regard to wiretapping in the country, according to Kılıçdaroğlu. “There are some acts that turn illegal wiretapping into a legal one. You will ask how it is possible. If some officials apply to the court to legally wiretap journalists but submit fake names to do so, this is a graver crime. I wonder what the prime minister’s reaction to that was.”

Describing attempts to eavesdrop on Erdoğan as a serious and grave issue, the main opposition leader asked the prime minister to inform the people about the perpetrators of this crime and further explain his claim that he might have been wiretapped by the deep state. “I think the prime minister should first answer the question regarding what the deep state is. Which ‘deep state’ wiretapped Erdoğan? The legal one or the illegal one?”

Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım is one of the people responsible for the wiretapping of Erdoğan, he maintained, recalling the minister’s advise that people not talk on the phone if they believe they are being eavesdropped on. “If you are disdainful of such an important issue, then it ends up with the wiretapping of the prime minister.”

Support to ODTÜ
Regarding ongoing attempts to isolate Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), whose students protested Erdoğan last week, Kılıçdaroğlu criticized both the government members and rectors of other universities that issued statements criticizing ODTÜ and its students. “We are, of course, against violence. There should be no violence. But we are equally against an understanding that regards the students’ right to protest, to open placards and to shout slogans, as violence. We also do not approve of other universities’ attempts to see the incident through the eyes and discourse of the prime minister. These are not the real views of these universities but of the rectors appointed by the [ruling] Justice and Development Party (AKP),” he said.

Noting that Erdoğan was escorted by nearly 3,500 policemen at ODTÜ, he asked “Are you going to a university or to an enemy country?”

‘Erdoğan won’t be able to be the president’
Reaffirming his statement that he would vote for President Abdullah Gül if the presidential race of 2014 would be between Gül and Erdoğan, Kılıçdaroğlu said he believed Turkey would elect someone eligible to this post who will not be Erdoğan. “The people will surely not elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as president. Can someone polarizing Turkey that much be the president? Can someone who enjoys the tension be the president? I trust in my people,” he said.

…

December/27/2012

ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News

Find this story at 27 December 2012

© http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com

The rumors started to hit the political corridor as soon as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s Security Chief Zeki Bulut was removed from office on Sept. 7, 2012.

He was actually appointed as the police chief of the Western Anatolian town of Denizli. On paper it was a promotion, but in fact it was a clear demotion according to tendencies in the Turkish bureaucratic system; you’d expect a bigger city after protecting the prime minister for years. A few days later it was understood that he was not alone. Most of the 200-strong team of bodyguards including four police commissars and five squad leaders were moved elsewhere; some papers had claimed that the entire police team and some civilian officers in the Prime Ministry building were replaced.

The rumors were about a number of bugs found in Erdoğan’s office by the electronic sweeping teams of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). It was not possible to make that a proper news story since it was not possible to obtain even a tiny bit of information from any official source, until Erdoğan himself said on Dec. 21 in an NTV interview that he was also eavesdropped on, possibly by the remnants of a “deeper state” in Turkey. “A deeper state exists almost in every country,” he claimed. “We try a lot but unfortunately it is not possible to eradicate the deeper state”; that was in reference to the ongoing court cases of Ergenekon, Balyoz and OdaTV in which many army officers, academics, journalists and writers, lawyers and police chiefs are being tried for conspiring to overthrow the government.

Journalist Ahmet Şık, who was under arrest from one of those cases up until a few months ago claimed in an article in Birgün newspaper on Dec. 26 that the unveiling by Erdoğan exposed a rift within the ranks of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) between the core and the followers of the U.S.-resident Islamic theologian Fethullah Gülen. According to this claim, the policemen removed from being the close guard of Erdoğan were sympathizers of the Gülen group, which has been serving the government dearly since the beginning of the Ergenekon, Balyoz and OdaTV probes. Prime Ministry sources deny the claims that the replacement of the bodyguards has anything to do with the bugs in the office.

Or should we say offices? Because according to the stories appearing in Hürriyet, Milliyet and Star newspapers on Dec. 26, the bugs were found in the last weeks of December 2011 in both the Prime Ministry building and the private office of Erdoğan in his apartment home in Ankara. That was when he returned from his more than 20-day stay in Istanbul following an intestinal operation there. The fact brings another factor into the equation. On Feb. 7, 2012 the Istanbul prosecutors who were working on the coup claim cases attempted to interrogate Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkish intelligence, MİT, together with two former officers, which made Erdoğan furious. A number of prosecutors and police officers who had been claimed by Turkish media to be close to the Gülen group were removed from their offices to less relevant positions and Erdoğan forced a law change from Parliament to make the prime minister’s permission obligatory to open an investigation into MİT officers. One has to recall that soon after Fidan had taken his office in May 2011, an illegally recorded tape was leaked to the media about the (failed) secret talks between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in which Fidan had taken part.

…

December/27/2012

Find this story at 27 December 2012

© http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com