Tag Archives: CIA

“Intelligence Coup Of The Century”: CIA Ran Global Spy Op Using Well-Known Swiss Encryption Company, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

What better way to infiltrate a government’s computer systems than by selling them their encryption software. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

In a new bombshell report, The Washington Post reveals a massive covert operation which was ‘hidden in plain sight’ that seems straight out of Confessions of an Economic Hitman — it’s yet more ‘conspiracy theory’ of the past now definitively proven conspiracy fact.

For the past decades, the CIA owned and operated a front company based in Switzerland for the purpose of spying on secret government communications across the globe, whether they were allies or adversaries. This according to newly unearthed 280-pages of an internal CIA history of the operation obtained by the Post along with Swiss public broadcaster SRF and German broadcaster ZDF.

Crypto AG, a Switzerland-based communications encryption firm, was secretly purchased by the CIA and West German intelligence services in 1971. The company not only made millions by selling encryption equipment to over 120 countries into the 21st century, but used the very same equipment to infiltrate each host country’s communications in a ‘Trojan Horse’ style operation.

Crypto is headquareted in Steinhausen, Switzerland. Image source: Reuters.

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Posted in Business, Governments, Intelligence, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology

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Draining the Intelligence Community Swamp, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on March 4, 2020 | 2 comments

Even if a bunch of intelligence community operatives are fired, given Trump’s policy predilections, particularly his partiality towards Israel, the operatives will be replaced by Trump lackeys with similar views. Very little will change. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

The appointment of U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as interim Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a position that he will apparently hold simultaneously with the ambassadorship, has been criticized from all sides due to his inexperience, history of bad judgement and partisanship. The White House is now claiming that he will be replaced by Texas Congressman John Ratcliffe after the interim appointment is over, though sources in Washington suggest that Ratcliffe might have some problems in being approved by Congress.

But such criticism, including my own, has somewhat missed the point, which is that what we are already seeing is a purge orchestrated by Grenell of federal employees in the White House and national security apparatus who are holdovers from the Obama Administration and who are therefore considered to be unreliable. That is why Grenell will continue to be ambassador as well as DNI as it is envisioned that his wrecking ball will have completed its task within six months and he will be able to return to Berlin, in spite of the fact that he is despised in Germany and many officials there even refuse to meet with him, which characteristically doesn’t appear to bother the White House at all.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Intelligence, Media, Politics

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U.S. Intelligence Is Intervening in the 2020 Election, by Jefferson Morley

Posted on February 27, 2020 | 1 comment

Nobody is interfering more in US elections than the intelligence hacks screaming  about foreign, particularly Russian, interference in our elections. From Jefferson Morley at truthdig.org:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)

President Trump’s ongoing purge of the intelligence community, along with Bernie Sanders’ surge in the Democratic presidential race, has triggered an unprecedented intervention of U.S. intelligence agencies in the U.S. presidential election on factually dubious grounds.

Former CIA director John Brennan sees a “full-blown national security crisis” in President Trump’s latest moves against the intelligence community. Brennan charges, “Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.” But congressional representatives, both Democratic and Republican, who heard a briefing by the intelligence community about the 2020 election earlier this month say the case for Russian interference is “overstated.”

On February 21, it was leaked to the Washington Post that “U.S. officials,” meaning members of the intelligence community, had confidentially briefed Sanders about alleged Russian efforts to help his 2020 presidential campaign.

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Intelligence, Media, Politics

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U.S. Warms Up Its Own Old Spy Stories To Bash Putative Chinese Espionage, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on February 13, 2020 | 1 comment

The old saying is that it takes one to know one. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.com:

The Washington Post is warming up an old crypto story:

For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret.The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.

The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.

But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.

The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project.

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Posted in Business, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Intelligence, Media

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Secret Wars, Forgotten Betrayals, Global Tyranny. Who Is Really in Charge of the U.S. Military? by Cynthia Chung

Posted on January 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

Do any of the elected officials in the US, from the president on down, have any significant control over what the government does? From Cynthia Chung at strategic-culture.org:

“There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold.”

– William Shakespeare

Once again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its breath all at once and can only wait to see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us by. The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man. It is only normal then, that during such times of crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives of just this one person.  The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen and undeniably an essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia, was a terrible crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation. And therefore, that is exactly what we should not do.

In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous indignation unfortunately causes the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with what is right in front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the doublespeak of ‘official government statements’.

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Downing of PS-752 already being used to smear MH-17 skeptics, by Max Parry

Posted on January 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

The Iranian government lied about shooting down PS-752 and the admitted it had shot the plane down, ergo, there are no holes in the official story about MH-17, the plane that was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. It makes perfect sense. From Max Parry at off-guardian.org:

When the Pentagon confirmed the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, U.S. President Donald Trump took to social media to post a single image of the American flag to the adulation of his followers.

Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the other flag synonymous with U.S. foreign policy, that of the ‘false flag’ utilized to deceive the public and stir up support for endless war abroad.

While the chicken hawk defenders of Trump’s reckless decision to murder one of the biggest contributors in the defeat of ISIS salivated over possible war with Iran, their appetite was spoiled by Tehran’s retaliatory precision strikes of two U.S. bases in Iraq that deliberately avoided casualties while in accordance with the Islamic Republic’s right to self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations charter.

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Inside Journalist Tareq Haddad’s Spectacular Departure from Newsweek, by Alan Macleod

Posted on December 22, 2019 | Leave a comment

Don’t take if from SLL that the mainstream media is a motley amalgamation of mendacious miscreants, take it from someone who until recently was part of it. From Alan Macleod at mintpressnews.com:

Tareq Haddad’s exposé of the corruption and collusion at the heart of modern journalism is something long-discussed by academics, but rarely does such a clear example present itself.

It’s Manufacturing Consent meets Operation Mockingbird; in a long exposé essay that doubles as a goodbye to the profession, Newsweek journalist Tareq Haddad explained why he was very publicly quitting his job at the New York-based magazine. “Journalism is quickly dying. America is regressing because it lacks the truth,” he wrote.

The trigger for his decision was management suppressing his story on the bombshell news that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) hid a mountain of evidence suggesting the 2018 Douma Attack was staged, thus paving the way for more military intervention in Syria. But below the surface, it was about far more than that; Haddad’s essay described how journalists are worked to the bone and how media drives the public towards war, coordinating smears against politicians who stand against it. But most spectacularly of all, he alleges that there is a network of hundreds of government assets working as high-level editors in newsrooms across America, even naming the one at Newsweek.

Haddad knew the consequences of speaking out:

In the end, that decision was rather simple, all be it I understand the cost to me will be undesirable. I will be unemployed, struggle to finance myself and will likely not find another position in the industry I care about so passionately. If I am a little lucky, I will be smeared as a conspiracy theorist, maybe an Assad apologist or even a Russian asset—the latest farcical slur of the day,” he wrote.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Intelligence, Investigations, Media, Military, Morality, Politics, War

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Durham Reportedly Seeking Ex-CIA Director Brennan’s Emails, Call Logs Over Russian Probe, by Tyler Durden

Posted on December 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Although he has plenty of competition, Brennan may have been the scuzziest intelligence operative of them all. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Attorney General William Barr told “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that by the time Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, it had become clear that allegations raised by the FBI against a former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos were largely baseless, and that pursuing George Papadopoulos’ “had very little probative value.”

Additionally, Barr admitted, in a very candid (for him) moment, that federal prosecutor John Durham (who is scrutinizing the Russia investigation) “isn’t just looking at the FBI, he’s looking at other agencies, departments, and private actors,” but  that “the other agencies are cooperating very well.”

Which is all the more intriguing as, at the same time as his interview aired, The New York Times dropped a bombshell, reporting that, according to three people briefed on the inquiry, Durham’s investigation has begun examining the role of the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan in how the intelligence community assessed Russia’s 2016 election interference.

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Former NSA Tech Chief Says Mueller Report Was Based on CIA-Fabricated ‘Evidence’, by Eric Zuesse

Posted on December 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

Bill Binney says that the CIA fabricated the evidence used to “prove” the hack of DNC emails. This disguised that the hack was actually a download. From Eric Zuesse at theduran.com:

On December 12th, the retired NSA whistleblower and former Technical Director of the NSA, Bill Binney asserted, at 39:00-44:00 in this audio interview of him:

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BILL BINNEY: I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently. We haven’t published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items that we’ve found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails. Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0 was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack. Taking that into account with all the other evidence we have; like the download speeds from Guccifer 2.0 were too fast, and they couldn’t be managed by the web. And that the files he was putting together and saying that he actually hacked, the two files he said he had were really one file, and he was playing with the data; moving it to two different files to claim two hacks. Taking that into account with the fabrication of the Russian fingerprints, it leads us back to inferring that in fact the marble framework out of the Vault 7 compromise of CIA hacking routines was a possible user in this case. In other words, it looked like the CIA did this, and that it was a matter of the CIA making it look like the Russians were doing the hack. So, when you look at that and also look at the DNC emails that were published by Wikileaks that have this phat file format in them, all 35,813 of these emails have rounded off times to the nearest even second. That’s a phat file format property; that argues that those files were, in fact, downloaded to a thumb drive or CD-rom and physically transported before Wikileaks posted them. Which again argues that it wasn’t a hack. So, all of the evidence we’re finding is clearly evidence that the Russians were not in fact hacking; it was probably our own people. It’s very hard for us to get this kind of information out. The mainstream media won’t cover it; none of them will. It’s very hard. We get some bloggers to do that and some radio shows.

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Julian Assange’s extradition fight could turn on reports he was spied on for CIA, by Ben Doherty and Amy Remelkis

Posted on December 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

How would Julian Assange get a fair trial if the CIA’s been spying on him and his lawyers? From Ben Doherty and Amy Remelkis at theguardian.org:

Allegations a security firm at Ecuadorian embassy gave footage to CIA come as 100 doctors urge Australia to protect him

Julian Assange leaves a police station in London in April 2019
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves a police station in London in April 2019. The International Law Association in Sydney has heard that Assange’s fight against US extradition would be a long contest. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Julian Assange’s fight against extradition to the US could last years, and his argument could hinge on reports he has been illegally spied upon and his sensitive information given to the CIA.

Meanwhile, more than 100 doctors from across the world have written to the Australian government, urging it to act and “protect the life of its citizen”, in a letter to be delivered to the foreign affairs minister on Tuesday, amid warnings Assange’s health continues to deteriorate.

A judicial investigation by the Audiencia Nacional in Spain, the country’s national court, is acting on allegations that while Assange held asylum inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, the Wikileaks founder was spied on, listened to and had his computer data scraped and that this information was sold to US intelligence agencies.

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