CIA

Stories 601 - 620 | << Prev   Next >>

Five Best Jobs Left in Obama Administration
Five Best Jobs Left in Obama Administration
ANALYSIS
Dec 5, 2008 1:12 PM CST

Five Best Jobs Left in Obama Administration

Highest-profile unfilled slots are energy, intelligence positions

(Newser) - State and Defense are taken, but Barack Obama has yet to fill several high-level administration positions. Politico looks at the top five open jobs:
  • Energy Secretary: Sustainable energy will remain a priority, despite the attention the economy will draw away. Key candidates: Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Dan Reicher and
...

Obama's In for an Awkward CIA Transition
Obama's In for an Awkward
CIA Transition
ANALYSIS
Dec 3, 2008 12:08 PM CST

Obama's In for an Awkward CIA Transition

His tough campaign rhetoric sets tone as left looks for change

(Newser) - On the campaign trail, Barack Obama frequently railed against the CIA’s secret jails and harsh interrogation techniques. Now, he must lead the agency, and the transition’s already proving rocky, the New York Times reports. Liberal outcry derailed his rumored pick for director, John Brennan. Brennan was chief of...

Obama's Top CIA Pick Drops Out

Obama's Top CIA Pick
Drops Out
Nov 26, 2008 4:46 AM CST

Obama's Top CIA Pick Drops Out

Brennan withdraws under pressure but denies backing torture

(Newser) - Barack Obama's top intelligence adviser and his first choice for CIA director has withdrawn his name from consideration, the Los Angeles Times reports. John Brennan, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, was branded by some liberal groups as a proponent of the harsh interrogation techniques used against terrorist suspects...

Bin Laden Isolated, Struggling: Hayden

CIA: He's forced to move from place to place, isolated from his terror network

(Newser) - Seven years after 9/11, terror chief Osama bin Laden remains alive and free, but he's struggling, CIA director Michael Hayden said in a speech yesterday: "He appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he nominally heads." Hayden said bin Laden spends much of...

Obama Likely to Keep Bush Intel Policies

Positions likely to be filled with pragmatists

(Newser) - Barack Obama isn’t likely to deliver the radical intelligence policy overhaul many civil liberty groups are craving, advisers tell the Wall Street Journal. Those advisers include former Republican supporters and centrist Clinton officials. “He’s going to take a very centrist approach,” said an ex-Bush and Clinton...

In Pakistan, US Moves From Ground to Air

CIA turns to airstrikes after land operations draw protest

(Newser) - The US has recalibrated its antiterror campaign in Pakistan, backing off ground raids via the Afghan border and intensifying its CIA-led airstrikes against militants. The Pakistani government had lodged bitter complaints about the ground operations, the New York Times reports, which were seen as a violation of the country's sovereignty....

Russian Role in CIA Agent's Murder Probed

Questions linger over 1993 killing as Georgia's geopolitical significance surges

(Newser) - The first shot of a new cold war with Russia may have been fired into a CIA station chief's head in 1993, the Wall Street Journal reports. A vodka-swilling villager was swiftly jailed for the killing of Freddie Woodruff, the top US spy in newly independent Georgia, but that man,...

Secret White House Memos OK'd Waterboarding

Fearing backlash, CIA sought and received support

(Newser) - The Bush administration gave its blessing in writing for the CIA to use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques in two secret memos that have only now come to light, the Washington Post reveals. Intelligence officials sought to get something on paper in 2003—more than a year after the...

Missile Strikes Are Learning Tool: CIA

Chief says agency 'tickles' terrorist enemy to gauge reaction

(Newser) - The CIA purposely uses missile strikes to "tickle" enemy groups, often by targeting a single person, to learn from their responses, agency chief Michael Hayden said today. Hayden also told a gathering of Air Force members the CIA has "picked up insights" from working alongside the military, the...

Russia Claims US Citizen Provoked War

Cites teacher's found passport as proof of meddling in Georgia

(Newser) - To support its claims that US intelligence agents played a role in the Georgian conflict, the Kremlin has produced a US passport belonging to an Army veteran from Texas, the Wall Street Journal reports. They say the passport was found in an outpost used by Georgian special forces. The alleged...

CIA Dreads Another Neocon White House

Agency fears McCain administration would extend Bush-era woes

(Newser) - The CIA has had a rough run under the Bush White House, and its top brass is worried that a John McCain presidency would be just as bad, reports Mother Jones. In recent years, animosity has defined the relationship between neoconservatives and spies, and McCain’s braintrust is full of...

50 Years On, Tibet's Secret War Simmers

Dalai Lama's brother was key to CIA-backed anti-China insurgency

(Newser) - The little-known Tibetan resistance struggle after China's 1950 invasion still affects its politics today, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Dalai Lama's brother played a vital role in the CIA-backed armed movement, largely made up of Buddhist monks, and Chinese suspicion still lingers over how much the spiritual leader himself...

Julia Child Dished Up Secrets in WWII

Chef one of several famous Americans revealed as spies

(Newser) - Legendary chef Julia Child, Hollywood star Sterling Hayden, White Sox catcher Moe Berg and historian Arthur Schlesinger were all spies for the US, according to newly declassified documents. Untold stories and clandestine heroics of World War II will come to light today as authorities release 750,000 pages of files...

CIA Confronts Pakistan Over Militant Ties

Secret meeting focuses on evidence of links to violent extemists

(Newser) - The CIA has confronted Pakistani officials with evidence of links between the nation's spy agency and Islamic insurgents, the New York Times reports. A top CIA official flew to Pakistan for a tense secret meeting earlier this month with information about ties to al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in the border region believed...

Secret Justice Memo Bares CIA Torture Defense

Agents would be safe from prosecution if they acted in good faith

(Newser) - The Bush administration advised the CIA in 2002 that its agents would not be prosecuted on anti-torture legislation as long as they professed an "honest belief" that their actions would not cause severe pain and anguish, CNN reports. The memo is one of three made public by the ACLU,...

Gitmo 'Torture' Modeled on Chinese Grilling of US POWs

Communist methods became US training manual

(Newser) - Guantanamo Bay interrogators learned their techniques from Chinese Communists who used them on American POWs in the Korean War, the New York Times reports. A 1957 Air Force chart labeled Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance detailed methods like prolonged standing and exposure to cold, and was used as...

Ailing bin Laden Mere Months From Death?

Terror mastermind succumbing to kidney disease, CIA claims

(Newser) - Terror leader Osama bin Laden is dying from kidney disease, according to a CIA analysis of the medications he has been taking, reports Time.The world's most wanted terrorist likely has no more than 12 months to live, and may already be teetering on the brink of death, according to...

Gitmo Prisoner Charged in Cole Bombing

Torture claims will be central to defense

(Newser) - A suspected al-Qaeda terrorist held at Guantanamo Bay for six years has been charged with masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors and injured 50 others. The treatment of Saudi prisoner Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri in custody, which included waterboarding by interrogators, will be a...

US and Pakistan Let al-Qaeda Regroup

Infighting, Musharraf, Iraq led to failure of 'Operation Cannonball'

(Newser) - Nearly seven years after 9/11, America has not only failed to capture Osama bin Laden; it has also allowed al-Qaeda to rebuild itself in lawless northwest Pakistan, near the Afghan border. The New York Times conducted more than four dozen interviews to discover how rivalries among American agencies, trouble with...

US Steps Up Covert Plots in Iran
US Steps Up Covert Plots
in Iran
GLOSSIES
Jun 30, 2008 2:15 AM CDT

US Steps Up Covert Plots in Iran

Critics view $400M program as prelude to war

(Newser) - Congress agreed to boost covert operations against Iran last year despite reservations by key officials, Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker. President Bush sought up to $400 million for the program, which supports dissidents intent on undermining Tehran and gathers data on its nuke plans. Some analysts believe the...

Stories 601 - 620 | << Prev   Next >>
Most Read on Newser