Iran Feature: Obama Ordered Cyber-Attacks on Tehran (Sanger)

From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

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US and the World Feature: President Obama and the "Kill List" (Becker/Shane)

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

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Yemen Feature: CIA Seeks Authority to Expand Drone Programme (Miller)

The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, U.S. officials said.

Securing permission to use these “signature strikes” would allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior, such as imagery showing militants gathering at known al-Qaeda compounds or unloading explosives.

The practice has been a core element of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan for several years. CIA Director David H. Petraeus has requested permission to use the tactic against the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which has emerged as the most pressing terrorism threat to the United States, officials said.

If approved, the change would probably accelerate a campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen that is already on a record pace, with at least eight attacks in the past four months.

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Iran Propaganda Special: US Intelligence "Trust Us --- We Know Everything"

February 2003: US Secretary of State Colin Powell explains how US intelligence knows everything about Iraq

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What I like most about this Obama Administration propaganda effort --- put out through recurrent spokesman Joby Warrick of The Washington Post --- is that it covers so many different audiences.

Are you a lily-livered lefty who thinks we are making up "intelligence" to bash the Islamic Republic? No way.

Are you a hawk-hearted Congressman who wants an immediate airstrike to stop Iran's Almost-Here Bomb? Not so fast, sir.

Are you the Supreme Leader, thinking you can stall on nuclear talks and get away with deviousness even if they take place? You best think again.

(And stop gloating about how you took down one of our drone aircraft last year. See that reference to the "RQ-170 Sentinel" in the first paragraph? Gloat on that.)

Do you worry that the US Government just doesn't know what it is doing in this political dance over Tehran? Don't. We do.

U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence
Joby Warrick

More than three years ago, the CIA dispatched a stealth surveillance drone into the skies over Iran.

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Iran Feature: The Disappearing Interview with a US Official (Esfandiari)

The Controversial Alef ArticleSince Tuesday, we have paid close attention to the curious episode of a conservative Iranian newspaper/website, linked to leading MP Ahmad Tavakoli, announcing and then withdrawing the announcement of an interview with the State Department's Persian-language spokesperson Alan Eyre.

Golnaz Esfandiari, writing for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, summarises the developments, which came amidst confusion over Iran's forthcoming nuclear talks with the US and other powers....

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Yemen Feature: An Arab Spring? No, Just More US Drone Strikes (Woods/Slater)

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Covert US strikes against alleged militants in Yemen have risen steeply during the Arab spring, and are currently at the same level as the CIA’s controversial drone campaign in Pakistan, a new study by the Bureau reveals.

At least 27 US military and CIA strikes involving cruise missiles, aircraft, drones or naval bombardments have taken place in the volatile Gulf nation to date, killing hundreds of alleged militants linked to the regional al Qaeda franchise. But at least 55 civilians have died too, the study found.

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Iran Feature: Israel's Mossad, Posing as CIA Officers, Recruited Anti-Regime Insurgents (Perry)

Jundullah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, executed June 2010Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization.

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US War-On-Terror Special: The Drone Mentality (Greenwald)

Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon, summarises the US use of drone strikes in the latest phase of the War on Terror. From the realization that not even the CIA knows who the strikes are killing to the foggy legal justification for the drone operations to the personal story of the death of 16-year-old Tariq Aziz, Greenwald collects and examines the latest headlines in his blanket condemnation of the tactic.

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EA Twitter Special: Is the CIA Following Your Tweets? (Dozier)

A big Saturday morning hello to our readers at the CIA, who are not shy about following EA --- no "Anonymous Proxy" or "Unknown" in our StatCounter, just the straightforward "Central Intelligence Agency". 

As for all the other Twitter users they are watching.... Well, here's a message from Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press:

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

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Afghanistan: The Assassin, the CIA, and the Killing of Ahmad Wali Karzai (Amoore)

Ahmad Wali KarzaiThe man who finally killed Karzai was someone he trusted with his life. Not only was Sardar Mohammed a close confidant, but he also worked as an informant for the CIA, according to relatives, Karzai’s friends and the Afghan intelligence agency.

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