Tag: CIA

“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, […]

Damascus has remained relatively untouched by the country’s insurgents. Its defense is rooted in Assad’s strategy, but aided by our uncoordinated policy. Syria is unique because its center of gravity is not the people. Iraq ultimately failed in part due to our failure to capture the support of the people. We ignored the Sunnis in Fallujah and expelled […]

But there is still a very lethal terrorist element to it. Same thing with Jabhat al-Nusra; most of that is focused on trying to oust Assad. But we are concerned about their using Syria as a safe haven for attacks outside.

Two North Carolina men were arrested on Thursday in the hacking of the personal email accounts of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and other senior officials. The men — Andrew Boggs, 22, of North Wilkesboro, and Justin Liverman, 24, of Morehead City — were accused of working with a prolific hacking group called Crackas With […]

Daniel Jones, the man at the center of landmark Senate report, goes public for the first time about the six-year investigation that led to the CIA spying on him. The man at the center of the US Senate’s landmark investigation of the CIA torture program has gone public for the first time about an experience […]

Brennan said that compared to al Qaeda, Daesh is a lot less “deliberate” in its planning and more “free-wheeling,” willing to carry out attacks on shorter notice.
“You look at 9/11 and other major attacks, and it was very deliberate, methodical, a lot of planning went into it. I think ISIL tries to move from idea to bang within months or within weeks,” Brennan said, using the administration’s preferred acronym for Daesh .

Forterra Systems Inc., a California startup focused on virtual reality, was in need of money and its products didn’t have much commercial appeal. Then funds came in from a source based far from Silicon Valley: In-Q-Tel Inc., a venture-capital firm in Virginia funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. One catalyst for the 2007 infusion, according […]

An internal history of the Watergate scandal prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency – intended to help the Agency make a clean breast of its own wrongdoing and kept in classified vaults for more than four decades – reveals how the spy service used a double agent to keep tabs on the burglars whose arrests […]

Governments will hide and exploit vulnerabilities as long as they can, even if that risks criminals getting their hands on them too

“At first, I wanted to jump across the table and strangle him. But then I started laughing. It was really funny, because he was the one in shackles, not me.” This was the reaction of CIA officer Jeanne Vertefeuille upon learning that Aldrich Ames, the most damaging mole in CIA history, had once given his […]

In the last few weeks the two presidential nominees have received their initial intelligence briefings. Although the experience must have been different for each — it was Donald Trump’s first, whereas Hillary Clinton is an experienced intelligence consumer — they were both recipients of a product authorized by President Barack Obama, the intelligence community’s most […]

“Withholding information from us will not work in your favor,” says Ronald S. Patrick, deputy director of talent development at the Central Intelligence Agency, which receives up to 150,000 résumés a year. Applicants who are offered a job go through a monthslong security clearance, including an intense background check. To pass, you can’t have been […]