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New Snowden Revelation: Terrorists Attempting To Infiltrate CIA

Posted by samzenpus on from the keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer dept.

cold fjord writes "The Washington Post reports, 'The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds raised questions, roughly one out of every five had "significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections," according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The groups cited most often were Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but the nature of the connections was not described in the document. So sharp is the fear of threats from within that last year the NSA planned to launch at least 4,000 probes of potentially suspicious or abnormal staff activity .... The anomalous behavior that sent up red flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.'"

7 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Paranoia... by Meditato · · Score: 5, Interesting

    or actual infiltration?

    The original Bin Laden al-Qaeda is practically non-existent, its Islamist affiliates are too busy trying to win over regimes in the mideast, Hamas is trying not to piss off the US considering that Obama has been much more pro-Palestinian. Hezbollah....maybe. We're talking about a few tens of thousands of eligible individuals here, most of them with Hezbollah and Hamas.

    I have serious doubts that this is anything other than the Three Letter agencies trying to project a Cold War interpretation ("big centralized nation-state entity out to get us") onto a set of data that only shows small, disparate groups who are all actually too busy trying to avoid being smashed by the US, Israel, or the Arab League.

    1. Re:Paranoia... by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Interesting

      From TFA:

      roughly one out of every five had âoesignificant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,â

      I would guess that the definition of "signficant...connections" is in this case.

      Maybe it means you work for Hamas. Or maybe it means one of your cousins knew a guy in college whose little brother is now a member of hamas....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    2. Re:Paranoia... by Cassini2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's not how the middle-east guys work. The CIA needs Arab spies to spy on the middle east baddies (and their is a very long list including Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, etc.) After a while, the baddies work out who is working for the CIA, and then determine who the spies family is. Then the spy either becomes a double, or the family killed. This is a huge problem for the CIA.

      This problem is also why America has made such poor progress in Afghanistan. The Taliban will wipe out your family. On the other hand, American soldiers don't go after peoples families, and mostly follow a reasonable moral code. Thus, middle-eastern students in North America look over their shoulders, because they don't know who will go after their family back home. Can you imagine convincing people to fight when they don't know who will threaten their families?

  2. Re:No need for that anymore... by Frobnicator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No, they still need it. Just look at the nature of the story: "The official, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material."

    Yet these people aren't being hunted across the globe for their classified leaks.

    --
    //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  3. Re:TERRORISTS ALREADY HAVE INVADED NSA/CIA/MILITAR by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Terrorist" is the new "Red/Commie". Every generation needs a convenient vague Boogyman Bucket to shove people into they don't like.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  4. BULSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Don't ANY of us know how to read a news story and think for ourselves, anymore?

    There's a methodology used to substantiate this kind of BULLSHIT claim. It can be described as shooting an arrow towards a wall, then drawing a bulls-eye around it, after the fact.

    For another metaphor? Here's the word you get to drive your Mack truck through:

    "Affiliated"

    When you have the NYPD secretly assign all Mosques the "Terrorist Organization" label, and you have the CIA recruiting for record numbers of native Arabic speakers, for translation?

    Call it "Psyop Ju-Jitsu". This is an all-star set up, to make a positive scare-tactic out of the negative public relations resulting from Snowden's revelations.

    By-the-fucking-way, what else do you expect, when you let this kind of shit go down? Objective and agenda-less reporting of fact?

    USA. It's like a police-state with Tesla Model S and overnight shipping, instead of Bread and Circuses.

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  5. Re: Snowden beware by myowntrueself · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's actually why he identified himself -- to help avoid assassination.

    And he has some security in the form of encrypted documents scattered around the world with instructions to release the key should anything 'happen' to him. And these documents contain stuff that would be VERY damaging to the US government.

    So, naturally, the US doesn't want to assassinate him. But the US has many enemies who would like to see these documents released. Do the math.

    --
    In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.