Slashdot Mirror
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."
Don't worry, damage control is by default in effect as most people won't bother registering with the Chicago Tribune's website to read the story. ;)
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
But how are they sure it's not disinformation setup by these organizations to throw people off the trail? I don't have much faith in our government, but I don't think the Intelligence Agencies are that stupid.
How do we know that all that info is not just a bunch of red herrings to throw us off the track and keep us distracted?
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
You would prefer that they were really a completely secret police?
KFG
What the hell happened to the spy agency? CIA Agents now chat away on unsecure cell phones, check into foreign hotels using GSAs (US gov't issued credit cards), and leak every other intelligence briefing to the press. They might as well start a group on MySpace and issue bumper stickers and T shirts. The fact that Google can catch sensitive information means these guys have failed the test of keeping our government's secrets secure.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Quote from the Slashdot story: "In another blow to the reputation of the agency that just can't seem to get anything right..."
That depends on the definition of "right". CIA employees get more money and promotions if there is more trouble in the world. So, they make trouble. For example, the CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.
U.S. citizens should not expect that ANY U.S. government secret agency actually does what it is supposed to do. The secrecy allows the purpose to drift off course, until it is the employees who determine what happens, not the policy makers.
Government leaders, such as U.S. congressmen and women, are allowed to know only the public relations information about the secret agencies, not what is really happening. In the name of secrecy and covert operation, the secret U.S. government agencies are allowed to lie. They place lies in newspapers and magazines the same way other P.R. is placed.
A government that sometimes acts in secret cannot be said to be a democratic government, because the citizens cannot supervise what they don't know.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
Top Secret Confidential
... only url I can link ... http://soren.org/gov/money.html ... feel free to contact for ... \/\/hatever ... ;-)
Preface
Conspiracy theories are nothing new to history. Plots to kill Caesar and overthrow Rome abounded, for instance. However, it is seldom that concrete clues to such plots come to light, and are generally known.
The document you are about to read is real. It is no forgery, as alleged of "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." or actual forgeries such as those of Anne Frank, or (more recently) Hitler's diary.
"TOP SECRET: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, An introductory Programming Manual" was uncovered quite by accident on July 7th, 1986 when an employee of Boeing Aircraft Co. purchased a surplus IBM copier for scrap parts at a sale, and discovered inside details of a plan, hatched in embryonic days of the "Cold War" which called for control of the masses through manipulation of Industry, peoples' pastimes, education and political learning's. It called for a quite revolution, putting brother against brother, and diverting the public's attention from what is really going on.
For all intents and purposes, this document has "come to pass," much as Henry Ford, Sr. said the Protocols (regardless of their veracity) applied to the events of his day.
It is reprinted in its virgin form, with diagrams, as a touch of reality.
{Note; I removed the diagrams for reasons of ease of getting the information onto the internet.}
It is heavy reading, but it will (as it well should) spur you to read further, keep your eyes and ears open, and sound an alarm in Zion, for though she presently dwells with Babylon's daughter (Micah 4), her redemption draweth nigh.
Truth bears no fear.
--- TOP SECRET ---
SILENT WEAPONS FOR QUITE WARS
An introductory programing manual.
OPERATORS RESEARCH TECHNICAL MANUAL
TM-SW7905.1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Security
Historical Introduction
Political Introduction
Energy
Descriptive Introduction of the Silent Weapon
:wq
The Gestapo was a secret police and its facilities were perfectly well known (and feared).
(Damn, I just broke Godwin's law...)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Is the information is correct or just bogus data planted?
Is this "story" itself planted by the CIA? (not that we'd care either way)
2600? Funny number there.
Whatever the Chicago Tribune has uncovered, one might presume that they were expected to.
I suggest you read Slashdot
And even after all that they can probably sue for unfair dismissal.
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.
I'm not too sure this article should be posted under "your rights online". It should be more like "the CIA's rights online".
... look, the poor CIA are getting their privacy invaded because people are looking at what they've been searching for!! :-(
Maybe the CIA could get a blanket, some hot chocolate, and sit down with the DOJ to share their thoughts and feelings about this invasion of their privacy. Perhaps then the DOJ might stop trying to demand search data from Google.
The CIA is changing. Give them time.
... complicated, and often the left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Its the nature of the beast it's riding. (well, technically, it's in the belly of the beast, or perhaps the cloaca if you are HQ)
o r-credible/
m l).
The following article explains some of the issues behind the Tribune article
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/26366
The agency is
I have no doubt Goss is horrified. He just took over the CIA, and what GS manager would enjoy an outsider showing him a clear look at his department? And Goss hasn't had a chance ot fix things yet. THat is, if that's his goal...with the CIA, who knows?
By the way, didn't Goss inherit an agency that was once run by George Bush? It would explain a lot.
The CIA has other problems as well. The worse is that it facing some competition from private firms like StratFor(sorta like the US Post Office and Federal Express). It can't be much fun to be a world famous secret agency and having to explain to the Intelligence committee why you are being scooped by some small company in Austin,
For those of you who haven't heard of it, StratFor (http://www.stratfor.com/) is a private intelligence firm, with several hundred thousand customers, that is the CIA for multinationals and private individuals. It is considered somewhat more accurate than the CIA. http://seekerblog.com/archives/20050313/is-stratf
Hmm.. if the CIA is getting rid of people, that means they are hiring. I would like to apply as an intelligence analyst, or maybe an In Tel Q VC... (There is a rumor the easiest way to apply for a job with the CIA is write in on your computer and wait for ADVISE to pick it up. http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.ht
... The Tribune has suddenly vanished without a trace. The offices are scrubbed clean, the files are empty, and there's a For Lease sign up by the building management company.
... Hundreds of families across Illinois have filed new missing persons reports this month, a drastic rise from the usual numbers. Oddly, a high percentage of the newly missing persons seem to have worked for the Chicago Tribune.
---- I'm out of your mind!
http://www.cia.gov/robots.txt
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Ummm.. you're muddling information like a regular Rush Limbaugh. Look at the date under the picture: Valerie Plame, February 14, 2006 That's about 4 weeks ago... exactly how does that prove that her identity as a covert operative was widely known? And Scooter deservers to be prosecuted for LEAKING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. That is a crime after all. I wonder what it would take for you sheep to start coming to your own conclusions based on available evidence, rather than spouting off inconsistent, incorrect, and irrelevent bullshit from the Rove spin machine?
Of interest to who?
Those who forgot that FOX persecuted its own journalists for trying to expose Monsanto's BGH artificial hormone scam? That Fox fought against the whisltleblowers by arguing that FOX was not obligated under freedom of speech to tell the truth? --And won! And that they continue to persecute the journalists? Those guys?
That's just one instance of FOX's bald faced lying and villainy. They are committed to lying for corporate and government interests. NOTHING they report is worth the spit it's sent on.
There are SO many gaping holes in FOX's integrity that I can only see three excuses for anybody buying into their propaganda. 1. Laziness, 2. Foolishness, or 3. Being Evil.
-FL
.... it means they are trying to take more of our rights away.
whether or not the story is true, it is in fact presenting the public with this idea that the freedom of research and press are dangerious to the government that is suppose to be protecting these rights.
There seems to be another story on slashdot at the moment along this same line.
Next thing you know we won't be allowed to talk to our neighbors without government approval.
When are enough people going to wake up and realize 9/11 was a direct result of US wrongful manipulation of world economy.
Do a search on "Trillion dollar bet" Read the transcript and realize that much money doesn't just appear or vanish into nowhere.
CIA employee information????? Huh? What?
Don't do others wrong and you won't have reason to be parionoid of retaliation.
Scooter is being prosecuted for lying to the Grand Jury, and that is all.
Even if Valerie Plame turns out just to have been a McDonald's cashier all along, Scooter has to deal with the fact that he lied to the grand jury.
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire
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
You know, it could just be a really clever diversion.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
what if all the leaked info is just a cover to make a cuase for the justic dept to be able to get access to search engine data and delete/change ndexes and data as needed to protect covert operations? In related news, I've spent several hours playing splintercell... does this qualify me as a CIA agent, now?
even the magic 8 ball has an opinion on email clients: Outlook not so good.
Excuse me, the "failure got 3000 civilians killed"? What about the presidential security briefing, a month before 9/11, entitled "bin Laden plans to strike inside the US"?
And what about the US MURDERING somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Iraqis, on the basis of no WMDs?
Now, unless you think that we've spent tens of billions of dollars on what, three? four? five? (CIA, FBI, NSA, Army intel, Pentagon Intel, etc) agencies completely staffed by clones of Maxwell Smart, the only intelligence failure, either through ideological blinders or deliberately for ideological reasons, is the administration and the GOP.
And the fools who voted for them.
mark
... for a dose of mashochism now and then led my remote to stop on Fox last night.
Wow. Holy Fucking Shit. They've gone off the deep end more than I suspected.
The few minutes my stomach could stand to watch before being forced to regurgitate my wonderful New Mexico Green Chile Posole, was 100% pure propaganda. I mean WWI, Wilson type propaganda. The segement was titled something like "Three ways to kick Iran's fucking ass: Booyah to the Mulahs!" The gist was that we'd waltz into Iran with an Army--I guess they left out the draft part in order to find enough 'willing' troops-- and kick some Axis of Evil ass. Fuck Yeah. They did leave out the part about the path being strewn with fragrant rose petals. Sigh.
Also, in direct response to your post, a 4th excuse:
4. Being Plain Fucking Stupid
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?
For anyone who is really interested in what the CIA does can read plenty about them. I think it is fair to say that it is kind of like a global covert police force for the US Elite. The CIA supports terrorism, US dollar hegemony, the global drug trade, US oil domination, assassinations, death squads, and who knows what else. Contrary to what most people believe, it does function in a domestic fashion. Also it appears that there is another group that is somewhat CIA, but has more plausible deniability called The Enterprise created under the former director (and Reagan campaign manager) William Casey.
Dark Alliance
Gold Warriors
Inside the Company: CIA Diary
Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon
The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush
The Outlaw Bank
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
Plausible Denial
Cocaine Politics
The Politics of Heroin
The Iran-Contra Connection
Crossing the Rubicon
The Haunting of America
Secret Agenda
Killing Hope
JFK by Fletcher Prouty
The Secret Team by Fletcher Prouty
Confessions of an Economic Hitman
The Third Option by Ted Shackley
Powderburns, Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War
The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Turner and Christian
The CIA is on its own side. It is not on yours, or mine, or anyone else's necessarily. It is not even necessarily on the US government's side sometimes.
The article puts up some big numbers, but lest we forget a few things:
- The CIA is a BIG organization - it needs support personnel, etc. and they are not likely to ALL be undercover. Maintaining cover on accountants and receptionists would certainly be a big waste of resources.
- Most CIA positions are not undercover, including most analysts
The article admits a lot of this halfway down: "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."
So, in other words, the Tribune puts up a big number that is supposed to be shocking and then, after most people stop reading, admits it's not really that big a deal. The article does state, however:
"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."
There must be at least one - given the example at the top of the article - but no one says how many. The discovery that 26 people are working at Camp Peary (AKA - "The Farm" of "The Recruit" fame) is equally unimpressive, as SOMEONE must work there for support staff, and the 26 individuals discovered are likely to be support staff, not trainers. The 17 aircraft aren't particularly interesting, either, as the CIA likely operates many aircraft openly. Big organizations like the CIA cannot maintain cover on EVERYTHING, nor do they try to, as this report implies
I'm of the opinion that this article boils down to the following:
- The Chicago Tribune tooting its own horn
- A cheap jab at Bush, which seems to represent "objective" journalism these days
- Sensationalist journalism - they put up big numbers, but those numbers are unlikely to actually mean anything
Many have jokingly said, "move along, nothing to see here". To be honest, I think those statements are accurate.
- Both agents were doing everything but keeping a low profile in the days before the evacuation of the German Embassy in Iraq. Apparently they had no problems mingling with the press.
- Both had websites with pictures of their current postings. For example, one guy showed himself with his family at his new post in Australia.
- Their websites had guestbooks. Other agents left "well concealed" messages on there. For example, one post ended with "greetings from Pullach". The CIA equivalent of that would be "greetings from Langley".
Pretty bad...They probably get lots of things right, 95% of which they will never tell us about.
There are other connections between Google and the Intelligence community. Like this job ad and this.
Got to go, the black helicopters are circling. Remember, trust no one.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The people have a right to know! And so does everyone else in the world!
Chicago Tribune on the Danish Cartoons:
Excerpts found by searching for "danish cartoons" in the Chicago Tribune search box. The stories themselves are not freely available.
Stephen Hobson
In any democracy the word "responsibility" must accompany the exercise of all our freedoms. The publication of the cartoons of Muhammad by the Danish press is just another example of someone falsely yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater without considering...
Ed Letchinger
Two editors of the Daily Illini were suspended from their posts following their publication of some of the Danish cartoons, and the Tribune and most other U.S. newspapers have avoided publishing them (Metro, Feb. 15). It is surprising to me that these...
In other words: We are being responsible by deciding what you the people don't need to see. We will make up your mind for you. Good dog.
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.
Damn. Even the Nazis understood and practiced checks & balances better than us.
[ducking]
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
President Muffley: "This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that."
DeSadeski: "Our source was the New York Times."
From the article you cited: "... all available evidence suggests that bin Laden was never funded, trained or armed by the CIA."
That is my understanding, after considerable reading. AND... it is not relevant.
Osama bin Laden did not need money or arms. He had millions of dollars of his own money; he was extremely wealthy and had connections with other extremely wealthy people who wanted to fund his ideas.
Here's part of what the CIA gave bin Laden, perhaps completely indirectly:
A deep understanding of how to be an efficient terrorist: What bin Laden needed was the CIA's manuals that tell how to be a terrorist. There was a news story about an Arab terrorist manual that had been found, and some of the text was quoted. The U.S. government stopped the quoting. However, before it was stopped, it was completely obvious that the original language of the terrorist manual was certainly not Arab and it seemed obvious to me that it was American English.
Jobless people trained in violence: When the U.S. government's largely secret support for aggression against Russia was finished, all those trained in violence and CIA terrorist methods needed work. Their resumes did not support getting jobs as rug merchants; all they knew was violence. That was the CIA's second biggest contribution to OBL: A huge group of people trained in and looking for violence.
Followers who hated U.S. government interference and violence: Other incidents of what the CIA calls "Blowback" provided strong reasons to hate U.S. government intervention. Also, many people in the U.S. government have a difficult time understanding this, but Arabs don't like to be killed.
A huge cache of modern missiles and explosives: Sure, maybe there was never a formal transfer of weapons to OBL, with contracts signed and handshakes, but a huge number of weapons and a huge amount of weapons material were left, and became available to OBL.
Watch a movie about 9/11:
No evidence of body part of Arabs was ever found. Some of the "Arab terrorists" named by the U.S. government later were found to be alive and working in Arab countries.
World Trade Center building 7 fell in exactly the same way as WTC 1 and 2, and it was NOT hit by an airplane. ALL the collapses looked exactly like controlled demolitions.
Watch the interesting movie Loose Change. It is a work in progress, but already very informative.