Getting the boot

Germany has asked Washington’s top CIA official to leave their country amid allegations that employees of Germany’s intelligence service were actually spying for the US.   The CIA official asked to leave is reported to be accredited as the chief of station, which begs the question, how many German intelligence agency chief’s of station are openly operating on US soil? Or French? Or name your country? Why is it that the US maintains intelligence services offices around the world, but no other country has one here?

Share:

Related Articles

12 thoughts on “Getting the boot

  1. Steve, thanks.

    “A Stuxnet-Like Virus Has Infected Hundreds Of US And European Energy Companies”

    “…The malware is similar to Stuxnet, a virus created by the U.S. and Israel that infected Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility in 2007 and reportedly destroyed roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control.
    Stuxnet is the most powerful cyber weapon ever created, and cybersecurity expert Ralph Langer contends that the attack “changed global military strategy in the 21st century.” And it seems that Energetic Bear is the new reality of cyberwarfare….

    https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/stuxnet-virus-infected-hundreds-us-133800447.html

    Netting this out, the geniuses in charge of U.S. Intelligence (Bush/Cheney) developed malware in 2007 which is now being used against us. It’s threatening U.S. manufacturing.

    The NSA’s response is to target anyone who wants to protect their intellectual property.

    “Encryption makes you an NSA target expert warns”

    http://www.slashgear.com/encryption-makes-you-an-nsa-target-expert-warns-11320266/

    My guess is that this was a factor in Elon Musk (Telsa electric cars) opening up his patents, “CEO Elon Musk opens up Tesla’s patents to all.”
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/06/12/tesla-patents-drop/10374433/

    He couldn’t protect them anyway.

  2. Could it be that we are not “spying” on Germany or other friendly or neutral allies or countries, but seeking to know what we do not know? My question assumes that all intelligence is not shared by Germany with the U.S. either deliberately or ignorantly.

    Intelligence is a collection or collaboration of information in part or whole to make an assessment of a potential, real, or imminent threat.

    I yield that the effort in this case was clumsy at best.

    If I feared for my life or a “dirty bomb” in this age of martyrdom combined with science, I would exhaust no effort at eternal vigilance.

    1. Duane, completely agree that our intelligence agencies should “exhaust no effort at eternal vigilance.”

      Spying on a key ally such as Germany, however, only drives them closer to Putin and Russia’s oligarchs. Unfortunately, I think the “net” off our surveillance is to blackmail foreign leaders. That was the argument about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. He was so afraid of that news getting out, that any foreign government could have blackmailed him with it.

      Germany and the rest of the world understands that our intelligence agencies are out of control.

      “Justice won’t probe CIA, Senate spying allegations”

      http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/10/politics/cia-senate-spying/

      That was CIA spying on Sen. Feinstein’s staff. Sen. Feinstein has been one of the great enablers of NSA, CIA in this whole mess and they are spying on her. And Obama’s Executive Branch isn’t going to help her out.

      Judges, Congress, the Executive branch, it doesn’t matter. NSA/CIA are hoovering up data on everyone. Once they’ve got it, anyone with access (and that’s what Snowden proved, he had access) can decide how to use it/sell it.

      A big part of the problem with surveillance is that our agencies refuse to destroy anything. That failure exponentially increases the possibilities for blackmail and abuse by all kinds of people within our intelligence agencies. Not everyone in those agencies is crooked, but the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights is very specific. If you want to do a search on a U.S. citizen, you have to have a signed warrant.

      Even worse, it’s not like the information they’re warehousing is under lock and key. Ed Snowden worked for a private contractor, Booz Allen and Hamilton.

      “99 Percent Of Booz Allen Hamilton’s Revenue Comes From The Federal Government”
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/booz-allen-hamilton-revenue_n_3415451.html

      Booz Allen Hamilton is a subsidiary of the Carlye Group which is Saudi princes and other billionaires.

      http://www.carlyle.com/our-business/portfolio-of-investments/booz-allen-hamilton-inc

      Under Bush and Obama we’ve outsourced national security to the oligarchs. To be fair the Carlyle Group has an affirmative action plan for millionaires. They let some little people in, Bush family, the Romney’s….

      Can I just say how good it is to be a retired four-star Army General with Nat/Sec experience? General Alexander’s shaking down Wall street for about $600,000/month.

      “Keith Alexander Has Finance Worried about Being Zeroed Out, Just Like President’s Review Group”

      http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/07/08/keith-alexander-has-finance-worried-about-being-zeroed-out-just-like-presidents-review-group/

      Nice work if you can get it.

      About our only hope is that the billionaires don’t trust each other, because whomever controls the security apparatus (imho it’s virtually synonymous with Big Data Google, AT&T, Amazon (they’re building a CLOUD for CIA)…..

      Wall Street was pissed off at Dem. Governor Elliot Spitzer, so they used the NSA/CIA/FBI to comb his bank records. That led them to sex workers. Since they didn’t want to reveal how they violated Spitzer’s due process, they just leaked the info to the press and he had to resign.

      We aren’t even allowed to know the total federal tax dollars spent on all the surveillance. That’s classified.

      This is another area where Sen. Feingold was nearly irreplaceable in the Senate. Dem Senators Wyden and Markey have been pretty good. It’s a legal shell game. The level of complexity, that NSA/CIA use to get around the Bill of Rights and Congressional oversight is amazing.

      “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

      -Ben Franklin

      1. John, I have no major disagreement with you. I would vote for Feingold in a heartbeat compared to the opposite we currently have. I am no apologist for the CIA or NiA, but they have a heavy burden and as you and I, they are imperfect on occasion.

        At an advanced age and a number’s guy, now retired, I attempt to look beyond an isolated incident to falsely conclude, as Steve, from one or limited to the whole.

    1. Steve, you’re entitled to your unsubstantiated opinion, but I fear more from those who blow themselves up without regard to the innocents murdered, to make a point.

      1. “Tamerlan Tsarnaev Placed in Database Perceived as Weak, Even by DHS”

        “…The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials. …”

        http://www.emptywheel.net/tag/boston-marathon/page/2/

        AFAIK, the big money is in surveillance. You start out at NSA/CIA and then end up in a cushy job with Big Data Google,… or a defense contractor, Booz, Allen, Hamilton…..

        There doesn’t appear to be a driving interest in actually doing the hard work of stopping actual terrorism within the framework of the Constitution. That’s especially true when it comes to white supremacists and right leaning terrorists. “Las Vegas Shooters Boasted About Protesting At Cliven Bundy’s Ranch” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/las-vegas-shooting-cliven-bundy_n_5473662.html

        Sedition’s a crime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 It’s a limit on the First Amendment. Free Speech does not allow you to talk about the violent overthrow of the U.S. Government. There’s a lot of overlap between “secession,” and “sedition.” I’m not a lawyer. Did FBI…. have probable cause to surveill Bundy’s ranch and the people there? Is it out of line to think if they had done that, those two Vegas Police officers would still be alive?

        AFAIK, those two in Vegas didn’t have any military background. Wade Michael Page, the Oak Creek shooter was a veteran. http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/06/us/wisconsin-temple-shooting/index.html

      2. Those “others,” nationally or internationally, Duane? Est 1.5M Iraqis killed, not to mention the millions displaced to who knows where.

        I don’t suppose they ever feared the US entering that country or US drones to this day./s

        By-products politically, economically and militarily (self appointed militias) of Bush I and Reagan (CoIntel) in Central America and families “relocating,” their children, any way they know today, to the US to attempt to give them any sort of LIFE, as opposed to death.

        When we gave them nothing to lose, what should we expect their behavior to be. Now it is happening to larger and in better understood ways, domestically. Do you think GTAC gives a rat’s ass about the environmental quality of the Bad River (metaphorically for the region and any of its residents)?

  3. The dollar as Reserve currency, was it Spain’s financial minister (sorry, didn’t save the link) last week who commented that perhaps the EU needs to be rethinking their economic future well-being and how that might or might not work out tied to the Dollar, iirc, Spain being one of the more robust EU economies currently?

    US CIA backed neo-nazi terrorists attacking Russian sympathetic, Eastern Ukrainian citizens and driving them out of their own country so cowboy O can attempt to get Putin into a shooting war with the UN. The world ownership class already can’t trust one and other. Whatever the outcome it doesn’t bode well for any of us, “disposables.”

  4. I’m the furthest thing from an expert on Central America, but a lot of people are making the claim that the Honduran refugees are the result of the US backed coup back in 2009. “How Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Congressional Republicans, Worked Together to Create the Flood of Refugee Children Into the U.S”

    “Frances Robles of The New York Times headlined on July 9th, “Fleeing Gangs, Children Head to U.S. Border” and reported:

    More than half of the top 50 Central American cities from which children are leaving for the United States are in Honduras. Virtually none of the children have come from Nicaragua, a bordering country that has staggering poverty, but not a pervasive gang culture or a record-breaking murder rate. “Everyone has left,” Alan Castellanos, 27, the uncle of Anthony and Kenneth, said in an interview in late May. “How is it that an entire country is being brought to its knees?”

    The answer to that question is remarkably clear, and it started actually in 2009.

    In that year, a military coup, which was initiated by fewer than a dozen aristocratic or “oligarchic” families of Honduras, overthrew that country’s popular and democratically elected progressive President Manuel Zelaya. As the present reporter has previously documented in detail, the then-Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton immediately after the coup blocked the efforts of virtually all other nations’ heads-of-state, they being opposed to the coup; and she also prevailed upon the then-dithering U.S. President Barack Obama to agree to provide crucially needed ongoing U.S. military and financial assistance to the coup-imposed government, for a long-enough period of time so that that government could finally become accepted internationally as the “legitimate government” of Honduras. This legitimation was done by means of the usual rigged “elections,” in which the post-coup “interim government” was replaced by a head-of-state whom the voters selected from a pre-screened field of candidates whose every member was approved by the controlling council of oligarchs — those very same ruling families who had overthrown Zelaya. The names of those families are included in my previous news-report, along with the details of how Clinton, Obama, and all congressional Republicans (then under the guidance of the head of the Heritage Foundation, the former U.S. Senator, Jim DeMint), propped up and sustained Honduras’s dictators in power….”

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/hillary-clinton-barack-obama-congressional-republicans-worked-together-create-flood-refugee-children-u-s.html

Comments are closed.