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Internet Searches Reveal CIA's Secrets
GabrielF writes "In another blow to the reputation of the agency that just can't seem to get anything right, the Chicago Tribune used web searches and various commercial online databases to uncover a treasure trove of information about the CIA. The Tribune found the identities of over 2600 CIA employees (including an undisclosed number of covert operatives) as well as the locations of over two dozen CIA facilities across the U.S., internal telephone numbers, and information on 17 aircraft."
I was about to say the same thing. But try this link its via google.
i -060311ciamain-story,1,123362.story?coll=chi-news- hed
i -0512250424dec25,1,7168647.story
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ch
This one was interesting too.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ch
Nice to see no expenses spared for kidnapping someone.
BugMeNot rules! If you install the firefox extension (I think there's also an IE one), all you have to do is right click on one of the authentication text boxes and press "Login with BugMeNot"...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Hmmm, worked for me (me being in Australia). I used double@mailinator.com with the password 123456.
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
Complexity is a measure of our ignorance...
Text:
TRIBUNE INVESTIGATION
Internet blows CIA cover
It's easy to track America's covert operatives. All you need to know is how to navigate the Internet.
By John Crewdson
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 11, 2006, 12:00 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house.
Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile public information also can learn that she is a CIA employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe.
The CIA asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the CIA, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her have somehow become a matter of public record, thanks to the Internet.
When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.
Only recently has the CIA recognized that in the Internet age its traditional system of providing cover for clandestine employees working overseas is fraught with holes, a discovery that is said to have "horrified" CIA Director Porter Goss.
"Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the Internet age," said the CIA's chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Dyck. "There are things that worked previously that no longer work. Director Goss is committed to modernizing the way the agency does cover in order to protect our officers who are doing dangerous work."
Dyck declined to detail the remedies "since we don't want the bad guys to know what we're fixing."
Several "front companies" set up to provide cover for CIA operatives and its small fleet of aircraft recently began disappearing from the Internet, following the Tribune's disclosures that some of the planes were used to transport suspected terrorists to countries where they claimed to have been tortured.
Although finding and repairing the vulnerabilities in the CIA's cover system was not a priority under Goss' predecessor, George Tenet, one senior U.S. official observed that "the Internet age didn't get here in 2004," the year Goss took over at the CIA.
CIA names not disclosed
The Tribune is not disclosing the identities of any of the CIA employees uncovered in its database searches, the searching techniques used or other details that might put agency employees or operatives at risk. The CIA apparently was unaware of the extent to which its employees were in the public domain until being provided with a partial list of names by the Tribune.'
At a minimum, the CIA's seeming inability to keep its own secrets invites questions about whether the Bush administration is doing enough to shield its covert CIA operations from public scrutiny, even as the Justice Department focuses resources on a two-year investigation into whether someone in the administration broke the law by disclosing to reporters the identity of clandestine CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Not all of the 2,653 employees whose names were produced by the Tribune search are supposed to be working under cover. More than 160 are intelligence analysts, an occupation that is not considered a covert position, and senior CIA executives such as Tenet are included on the list.
Covert employees discovered
But an undisclosed number of those on the list--the CIA would not say how many--are covert employees, and some are known to hold jobs that could make them terrorist targets.
Other potential targets include at least some of the two dozen CIA facilities uncovered by the Tribune search. Most are in northern Virginia, within a few miles of the agency's headquarters. Several are in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington state. There is one in Chicago.
Some are heavil
HD Trailers
Actually, you fulfilled Godwin's Law. (To paraphrase -- the number of posts in any given thread approaches infinity, the probability of an analogy to Nazism being mentioned approaches 1.) The only way that you may have, in fact, violated Godwin's Law is in your very mention of it, which may negate any "thread-ending" characteristics that an invocation of said law possesses.
The Gestapo had a secret branch whose facilities were not well known. They were, in fact, secret.
There was also a secret police not allied with the Gestapo, because the watchers needed to be afraid of someone as well. These were completely secret police who answered only to Hitler and/or Goering.
Yes, the Gestapo also had a public facing branch, if only because in order to rat out your neighbor you needed someplace to go to do it.
Perhaps the CIA, rather than being remiss in their duties for having a publicly accessable branch, actually have some clue as to what they are doing by having offices and phones that the general public are perfectly aware of.
And, of course, in America, the people watching the watchers are supposed to be "The People."
KFG
They are. Where do you think they get their people? I have at least four friends who "interned" in the CIA, FBI, and/or NSA or related DC-based fed bodies while or immediately after working on their B.S or B.A. in political science, criminology, or similar fields, going on to become defense analysts or operatives. And they talk openly about their careers. I've been to their weddings where half of the smalltalk was federal shoptalk.
These aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the world either, mind you. My filmmaker and physicist friends certainly have them beat for smarts. These are average kids with good grades who went to reasonably big schools like GWU or Penn after high school and went into a federal internship as a B.S./B.A. level scholar at 20 or 21 years old.
They're just not tight packages of great judgment and discretion at that age and level of education, regardless of what the government would tell us and/or like to think. One of them in particular, who works at the Pentagon now, is about the biggest ditz/boof I've ever met, but is a great climber and perky enough to get promotions just on her smile.
The point: these agencies have to draw their people from the same population that shells out $10.00 to see Adam Sandler flicks and that things "Digital Rights Management" is there to protect their rights.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Isn't it funny how nobody wants to actually call attention to the FACT that Bush had warning that Bin Laden was going to attack the U.S. as well as intelligence indicating the intended use of planes as weapons. And he apparently ignored this. The OP is right. There was failure which got 3000 people killed. Failure by the President and his administration and the people underneath them who disregarded critical intelligence.
And people are surprised that there's supposedly secret information publicly available?