Intelligence Operations

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project. At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up...

The important thing right now isn't whether Edward Snowden should be labeled a hero or villain. First, let's have the debate he sparked over surveillance and privacy. Then we can decide how history should remember him. Snowden is the 29-year-old intelligence analyst and computer geek who leaked some of the National Security Agency's most precious secrets to journalists from The Post and the Guardian. He is now on the lam, having checked out of the Hong Kong hotel where he holed up for several weeks as he orchestrated a...

The important thing right now isn't whether Edward Snowden should be labeled a hero or villain. First, let's have the debate he sparked over surveillance and privacy. Then we can decide how history should remember him. Snowden is the 29-year-old intelligence analyst and computer geek who leaked some of the National Security Agency's most precious secrets to journalists from The Post and the Guardian. He is now on the lam, having checked out of the Hong Kong hotel where he holed up for several weeks as he orchestrated a...

As President Obama reflects on how to fill the vacancy created by the abrupt resignation of CIA Director David H. Petraeus [front page, Nov. 10], he should think about how to lift this position above the maelstrom of day-to-day partisan politics. One way would be the model adopted for the FBI, whose responsibilities in many ways mirror domestically those that the CIA has abroad. That is to say, make the CIA appointment for 10 years. Too often in the past, not only have political pressures buffeted CIA leadership; almost as if...

Iran recently has mounted a series of disruptive computer attacks against major U.S. banks and other companies in apparent retaliation for Western economic sanctions aimed at halting its nuclear program, according to U.S. intelligence and other officials. In particular, assaults this week on the Web sites of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America probably were carried out by Iran, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Friday.

One consequence of the early "war on terror" years was that the lines between CIA and military activities got blurred. The Pentagon moved into clandestine areas that had traditionally been the province of the CIA. Special Forces began operating secretly abroad in ways that worried the CIA, the State Department and foreign governments. The Obama administration is finishing an effort to redraw those lines more carefully, issuing a series of new executive orders (known as "EXORDS") to guide the military's intelligence activities,...

When it comes to the effective running of the U.S. intelligence community, which is more important: personalities or structure? Leadership changes are about to take place in two of the five positions that have emerged under President Obama as key to intelligence operations. Leon Panetta has been nominated to move from CIA director to secretary of defense, and David Petraeus has been nominated to shed his general's uniform and become CIA director. The other key players, FBI Director ...

At the Pentagon, there's a legal formula for intelligence operations that has come to be known as "Gates practice," after its proponent, Defense Secretary Bob Gates. It basically argues that if the United States conducts a sensitive intelligence mission outside a war zone, the president should make the decision. That may seem like a no-brainer, but it wasn't always the case. Early in the past decade, when Gates's predecessor Donald Rumsfeld was looking for ways to pursue al-Qaeda, he issued a series of executive orders that gave the...

The late King Hussein of Jordan was an unlikely prospect for political and physical longevity. As a teenager, Hussein was at the side of his grandfather, King Abdullah I , when an assassin's bullet felled Abdullah in 1951. The gunman reportedly also fired at Hussein, whose life was spared when the bullet struck a medal on his uniform. A year later, when his schizophrenic father abdicated, Hussein became king at the age of 16. Four years into his reign,...

Justice Department officials have ordered changes to a secret U.S. eavesdropping program after discovering that the wiretaps were inadvertently capturing communications between Americans who were not targets of the program, intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday. The unauthorized eavesdropping was part of a massive electronic surveillance program conducted by the National Security Agency, which screens Internet and telephone communications for evidence of terrorist plots, two knowledgeable sources said.

1 The Pope's Jews: The Vatican's Secret Plan to Save Jews From the Nazis , by Gordon Thomas (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, $27.99). Pius XII, the pope during World War II, supposedly did little as Europe's Jews were exterminated wholesale. But in "The Pope's Jews," Gordon Thomas sets out to debunk that notion. Rather than stand idly by, he argues, Pius XII oversaw a covert network of priests, nuns and Roman citizens who forged documents and smuggled Jewish refugees safely to Switzerland, the United States and Palestine while Vatican infirmaries became...

Iran recently has mounted a series of disruptive computer attacks against major U.S. banks and other companies in apparent retaliation for Western economic sanctions aimed at halting its nuclear program, according to U.S. intelligence and other officials. In particular, assaults this week on the Web sites of JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America probably were carried out by Iran, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Friday.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project. At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat...

A group of Senate Republicans introduced a resolution Tuesday calling for Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to appoint a special counsel to investigate the leaks to reporters of classified national security information about U.S. military and intelligence operations. The resolution, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), came on the heels of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at which several GOP lawmakers argued that the two U.S. attorneys appointed by Holder to investigate the...

HONG KONG — A Chinese state security official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the United States, sources said, a case both countries have kept quiet for several months as they strive to prevent a fresh crisis in relations. The official, an aide to a vice minister in China's Ministry of State Security, was detained early this year on allegations that he had passed information to the United States for several years on China's overseas espionage activities, said three sources, who have direct...

Espionage is a dangerous business often seen only through a Hollywood lens. Yet the real-world operations, and lives, that inspire such thrillers are highly perishable. They depend on hundreds of hours of painstaking work and the ability to get foreigners to trust our government. Sitting in a prison cell in Pakistan is one of those foreigners who trusted us. Shakil Afridi served as a key informant to the United States in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. This brave physician put his life on the line to assist U.S....

HONG KONG — A Chinese state security official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the United States, sources said, a case both countries have kept quiet for several months as they strive to prevent a fresh crisis in relations. The official, an aide to a vice minister in China's Ministry of State Security, was detained early this year on allegations that he had passed information to the United States for several years on China's overseas espionage activities, said three sources, who have direct knowledge of the...

Jerome "Jerry" Greiner, 82, a retired officer with the CIA who participated in intelligence operations in Asia, died Aug. 14 at his home in Vienna after a heart attack. His death was confirmed by his wife. Mr. Greiner came to the Washington area in 1951 to join the CIA and spent about eight years stationed in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. In addition to intelligence work, he took part in paramilitary operations in Asia. He retired in 1977. Jerome William Greiner was born Detroit and received an...

The latest al-Qaeda bomb plot targeting U.S. aircraft was unraveled from inside the terrorist group by operatives — including an agent who posed as a willing suicide bomber — working on behalf of the CIA and its counterparts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, said U.S. and Middle Eastern officials. The Saudi intelligence service played a particularly important role in penetrating al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen and recovering the explosive device, according to officials, who described an elaborate espionage operation in which the CIA tracked the...

TEHRAN — Iranian security forces have arrested an Israeli-backed "terrorist team" that was planning attacks inside Iran, the Intelligence Ministry announced Tuesday, four days before crucial nuclear talks with world powers . The announcement, reported by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), said that "terrorists, backed by the Zionists," were arrested after months of intelligence operations in central and border provinces and that the "Zionist regional headquarters" was discovered in...