A rare armed attack on a Jordanian intelligence agency facility has left five people dead, including three intelligence officers. The attack took place on Monday at the General Intelligence Department (GID) building in the Baqa’a refugee camp, located just north of the capital Amman. Built in 1968, Baqa’a is the largest of Jordan’s 10 government-sanctioned…
Category: Counterintelligence
Espionage Files: North Korea’s Shadow War, Part IV
South Korea’s Covert Operations in North Korea After Pyongyang attacked Seoul in the late 1960s, the South counterattacked This is the fourth story in a series. Read parts one, two and three. In the late 1960s, North Korea unleashed a guerrilla war on South Korea, sending spies and special operations troops across the Military Demarcation…
Future Warfare: 21st Century DIY Insurgency
It started innocuously enough. The prime minister-for-life never missed the annual “Liberation Day” parade. With the drums and platoons thundering, nobody noticed as the quadcopter, barely larger than a sparrow, floated down toward the dais, its faint whirr drowned out by the industrial machinery rolling by in formation. It was at once a child’s birthday…
Military News: China and Russia Field “Anti-Stealth” Drones
Both China and Russia appear to be building unmanned aerial vehicles designed to negate America’s advantages in stealth aircraft. Earlier this year, photos first emerged of a new High Altitude, Long Endurance (HALE) UAV termed the Divine Eagle that foreign observers believe is designed to detect and eliminate stealth enemy aircraft far from the Chinese…
Surveillance State: Inside The NSA’s Real-Time Regional Gateway (RT-RG)
It is a very common trend to see “Counter-Terrorism” programs and technology that were once used to save American Military and Civilian lives in war get re-directed to spy on American citizens in Peace time. This is something to keep in mind with this program. -SF Relentless attacks on American military personnel at the height…
Surveillance State: Everything We Know About How the FBI Hacks People
RECENT HEADLINES WARN that the government now has greater authority to hack your computers, in and outside the US. Changes to federal criminal court procedures known as Rule 41 are to blame; they vastly expand how and whom the FBI can legally hack. But just like the NSA’s hacking operations, FBI hacking isn’t new. In…
The Surveillance State: Twitter and Data Mining
Twitter has barred Dataminr, a service that analyzes tweets from across the globe to inform users about news events, from providing its information to US intelligence agencies, according to the Wall Street Journal. The social network has not confirmed that it cut the agencies off from the service, which claims to have informed clients about the…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Jihad On the Fly? ISIS Using Homing Pigeons To Communicate
Jordan intercepts bird carrying messages between terror operatives as group attempts to bypass Western intel gathering its channels of communication are increasingly monitored by coalition forces, the Islamic State is reportedly turning to low-tech solutions in its efforts to avoid detection. The Telegraph reported that homing pigeons bearing messages between IS operatives were recently captured…
Espionage Files: The Life of the Modern Spy
The days of spy vs. spy of the Cold War are over. The enemies changed and technology revolutionized the world … and not always for the better. But spies remained an important part of the modern battlefield. This week on the War College Podcast, Jamillah Knowles chats with Reuters reporter and author Stephen Grey about his…
Espionage Files: How the CIA Writes History
Excellent read on the dark History of CIA and one of their most influential and controversial figures. -SF LAST SUMMER I PAID a visit to Georgetown University’s Lauinger Libraryas part of my research on legendary CIA counterspy James Jesus Angleton. I went there to investigate Angleton’s famous mole hunt, one of the least flattering episodes of his…