FAS | Intelligence | News | 2005 ||||

January 2005 Intelligence News

• DoD Background Briefing on Strategic Support Teams, Pentagon press briefing, January 24. "Strategic Support Teams -- that is what the teams were called -- made up of interrogators and collectors and so forth. And they were to be managed by the Strategic Support Branch, which is an office inside of DIA..."
• Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil by Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 23. "These commandos, operating under a secret counterterrorism program code-named Power Geyser, were mentioned publicly for the first time this week on a Web site for a new book, 'Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operation in the 9/11 World,' (Steerforth Press). The book was written by William M. Arkin, a former intelligence analyst for the Army."
• Russian Republic Charges Topographer With Selling State Secrets, Tass, January 19. "The accused, who has not yet been named, sold secret documents to somebody without access to state secrets, namely a catalogue of coordinates of all geodesic points in the republic."
• The Future of Lying by Chris Summers, BBC News, January 14. "The US Department of Defense has given Dr Jennifer Vendemia a $5m grant to work on her theory that by monitoring brainwaves she can detect whether someone is lying."
• Proliferation Security Initiative Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), State Department fact sheet, January 11. "The Proliferation Security Initiative is an effort to enhance and expand our efforts to prevent the flow of WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials on the ground, in the air and at sea to and from countries of proliferation concern."
• Spy vs. CIA: It's a shot in the dark by Bill Adair, St. Petersburg Times, January 10. "Can a secret agent sue to enforce a contract he agreed to keep secret? The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments."
• The Spy Who Billed Me by Tim Shorrock, Mother Jones, January/February. "In the post-9/11 rush to beef up intelligence, the government has outsourced everything from spy satellites to covert operations -- and well-connected companies are cashing in."
• Northern Sumatra Earthquake and the Subsequent Tsunami on 26 December 2004, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization news release, January 5. "The International Monitoring System, which is being built to monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, recorded the earthquake west of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, on 78 of its waveform monitoring stations within seconds to minutes of the event on 26 December, 2004."
• Spy satellite debate comes out in the open by Leonard David, MSNBC (Space.com), January 3. "There is now a delicate dance underway between issues of national security and open public scrutiny about taxpayer dollars being spent wisely or squandered. Meanwhile, the swirl of secrecy seems to be revolving around a top secret 'stealthy' satellite project, codenamed MISTY."