Posts tagged cia

The killing of Iranian scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan is the latest in a series of mysterious incidents involving Iran’s nuclear industry and the people working in it.

Iran says its nuclear program is purely for civilian use, but Western powers believe it has military goals.

It is widely assumed that Israel and possibly the US have been actively sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program.

Here are some details of the incidents:

February 2007

- Iran said deputy defence minister Ali Reza Asgari, who disappeared in Turkey in 2007, had been kidnapped by Western intelligence services. Israel and the United States denied any involvement in the disappearance.

- At the time, Turkish newspapers reported that Asgari had information on Iran’s nuclear program. Turkish, Arabic and Israeli media suggested Mr Asgari defected to the West, but his family dismissed that.

June 2009

- Shahram Amiri said he was kidnapped in June 2009 when on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia and transferred to the United States. He said he was offered $US50 million to remain in America and “to spread lies” about Iran’s nuclear work. Three months after he disappeared, Iran disclosed the existence of a second uranium enrichment site, near the city of Qom.

- Before his disappearance, Dr Amiri worked at Iran’s Malek Ashtar University, an institution closely connected to the country’s Revolutionary Guards. Tehran initially refused to acknowledge Mr Amiri’s involvement in Iran’s nuclear program.

- Dr Amiri returned to Tehran in July 2010. Washington denied kidnapping him and insisted he had lived freely in the United States.

January 2010

- Nuclear scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Tehran on January 12. Some opposition websites said he had backed moderate candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in the disputed 2009 election that secured president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s return to power.

- Iranian officials described the physics professor as a nuclear scientist but a spokesman said he did not work for the Atomic Energy Organisation. He lectured at Tehran University.

- Western sources said the professor worked closely with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi and Fereydoun Abbassi-Davani, both subject to UN sanctions because of their work on suspected nuclear weapons development.

June 2010

- Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power station was hit by the Stuxnet computer virus in what Tehran said was a cyber-attack by Israel and the United States. In November, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that malicious software had created problems in some of Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges, although he said the problems had been solved.

- The New York Times said in January 2011 that the worm was the most sophisticated cyber-weapon ever deployed and appeared to have been the biggest factor in setting back Iran’s nuclear progress. Its sources said it caused the centrifuges to spin wildly out of control and that a fifth of them were wiped out.

November 2010

- Two car bomb blasts killed an Iranian nuclear scientist and wounded another in Tehran on November 29, in what Iranian officials called an Israeli or US-sponsored attack on its atomic program.

- Majid Shahriyari was killed and his wife was injured. Iran’s atomic energy agency chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Dr Shahriyari had a role in one of its biggest nuclear projects, but did not elaborate, the official news agency IRNA reported. He was a lecturer at Shahid Beheshti University.

- In the other blast, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and his wife were both wounded. Dr Abbasi-Davani, head of physics at Imam Hossein University, has been personally subject to UN sanctions because of what Western officials said was his involvement in suspected nuclear weapons research.

- In February 2011, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed Dr Abbasi-Davani as vice-president and head of the Atomic Energy Organisation, Fars news agency reported.

July 2011

- Physicist Darioush Rezai was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran on July 23. The university lecturer had a PhD in physics. Deputy interior minister Safarali Baratlou said he was not linked to Iran’s nuclear program after early reports in some media said he was.

November 2011

- The sound of an apparent explosion was heard from Iran’s Isfahan city on November 28, the head of the judiciary in the province said, but the province’s deputy governor denied there had been a big blast. An important Iranian nuclear facility involved in processing uranium is near Isfahan.

- The report came less than three weeks after a massive explosion at a military base near Tehran killed more than a dozen members of the Revolutionary Guard including the head of its missile forces. Iran said that explosion was caused by an accident while weapons were being moved.

January 2012

- Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, a 32-year-old graduate of chemical engineering, was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran. Another passenger died in hospital and a pedestrian was also injured.

- Iran said the victim was a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility. Iran blamed Israel and the United States for the attack.

Reuters

(Source: abc.net.au)

The Associated Press’ Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman—who have been having a very good year—have tracked down the CIA secret prison where Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other ghost detainees were tortured and interrogated. It’s on a residential street in Bucharest (here it is on Google Maps). Its code name was Bright Light. Sounds cozy.

The existence of black sites in Poland and Romania has long been known, but this appears to be the first time a news outlet (the AP partnered with German public television on the investigation) has actually tracked down an address. Sheikh Muhammad, Ramzi Binalshibh, Abu Faraj al-Libi (the Al Qaeda operative who unwittingly provided information that led the CIA to bin Laden), and others were housed in prefabricated cells in the basement of this Romanian government building in Bucharest, a ten-minute drive from downtown. Neighbors lived across the street, and grocery markets, a beauty shop, and a post office were all within a few hundred yards.

The Bucharest location was set up in the fall of 2003, after a prison in Poland was shut down. According to Apuzzo and Goldman, no one was waterboarded at Bright Light—that appears to have gone down at a prison in Thailand. But detainees were subjected to other varieties of torture, like sleep deprivation, stress positions, and battery.

The most fascinating detail: The basement cells were built on top of springs to keep the floor shifting and the prisoners constantly destabilized.

The AP has put together this little graphic package illustrating what the basement prison looked like, who was held there, and what happened to them.

The US University of Virginia Tech is in lockdown amid reports of a gunman on the loose.

The university’s website is reporting that a police officer has been shot, and warning everyone on the campus to stay inside and secure their doors.

“Suspect remains at large. A police officer has been shot. A potential second victim is reported at the Cage lot. Stay indoors. Secure in place,” a statement on the site said.

The website also reported there was a potential second victim on the campus.

Virginia Tech is the site of the worst ever university shooting, when student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people during a gun rampage before taking his own life.

More to come.

(Source: abc.net.au)

(Source: Yahoo!)

The sound of an apparent large explosion was heard from Iran’s Isfahan city on Monday afternoon, the head of the judiciary in the province said, according to Iran’s ISNA news agency.

A major Iranian nuclear research centre is located near Isfahan city, although none of the Iranian reports of the blast said whether the explosion was near it.

“In the afternoon, there was a noise like an explosion, but we don’t have any information from security forces on the source of the noise,” judiciary head Gholamreza Ansari was quoted as saying.

Iranian media provided contradictory information about the incident, which came less that three weeks after a massive explosion at a military base near Tehran that killed at least 17 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including the head of its missile forces.

Earlier, the Fars news agency reported a large blast in the province but then removed the report from its website.

The Mehr news agency cited other Iranian news media, which it did not identify, as reporting that a blast had taken place at a petrol station at a town near Isfahan city. However, it also quoted the deputy governor of the province as saying he had no reports of a big explosion in his region.

On November 12, Iran said a massive explosion at a military base 45 kilometres west of Tehran killed 17 Revolutionary Guards, including the head of the elite force’s missile program.

Other reports put the death toll as high as 36.

Iran said that explosion, which could be heard as far as the capital, was caused by an accident while weapons were being moved.

On Monday a senior Israeli military official said the explosion may have slowed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

“The explosion at the site where ground-to-ground missiles are developed could delay or even bring a complete halt to the production of these missiles at that site,” said General Itai Baron, head of the military’s intelligence research unit, quoted by the media.

The general, who was speaking before Israel’s parliamentary committee for defence and foreign affairs, said that Iran also has other sites for the development of these missiles.

According to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, he denied “speculation” that Israel or the United States were responsible for the November 12 blast.

The chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, General Hassan Firouzabadi, had said the base was being used in the production of “an experimental product” being developed to unleash “a strong fist in the face” of the United States and Israel.

He did not elaborate, but said development of the military product had been delayed by “two weeks” because of the blast.

Reuters/AFP

(Source: abc.net.au)

Iran claims to have arrested 12 CIA agents and accused them of planning to strike at Iranian interests.

IRNA state media quoted an influential politician as saying that the agents were working in collusion with Israel.

Parviz Sorouri, who sits on the powerful foreign policy and national security committee, said the spy network aimed to damage Iran’s security, military and nuclear sectors.

“The US and Zionist regime’s espionage apparatuses were trying to damage Iran both from inside and outside with a heavy blow, using regional intelligence services,” said Sorouri.

“Fortunately, with swift reaction by the Iranian intelligence department, the actions failed to bear fruit.”

The lawmaker did not specify the nationality of the alleged agents, nor when or where they they had been arrested.

Iran periodically announces the capture or execution of what it claims are US or Israeli spies, and often no further information is released.

This current announcement follows the uncovering of an alleged CIA spy ring in Lebanon by Iran’s ally, Hizbollah.

Fierce clashes between Iran and the West over its nuclear capabilities are commonplace; assassins, mystery bombs and late-night kidnappings have all been part of the escalating tension.

Last November, a nuclear worker was killed after a magnetic mine was attached to his car in Tehran, while a bomb killed 17 people at an ammunition depot near the capital earlier this month.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions were thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks following the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the “possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme”.

This prompted Israel to announce further action and the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu promised air strikes on Tehran as a result.

While Iran continues to deny its nuclear programme is a military one, Western countries remain unconvinced.

Earlier this month, the UK announced its plans to move in line with US policy, and break all ties with Iranian banks - including the Central Bank of Iran.

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following Twitter and Facebook in an effort to stay ahead of America’s enemies.

At the agency’s Open Source Centre, a team known affectionately as the “vengeful librarians” also pores over newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms - anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue.

They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

Yes, they saw the uprising in Egypt coming; they just didn’t know exactly when revolution might hit, said the centre’s director, Doug Naquin.

The center already had “predicted that social media in places like Egypt could be a game-changer and a threat to the regime,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press at the center. CIA officials said it was the first such visit by a reporter the agency has ever granted.

The CIA facility was set up in response to a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, with its first priority to focus on counterterrorism and counterproliferation. But its several hundred analysts - the actual number is classified - track a broad range, from Chinese Internet access to the mood on the street in Pakistan.

While most are based in Virginia, the analysts also are scattered throughout US embassies worldwide to get a step closer to the pulse of their subjects.

The most successful analysts, Naquin said, are something like the heroine of the crime novel “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” a quirky, irreverent computer hacker who “knows how to find stuff other people don’t know exists.”

Those with a masters’ degree in library science and multiple languages, especially those who grew up speaking another language, “make a powerful open source officer,” Naquin said.

The center had started focusing on social media after watching the Twitter-sphere rock the Iranian regime during the Green Revolution of 2009, when thousands protested the results of the elections that put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power. “Farsi was the third largest presence in social media blogs at the time on the Web,” Naquin said.

The center’s analysis ends up in President Barack Obama’s daily intelligence briefing in one form or another, almost every day.

After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May, the CIA followed Twitter to give the White House a snapshot of world public opinion.

Since tweets can’t necessarily be pegged to a geographic location, the analysts broke down reaction by languages. The result: The majority of Urdu tweets, the language of Pakistan, and Chinese tweets, were negative. China is a close ally of Pakistan’s.

Pakistani officials protested the raid as an affront to their nation’s sovereignty, a sore point that continues to complicate U.S.-Pakistani relations.

A Mexican drug suspect awaiting trial in Chicago is making a startling claim. He insists he can’t be prosecuted because he worked as an informant and had a secret immunity deal with the U.S. government.

Prosecutors say Vicente Zambada-Niebla oversaw drug running on a massive scale into the U.S. But now, from behind bars at a maximum security prison in Chicago, he’s making his own explosive accusations — that U.S. government agents have been aiding Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa cartel — even tipping off leaders on how to avoid capture.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports that Zambada’s court filings claim federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents gave him, cartel kingpin Chapo Guzman, and other Sinaloa leaders “carte blanche” to “operate their drug business without interference,” as long as they snitched on other cartels. For years, Zambada’s attorney argues, Sinaloa leaders helped “authorities capture or kill thousands of rivals.” Their chief rivals are the Zetas, considered the most vicious and ruthless of all.

Phil Jordan used to head the DEA’s Center for Drug Trafficking Intelligence, called “EPIC,” in El Paso. He says he doesn’t buy Zambada’s claim that the DEA promised immunity.

Jordan told CBS News, “We do not have the power to offer immunity.”

But in court documents, prosecutors do admit the U.S. had a signed cooperation agreement with a different Sinaloa cartel leader.

That agreement was with Sinaloa cartel lawyer Humberto Loya-Castro. Starting as early as 2004, Loya passed information to the DEA from cartel leaders including Zambada — the one now on trial. In return, Zambada claims, the U.S. dismissed a major case against Loya and agreed to “not … interfere with” the cartel’s “drug trafficking” or actively prosecute their leadership.

Jordan says any agreement with a cartel leader is controversial, but may be deemed necessary.

He said, “It’s probably a matter of trying to get inside or closer intelligence to the whole Mexican federation, as we call it.”

Jordan points out that Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was once on the CIA’s payroll. And that in Colombia, the U.S. worked with select cartels, allowing them to continue drug smuggling operations in the U.S. as long as they helped in destroying the more dangerous Cali and Medillin cartels.

As to whether the government has similar plans in Mexico, they’re not saying, but this case, Attkisson reported, raises the question.

Prosecutors say even if federal agents did promise Zambada immunity — which they deny — it’s unenforceable.

(Source: cbsnews.com)