Entries Tagged "intelligence"

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When Investigation Fails to Prevent Terrorism

I’ve long advocated investigation, intelligence, and emergency response as the places where we can most usefully spend our counterterrorism dollars. Here’s an example where that didn’t work:

Starting in April 1991, three FBI agents posed as members of an invented racist militia group called the Veterans Aryan Movement. According to their cover story, VAM members robbed armored cars, using the proceeds to buy weapons and support racist extremism. The lead agent was a Vietnam veteran with a background in narcotics, using the alias Dave Rossi.

Code-named PATCON, for “Patriot-conspiracy,” the investigation would last more than two years, crossing state and organizational lines in search of intelligence on the so-called Patriot movement, the label applied to a wildly diverse collection of racist, ultra-libertarian, right-wing and/or pro-gun activists and extremists who, over the years, have found common cause in their suspicion and fear of the federal government.

The undercover agents met some of the most infamous names in the movement, but their work never led to a single arrest. When McVeigh walked through the middle of the investigation in 1993, he went unnoticed.

The whole article is worth reading.

Posted on May 1, 2012 at 7:31 AM • View Comments

Biometric Passports Make it Harder for Undercover CIA Officers

Last year, I wrote about how social media sites are making it harder than ever for undercover police officers. This story talks about how biometric passports are making it harder than ever for undercover CIA agents.

Busy spy crossroads such as Dubai, Jordan, India and many E.U. points of entry are employing iris scanners to link eyeballs irrevocably to a particular name. Likewise, the increasing use of biometric passports, which are embedded with microchips containing a person’s face, sex, fingerprints, date and place of birth, and other personal data, are increasingly replacing the old paper ones. For a clandestine field operative, flying under a false name could be a one-way ticket to a headquarters desk, since they’re irrevocably chained to whatever name and passport they used.

“If you go to one of those countries under an alias, you can’t go again under another name,” explains a career spook, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains an agency consultant. “So it’s a one-time thing—one and done. The biometric data on your passport, and maybe your iris, too, has been linked forever to whatever name was on your passport the first time. You can’t show up again under a different name with the same data.”

Posted on April 26, 2012 at 6:57 AM • View Comments

Outliers in Intelligence Analysis

From the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence: “Capturing the Potential of Outlier Ideas in the Intelligence Community.”

In war you will generally find that the enemy has at any time three courses of action open to him. Of those three, he will invariably choose the fourth.

—Helmuth Von Moltke

With that quip, Von Moltke may have launched a spirited debate within his intelligence staff. The modern version of the debate can be said to exist in the cottage industry that has been built on the examination and explanation of intelligence failures, surprises, omissions, and shortcomings. The contributions of notable scholars to the discussion span multiple analytic generations, and each expresses points with equal measures of regret, fervor, and hope. Their diagnoses and their prescriptions are sadly similar, however, suggesting that the lessons of the past are lost on each succeeding generation of analysts and managers or that the processes and culture of intelligence analysis are incapable of evolution. It is with the same regret, fervor, and hope that we offer our own observations on avoiding intelligence omissions and surprise. Our intent is to explore the ingrained bias against outliers, the potential utility of outliers, and strategies for deliberately considering them.

Posted on April 17, 2012 at 6:15 AM • View Comments

Chinese Hacking of iBahn Internet Services

Citing unexplained “intelligence data,” an unnamed “senior intelligence official,” and an anonymous “privacy security official,” Bloomberg News claims that iBahn—the company that runs Internet services for a bunch of hotel chains—has been hacked by the Chinese. The rest of the story is pretty obvious: all sorts of private e-mails stolen, corporate networks hacked via iBahn, China does lot of hacking, and so on. iBahn has denied the story.

Come on, people. I know that China hacking stories are plausible, but the bar for actual evidence should be higher than this.

Posted on December 21, 2011 at 5:55 AM • View Comments

Bad CIA Operational Security

I have no idea if this story about CIA spies in Lebanon is true, and it will almost certainly never be confirmed or denied:

But others inside the American intelligence community say sloppy “tradecraft”—the method of covert operations—by the CIA is also to blame for the disruption of the vital spy networks.

In Beirut, two Hezbollah double agents pretended to go to work for the CIA. Hezbollah then learned of the restaurant where multiple CIA officers were meeting with several agents, according to the four current and former officials briefed on the case. The CIA used the codeword “PIZZA” when discussing where to meet with the agents, according to U.S. officials. Two former officials describe the location as a Beirut Pizza Hut. A current US official denied that CIA officers met their agents at Pizza Hut.

Posted on November 30, 2011 at 6:57 AM • View Comments

TSA Administrator John Pistole on the Future of Airport Security

There’s a lot here that’s worth watching. He talks about expanding behavioral detection. He talks about less screening for “trusted travelers.”

So, what do the next 10 years hold for transportation security? I believe it begins with TSA’s continued movement toward developing and implementing a more risk-based security system, a phrase you may have heard the last few months. When I talk about risk-based, intelligence-driven security it’s important to note that this is not about a specific program per se, or a limited initiative being evaluated at a handful of airports.

On the contrary, risk-based security is much more comprehensive. It means moving further away from what may have seemed like a one-size-fits-all approach to security. It means focusing our agency’s resources on those we know the least about, and using intelligence in better ways to inform the screening process.

[…]

Another aspect of our risk-based, intelligence-driven security system is the trusted traveler proof-of-concept that will begin this fall. As part of this proof-of-concept, we are looking at how to expedite the screening process for travelers we know and trust the most, and travelers who are willing to voluntarily share more information with us before they travel. Doing so will then allow our officers to more effectively prioritize screening and focus our resources on those passengers we know the least about and those of course on watch lists.

[…]

We’re also working with airlines already testing a known-crewmember concept, and we are evaluating changes to the security screening process for children 12-and-under. Both of these concepts reflect the principles of risk-based security, considering that airline pilots are among our country’s most trusted travelers and the preponderance of intelligence indicates that children 12-and-under pose little risk to aviation security.

Finally, we are also evaluating the value of expanding TSA’s behavior detection program, to help our officers identify people exhibiting signs that may indicate a potential threat. This reflects an expansion of the agency’s existing SPOT program, which was developed by adapting global best practices. This effort also includes additional, specialized training for our organization’s Behavior Detection Officers and is currently being tested at Boston’s Logan International airport, where the SPOT program was first introduced.

Posted on September 14, 2011 at 6:55 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.