Archive for the 'Covert Operations' Category
Vatican Banker Linked to Pablo Escobar
November 28th, 2012Via: Gang Sonny: A Vatican banker found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982 had previously undisclosed links to the notorious Colombian drug smuggler, Pablo Escobar, the author of a new book has claimed. Roberto Calvi, who earned his nickname for his close ties to the Vatican Bank, was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge amid strong […]
What Will NASA Do with Donated NRO Telescopes?
November 28th, 2012Via: Discovery: NASA has begun surveying scientists on what they would like to do with two Hubble-class space telescopes donated to the civilian space agency by its secretive sibling, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) — which operates the nation’s spy satellites. But the gifts have some formidable strings attached, including costs to develop instruments and […]
U.S. Denies Malware Attack Against France
November 24th, 2012Via: Information Week: Did the U.S. government launch a “cyberattaque” against French government computers in the run-up to the 2012 French presidential election? That allegation was leveled at the U.S. government by unnamed French officials, according to a Tuesday report in the weekly French newspaper L’Express. It reported that computers belonging to top advisers to […]
Pentagon Wants to Keep Running Its ‘Afghan Drug War’ From Blackwater’s HQ
November 22nd, 2012You’ll love this. Via: Wired: The U.S. war in Afghanistan is supposed to be winding down. Its contractor-led drug war? Not so much. Inside a compound in Kabul called Camp Integrity, the Pentagon stations a small group of officers to oversee the U.S. military’s various operations to curb the spread of Afghanistan’s cash crops of […]
Afghanistan: Opium Poppy Cultivation Rises Sharply from 2011-2012
November 22nd, 2012Via: New York Times: Opium poppy cultivation rose substantially in 2012 in an “alarming” trend, despite a major opium eradication effort by Afghan governors, United Nations officials said Tuesday as they released the organization’s 2012 opium survey, which was undertaken with the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics. The higher cultivation levels were driven by high prices […]
Senate Bill Rewrite Lets Feds Read Your E-mail, Cloud Docs, Facebook Information and More Without Warrants
November 20th, 2012Update: Dropped — It won’t just be the NSA that will get to have all the fun… Via: Cnet: A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans’ e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law. CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of […]
Broadwell and Kelley Visited White House
November 17th, 2012Via: AP: The two women at the center of the David Petraeus scandal — the biographer with whom he had an extramarital affair and the socialite who received worrisome emails that led investigators to uncover the illicit relationship — visited the White House on separate and apparently unrelated occasions. Neither woman met with President Barack […]
Ingress: Google’s Strange New Game
November 16th, 2012John Hanke is the head of Niantic Labs, the Google unit that created Ingress, a new global augmented reality game. Let’s quickly look at some of what Hanke was up to before he worked at Google. After graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, Hanke, “Worked in foreign affairs for the US Government in […]
Broadwell Had Substantial Classified Data on Computer
November 15th, 2012Hmm. Via: Reuters: A computer used by Paula Broadwell, the woman whose affair with CIA Director David Petraeus led to his resignation, contained substantial classified information that should have been stored under more secure conditions, law enforcement and national security officials said on Wednesday. The contents and amount of the classified material – and questions […]
Big Picture: Syria Conflict
November 12th, 2012Via: Boston Globe: In a conflict dragging on into its twentieth violent month, today was an especially deadly day in Syria, where rebels are fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad. A pair of car bombs exploded, one in Hama and one in Damascus, and both sides claimed wildly different casualty totals. Intense shelling of rebel […]
