Results tagged “Justice_Department” from SpyTalk

Exclusive: USAF Demands Italy Lay Off Colonel in CIA Milan Caper

By Jeff Stein | September 23, 2009 2:28 PM | | Comments (1)

An Air Force lawyer has told Italy to lay off Col. Joseph L. Romano III, an officer caught up in a CIA counterterrorism kidnapping case.

Romano is one of 26 Americans being tried in absentia by Italy on kidnapping charges in connection with the abduction of an Al Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar, in Feb. 2003.

According to charging papers and Italy's indictment, Romano helped a CIA "rendition" team spirit Omar out of Italy through the Aviano air base, after he had been snatched off a Milan street. All the rest of the defendants are alleged to be CIA operatives.

"The decision (to file the motion) was approved by the Secretary of Defense," a Pentagon spokesman said.

Tags: Abu_Omar, Air_Force, CIA, Italy, Justice_Department, kidnapping, legal_affairs, rendition

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Interpol's U.S. Arm is Clueless, Justice Department Says

By Jeff Stein | September 21, 2009 2:57 PM | | Comments (0)

Who can forget Victor Mature as Interpol secret agent Charles Sturgis?

Almost everybody, it turns out. The 1957 B-movie was almost immediately consigned to the crime noir dustbin.

But the popular image of the International Criminal Police Organization as a global network of brilliant sleuths has never dimmed - no matter that Interpol doesn't really do any policing itself.

It "facilitates the exchange of information to assist law enforcement agencies in the United States and throughout the world in detecting and deterring international crime and terrorism through a network of 187 member countries," in the words of the Justice Department's Inspector General.

Washington's node on the Interpol network is the U.S. National Central Bureau.

And it's apparently clueless, the IG said in a stinging audit report Monday.

Tags: crime, crime_noir, FBI, Interpol, Justice_Department, legal_affairs, National_Central_Bureau, terrorism, USNCB

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CIA Woman Outraged by Belated U.S. Legal Help

By Jeff Stein | August 28, 2009 7:27 PM | | Comments (3)

Sabrina DeSousa, an alleged CIA agent charged with kidnapping in Italy, says that a Justice Department decision to pay her legal costs is much too little, much too late.

"Unbelievable!  The United States Department of Justice just 'approved' an attorney to defend me, a month after the trial ended, knowing full well that an attorney at this stage will make little or no difference to the outcome or verdict," DeSousa said via e-mail Friday.

Tags: Berlusconi, CIA, counterterrorism, diplomatic_immunity, extradition, foreign_service, Italy, Justice_Department, kidnapping, legal_affairs, Qaeda, rendition, State_Department, trial_in_absentia

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Spies Vs. Spies: How the ACLU Got the Photos

By Jeff Stein | August 26, 2009 9:36 PM | | Comments (0)

Someday somebody will make a thriller about human rights counterspies turning tables on the CIA, tracking down its interrogators and supplying dossiers on them to defense lawyers for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

According to reports in The Washington Post and New York Times, the Justice Department has launched an investigation of the attorneys and human rights sleuths, who even secretly photographed interrogators outside their homes and supplied pictures for the detainees to identify.

The Justice Department's implication, of course, is that something illegal was done by the John Adams Project, a collaborative effort by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

But was it?

Tags: ACLU, CIA, counterespionage, counterrerrorism, counterspies, Dick_Cheney, human_rights, Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act, international_law, interrogators, John_Adams_Project, John_Marks, Justice_Department, legal_affairs, National_Association_of_Criminal_Defense_Lawyers, spies, spooks, State_Department, the_dark_side, torture, Vietnam_War

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Interrogations Shake-Up: Blair Needs a HIG

By Jeff Stein | August 24, 2009 7:58 PM | | Comments (0)

It's hard to find any clear winners in the new interrogations set-up confirmed by the White House on Monday, but it's easy to spot the losers: Leon Panetta and Dennis Blair.

Tags: CIA, Dennis_Blair, interrogation, interrogators, Justice_Department, legal_affairs, Leon_Panetta, national_security, National_Security_Council, NSC, Obama, ODNI, politics, reorganization, torture, White_House

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DHS Says It Did Not Get Army Spy's Reports (Updated)

By Jeff Stein | August 18, 2009 2:52 PM | | Comments (0)

The Department of Homeland Security said today that reports on antiwar groups gathered by John Towery, an undercover Army spy in Washington State, did not make their way into DHS intelligence data banks.

Tags: ACLU, Army_Intelligence, Department_of_Homeland_Security, DHS, domestic_spying, Fort_Lewis, fusion_center, Justice_Department, legal_affairs, Maryland_State_Police, military_intelligence

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Lawyers: Punish CIA Counsel for 'Deception'

By Jeff Stein | August 17, 2009 3:20 PM | | Comments (1)

Only three weeks after a federal judge ruled that CIA lawyers committed fraud in a lawsuit, another top agency lawyer is being accused of unethical conduct in another case.

Attorneys for a onetime CIA recruit who is embroiled in a contract dispute with the spy agency have asked a federal court to punish CIA Assistant General Counsel Daniel L. Pines for what they call "a pattern of troubling negligence if not outright deceit."

Tags: CIA, courts, employee_dispute, Inspector_General, Justice_Department, labor_law, legal_affairs

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Ex-FBI Translator Tests Justice Dept. Again

By Jeff Stein | August 4, 2009 7:27 PM | | Comments (1)

Sibel Edmonds may never get her day in court - or at least the kind she wants.

The former FBI translator has spent seven years trying to get a court to hear her allegations that foreign agents, in particular Turkish intelligence, had penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress.

This weekend she's going to try again.

Tags: Congress, counterespionage, courts, Defense_Department, espionage, FBI, influence_peddling, Justice_Department, legal_affairs, Pentagon, Saudi_Arabia, secrecy, secret_agent, security, Sibel_Edmonds, State_Department, state_secret, Turkey, whistle_blower, whistleblowers

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Incongruities in NC Terrorism Case

By Jeff Stein | July 29, 2009 7:55 PM | | Comments (0)

The feds have been hyping their domestic terrorism cases for several years now, and the arrest of seven North Carolina men this week appears to be no exception.

The headliners in the case, of course, are ordinary folks Daniel Patrick Boyd and his two sons, who prosecutors say led three lives: good family men, likeable neighbors and secret terrorists.

Tags: Afghanistan, ATF, CIA, domestic_terrorism, FBI, gun_control, homeland_security, jihad, Justice_Department, North_Carolina, Pakistan, terrorism

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Lawyer in CIA Kidnapping Case Urges Obama to Press for Immunity in Italy

By Jeff Stein | July 7, 2009 6:53 PM | | Comments (3)

The lawyer for a defendant in the trial of more than two dozen CIA operatives charged with kidnapping in Italy is trying to stir up interest in his client's plight just as President Obama arrives in Rome for a G8 summit meeting of the world's industrialized nations.

Mark Zaid represents Sabrina Desousa, who was listed as a diplomat at the American embassy in Rome and U.S. consulate in Milan at the time of the 2003 kidnapping of an al Qaeda suspect known as Abu Omar.

Tags: Abu_Omar, cover_story, diplomatic_immunity, espionage, extraordinary_rendition, G8_Summit, Greg_Craig, intelligence_operations, Italy, Justice_Department, kidnapping, Obama, Robert_Gates

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Harman Comes Out Swinging Once More in Israel Wiretap Flap

By Jeff Stein | June 25, 2009 4:46 PM | | Comments (2)

Rep.  Jane Harman, D-Calif, who was reportedly overheard on a 2005 NSA wiretap agreeing to lobby Bush administration officials on behalf of two accused Israeli agents, released a letter from the Department of Justice today that she says clears her of any wrongdoing. 

"It states I am not a target or subject of an investigation," a press release from Harman's office said. "This reaffirms similar information I received in early 2007 following initial unsubstantiated leaks."

But in claiming absolution from the Justice Department, Harman has continued a public relations tack of effectively denying something she was never charged with.

Tags: AIPAC, criminal_defense_lawyer, electronic_spying, electronic_surveillance, FISA, Jane_Harman, Justice_Department, NSA, Public_Integrity_Section, Reid_Weingarten, wiretap

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Cuba Spies: Riggs Bank Had More Secrets Than State Department

By Jeff Stein | June 9, 2009 6:35 PM | | Comments (0)

The arrest of a northwest Washington couple on charges of spying for Cuba has put a spotlight on the career of Kendall Myers, a senior State Department intelligence analyst.
 
But if the charges are true, it's Myer's wife, Gwendolyn, a computer specialist at now-defunct Riggs National Bank, who could well have been in far better position to supply Cuba with sensitive information than her husband.

Tags: Bandar, Chile, CIA, Cuba, espionage, FBI, Gwendolyn Myers, Justice_Department, Kendall Myers, money_laundering, Pincochet, Riggs, secret_funds, tradecraft

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FBI Lawyers Threaten Bureau Critic for Using Official Seal on His Book Cover

By Jeff Stein | May 7, 2009 7:20 PM | | Comments (2)

You'd think that the nation's number one domestic counterterrorism agency would have better things to do than yap at authors and publishers about using the bureau's official seal on their books.

But I.C. Smith, a retired senior FBI counterintelligence agent who wrote a very critical book about the bureau in 2004, just found out otherwise.

A few weeks ago an FBI lawyer instructed Smith that he had to remove the FBI seal from his Web site, including one on the jacket of his 2004 book, "INSIDE: A Top G Man Exposes Spies, Lies and Bureaucratic Bungling Inside the FBI."    

The G-lawyer also told Smith that the publisher of his book, Thomas Nelson, Inc., would also be instructed "that if the book is reprinted, the cover be redesigned to remove the FBI Seal."

Tags: alphabet_agencies, censorship, CIA, copyright, counterespionage, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, FBI, FBI_seal, First_Amendment, Freedom_of_Speech, I.C._Smith, Justice_Department, lawyers, Lo_Jack, Mark_Olshaker, Ronald_Kessler, Secret_Service, trademark, whistle_blower

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AIPAC Verdict Sure to Fuel More Harman Conspiracy Theories

By Jeff Stein | May 1, 2009 10:25 AM | | Comments (2)

The Justice Department's decision to drop espionage charges against two pro-Israel lobbyists will certainly pour jet fuel on conspiracy theories burning up the blogosphere over the Jane Harman wiretap controversy.

Tags: AIPAC, CIA, espionage, FBI, Israel, Israeli_lobby, Jane_Harman, Justice_Department, Porter_J._Goss, spies

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The Mysterious Case of CIA Interrogator Mark Swanner

By Jeff Stein | April 8, 2009 11:09 PM | | Comments (0)

There are 14 names in the confidential Red Cross report that surfaced last week on the CIA's "ill treatment" of detainees.

But you will not find in it the name of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi who was picked up by U.S. Navy SEALS in Baghdad and interrogated by the CIA.

That's because Jamadi died in the care of Mark Swanner, a 44-year-old CIA interrogator who battered the prisoner at the ghastly Abu Ghraib in 2003. 

Tags: Abu_Ghraib, Baghram, CIA, CID, civil_liberties, Criminal_Investigations_Detachment, Geneva_Convention, ghost_prisoners, ghost_ prisoners, Guantanamo, homicide, human_rights, hypothermia, interrogation, Jane_Mayer, Justice_Department, Manadel_al_Jamadi, Mark_Danner, Mark_Swanner, Navy_SEALS, Nina_Ginsberg, secret_prisons, torture, U.S. Army

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CIA Unlikely to Reveal Much More About Missing Interrogation Tapes

By Jeff Stein | March 4, 2009 3:11 PM | | Comments (0)

Don't expect the CIA to turn over the family jewels on its interrogation videotapes to the American Civil Liberties Union, just because it lost a legal round this week.

Tags: ACLU, CIA, Inspector_General, interrogation, Justice_Department, Lev_Dassin, video_tapes_destroyed

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DEA Whacks Cartel as DHS Maps Response to Mexican Drug Violence

By Jeff Stein | February 25, 2009 3:08 PM | | Comments (0)

Even to a public long grown jaded by ballyhooed drug busts, the roundup of more than 750 alleged traffickers and over 23 tons of narcotics in an operation targeting Mexico's notorious Sinaloa Cartel demands respect.

Fifty-two people were arrested today in California, Minnesota and Maryland as part of Operation Xcellerator, which has targeted the North American tentacles of one of Mexico's most powerful and vicious drug organizations, the Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration announced Wednesday.

Tags: cartels, Colombia, DEA, drugs, drug_smuggling, Justice_Department, Mexico, narcotics, Sinaloa

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