Free Republic

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the first time has revealed details about an ultra-secret Cold War-era project to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the depths of the Pacific Ocean in 1974. The high-risk salvage operation, code-named ‘Project Azorian’, had been shrouded in secrecy for decades but the spy agency broke its silence in newly-declassified documents published yesterday by an independent watchdog, the National Security Archive. The documents, drawn from a 50-page article written for an in-house CIA journal, recount the daring bid approved by then-president Richard Nixon to raise the submarine using a specially-designed ship, the Glomar Explorer....

The proposed new charter for the nation’s spy satellite builder, the National Reconnaissance Office, is stuck in the Department of Defense’s general counsel’s office. The lawyers are apparently worried that the new charter may expand the agency’s powers into areas governed by the military services. Information on all this is extremely close hold but we have heard variations on this from two very well informed sources. One phrase in the statement of principles that guides the charter appears to be the issue: “overhead reconnaissance systems.” That is the key phrase in a document, called the statement of principles. It lays...

Within a year—give or take a few months—the shuttles will no longer be roaring through Florida skies. The program will shut down, the orbiters will go to museums, and pundits and bloggers will jump all over each other to pontificate on the meaning of the shuttle program. Most will declare it a mistake, some will call it a disaster. Eventually the historians will get to it, holding symposia and writing books about the program. Some of them will look at the shuttle’s early origins, when it was slated to be all things to all people: cheap, reliable, responsive. They will...

U.S. intelligence operations in Afghanistan have been ordered to adopt many of the systems and techniques that were used in Iraq. There, intelligence collecting came to include many social indicators, along with purely military items. Why didn't this approach develop in Afghanistan? Well it did, sort of, but in a scattered fashion. It never became the method for collecting and analyzing data on a national scale. Now it is. In another change, this data will be shared with allies. Normally, this sharing kind of sharing is entangled in a thicket of security restrictions. The thicket is getting pruned. All this...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair should sign by Dec. 1 a document laying out new responsibilities for the National Reconnaissance Office, builder and operator of America’s spy satellites. This will set in motion the first substantial changes to the NRO charter since 1965, four years after then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara created the NRO and drafted its charter. The NRO is led by former Air Force Gen. Bruce Carlson, The new document, called a statement of principles, lays out eight core ideas meant to guide the NRO, according to a source familiar with the document....

Several high-priority and high-priced satellites crucial to U.S. national security are slated to launch over the next 15 to 18 months, according to Bruce Carlson, director of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). During a keynote address here at the Strategic Space Symposium, Carlson did not provide details of the upcoming missions. Most of the NRO’s satellite programs are classified. Carlson noted the launches to make the point that the NRO continues to perform its mission despite having had its struggles in recent years. But Carlson also said the NRO has suffered a steep decline in its research and development...

A new generation of electro-optical imaging satellites to be built by Lockheed Martin pending congressional approval will have an aperturesize of 2.4 meters, a senior U.S.intelligence official said. James R. Clapper, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, disclosed the aperture size — or diameter of the satellite’s primary imaging mirror — of the Next-Generation Optical satellite system Oct.19 during a keynote address here at the Geoint 2009 Symposium. Technical details and capabilities of the nation’s spy satellites typically are closely guarded secrets. Aperture size and altitude are the two factors that determine a satellite’s imaging resolution, which is the minimum size...

Its interesting that today it was reported that the United States knew about Iran's secret second site to enrich uranium for three years now. In fact the White House has admitted it has been "carefully observing and analyzing this facility for several years." That isn't even the strange part,it was less than two years ago a National Intelligence Estimate report on Iran's nuclear programs reported with "high confidence" that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. So while while we were reporting that all Iranian Nukes stopped in 2003, we were spying on a second Iranian enrichment plant. The...

An independent inspector general will look into the foreign financial ties of Chas W. Freeman Jr., the Obama administration's pick to serve as chairman of the group that prepares the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive assessments, according to three congressional aides. The director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, last Thursday named Mr. Freeman, a veteran former diplomat, to the chairmanship of the National Intelligence Council, known inside the government as the NIC. In that job, Mr. Freeman will have access to some of America's most closely guarded secrets and be charged with overseeing the drafting of the consensus view...

The name Chas Freeman Jr. has been "floated" in the media as President Obama's selection for Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead U.S. governmental body in producing national intelligence estimates. For the last dozen years, Freeman, the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has been President of the Middle East Policy Council (formally known as the American Arab Affairs Council) an Arab/Islamic Lobbying group. One of the groups primary functions is to Publish a quarterly journal called Middle East Policy. The Journal is filled with anti-Israel messages that are beyond even...

/begin my translation U.S. Intelligence Sources: Grounds to Believe Kim Jong-il's Health in Serious Trouble Yonhap News In light of Kim Jong-il's absence at 60th anniversary celebration of N. Korean state's founding, U.S. intelligence sources revealed on Sept. 9 that there are grounds to believe that Kim health is in serious trouble. /end my translation

What the 2007 NIE actually says - "We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon is late 2009," News agencies around the globe are gushing over the latest U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) issued on Iran and its nuclear proliferation program. TIME reports Europe Relieved by Iran Finding, the Chicago Tribune say’s Twice now, Bush has confronted faulty intelligence and the Telegraph UK announces Iran president hails nuclear report as ‘victory’. Unfortunately, it appears that none of these reporters bothered to actually read the NIE before...

Much as been made of the demonstrated ignorance of Silvestre Reyes, the newly named chair of the House Intelligence Committee. But Reyes is far from alone in failing to have learned the most basic facts of the forces arrayed against us. Reyes' position requires that he provide oversight of our intelligence operations, and those in charge of those operations have demonstrated they know little more than Reyes does:

PRIME Minister John Howard has shrugged off a leaked US intelligence report which says the Iraq war has increased the risk of terrorism. A US national intelligence estimate from April said the Iraq war had spawned a new generation of Islamic radicals and made the terrorism problem worse, the New York Times newspaper reported overnight. However, Mr Howard said today that global terrorism had been a problem since well before the invasion of Iraq. "My response is that there are many theories about the origins of terrorism and the factors that bear on terrorism," he said. "One fact is absolutely...

Senior Republicans in the United States are playing down a secret report that has found the war in Iraq has increased the global terrorist threat. The White House says its "war on terror" is making things safer but the top-level National Intelligence Estimate reportedly concludes the invasion of Iraq is actually increasing the terrorist threat. The estimate, which is titled Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, is based on analysis of all 16 US intelligence agencies. Republican Senator John McCain says terrorists do not need motivation from the war to attack the US. "I think that it's...

The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane's flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say. (Related: How the U.S. found the missiles) Eight days after Hezbollah's war with Israel began, U.S. diplomats persuaded Turkey and Iraq to deny the plane permission to cross their territory to Damascus, a transfer point for arms to Hezbollah, the officials said. The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official...

Here is a quote from a military/defense forum I also post on. I normally post on the Navy portion of that forum with a few other Americans, but this is from a poster in their World Armed Forces Forum who linked to a disturbing insurgent propoganda film about their use of IEDs against American and Iraqi forces. Insurgent propoganda video about IED attacks against Americans (Choose free download and then look for doanload message at bottom of next page) Be warned, the film is disturbing...but it is also a huge mistake by the insurgents because there is tremendous intelligence that...

WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators are probing a new allegation that President Bush's choice for U.N. ambassador once visited CIA headquarters to demand the removal of a top intelligence analyst who disagreed with him on Cuba's biological warfare capabilities. Current and former senior U.S. intelligence officials denounced the alleged visit by Under Secretary of State John Bolton. They said it risked undermining the objectivity of intelligence judgments. The impartiality of U.S. intelligence judgments remains a highly charged issue because of assertions by some lawmakers that analysts were pressured to produce assessments on Iraq that supported Bush's case for war but turned...

<p>PRESIDENT Bush is accused unfairly of falsifying intelligence. He didn't do it. That's not the way the system works.</p> <p>On the other hand, I have no doubt that the president and his deputies read intelligence reports selectively and talked themselves into believing what they wanted to believe.</p>

Syria is cooperating with U.S. intelligence agencies by supplying information on al Qaeda as part of a deal that allows the terrorist-sponsoring-nation to import 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude per day, NBC News reported Thursday. "We supply the United States with any information we have on al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that we consider terrorist,” Georges Jabbour, a political analyst at Syria's Aleppo University, told the network. Jabbour is also a former adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad who "often speaks unofficially for Syria," NBC said. "This does not mean we agree with the United States on what she...