In this unsealed document federal prosecutors said in 2006, Headley traveled to the FATA area with Pasha. “During the trip, Headley and Pasha were stopped and questioned by Pakistani authorities. Headley was questioned by an individual who identified himself as Major Ali. He told Ali about his training with LeT, Ali then asked Headley for his contact information.”
“Several days later, Headley was contacted by an individual who identified himself as Major Iqbal,” said the unsealed document.
“Over the next several years, as described in more detail below, Headley met with Major Iqbal and his associates many times. During these meetings, Headley was trained in various topics, including spotting and assessing people, recognising Indian military insignia and movements, dead drops and pick up points, and clandestine photography,” the unsealed documents said.
Image: NSG commandoes para-dive atop Nariman House in Mumbai during 26/11 terror strikes
Getaway Driver Listened To Police Traffic, Police Say
MUNCIE, Ind. — A man accused of being a getaway driver in a foiled pharmacy robbery used a smart phone application to eavesdrop on emergency radio transmissions as he waited in his car, police said.
Muncie detective Jim Johnson told The Star Press newspapers that investigators wonder whether 29-year-old Matthew Hale knew to leave the scene by eavesdropping on their conversations.
He said officers believe Hale fled after hearing radio calls saying a security guard in the store had captured his alleged cohort, 23-year-old Brian Franklin.
Johnson said Hale used his smart phone to download an application that allowed him to eavesdrop on police radio transmissions.
Franklin faces a preliminary charge of attempted armed robbery, while Hale faces preliminary charges of attempted armed robbery and unlawful use of a police radio.
May 17, 2011: Russia is holding a treason trial for Alexander Poteyev, one of its espionage officials. Poteyev is believed to be in the United States at the moment, as he disappeared from his SVR (Russian overseas intelligence) job late last year, just before he was found to be the one who told the United States about ten Russian spies operating in America. Poteyev is being tried for betraying the SVR, and is said to have done it for money (as much as $30,000). Actually, the United States will end up spending much more than that on Poteyev, who is apparently in the CIA’s own “witness protection program” for foreign spies who have fled to the United States. These men and women are given new identities, eased into life in some part of the United States, helped to find a job, and provided with any other assistance needed. This can be expensive, but it provides a major incentive for foreigners to spy for the United States. Cases like Poteyev’s demonstrate that the U.S. will get you out, if your espionage work is discovered, and take care of you and your family after that. The Russians believe that Poteyev was recruited by Sergei Tretyakov who also spied for the United States, and left Russia in 2000.
Late last year, Russian officials admitted that the ten Russian spies arrested in the United States last June were betrayed by an unidentified Russian espionage official in the SVR. The U.S. claimed they had been watching the ten sleepers for several years, which may indicate that Poteyev had revealed a lot more if he was on the American payroll all that time. Poteyev was in charge of the SVR sleeper cell operation. The Russians use military ranks in the police and intelligence services, and colonels are middle-management. There was political pressure on the head of SVR to resign, indicating that the damage was greater than anyone wants to admit. But the SVR honcho still has is job, indicating any number of things.
Last July, after Poteyev was safely in the U.S., American and Russian officials conducted a spy swap in Vienna, Austria. This was the largest such swap since the Cold War. Russia pardoned and freed four Russians, including two former intel officers who had revealed the identities of numerous Russian agents in the West. These two are believed to have more information and insights of value. The U.S. released the ten Russians who had, for the last decade, been trying to pass themselves off as Americans, and operate as “illegals” (spies without diplomatic cover and protection). As part of the deal, the ten Russians had to admit their guilt.
The FBI said that they caught on to this bunch early on, and have been watching them for years, trying to obtain more information on how Russian espionage operate in the United States. The FBI finally arrested these ten when it became apparent that the Russians had detected that they were being watched. Or because Poteyev believed his SVR bosses were on to him, or because the colonel believed it was time to retire to that secret condo in the United States. Russian government officials are indicating that SVR assassins have been sent to kill Poteyev. Russian intel officials are also insinuating that they had something to do with Sergei Tretyakov’s death a year ago (he choked on a piece of meat while in Florida).
The FBI said they were puzzled by how little useful information the ten Russians were able to obtain. As far as the FBI could tell, these ten spies never obtained anything important. But the Russians were eager to get them back, and avoid a trial in the United States. Russian state media said very little about the spy swap. The spy exchange was organized in less than a month, with the U.S. eager to get four valuable people back, and Russia equally intent on getting its ten embarrassing spies out of the news.
It’s unclear why Russia undertook such an inept operation, although Poteyev should know. If he did, that information has not gone public. There are indications that many other Russian espionage operations are similarly sloppy (and will be revealed when arrests are made). This is in sharp contrast to the Cold War when, after it was over, it was revealed that the Russians were much better at the spy game than their Western opponents. But those super spies appear to have moved on to more lucrative work in the civilian sector, or the government. In any event, the past masters are no longer running the show. It’s amateur hour now, and the Russians would rather not talk about it.
It isn’t everyday that you hear this from a former NSA employee: “I should apologize to the American people. It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.”
That’s Bill Binney, who spoke to Jane Mayer about Thin Thread, a program he invented to track America’s enemies abroad, but that was used after the September 11 terrorist attacks to spy on countless Americans completely innocent of any ties to terrorism. You’ll recall what happened when The New York Times broke the story, thanks to a leak from a patriotic whistle-blower:
Democrats, including then Senator Obama, denounced the program as illegal and demanded congressional hearings. A FISA court judge resigned in protest. In March, 2006, Mark Klein, a retired A.T.T. employee, gave a sworn statement to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was filing a lawsuit against the company, describing a secret room in San Francisco where powerful Narus computers appeared to be sorting and copying all of the telecom’s Internet traffic–both foreign and domestic… Soon, USA Today reported that A.T.T., Verizon, and BellSouth had secretly opened their electronic records to the government, in violation of communications laws. Legal experts said that each instance of spying without a warrant was a serious crime, and that there appeared to be hundreds of thousands of infractions.
That was in 2005. In the aftermath of the leak, the Bush administration insisted it had acted legally, and that the methods it used were necessities in the War on Terrorism. But folks inside the NSA new better. One former staffer told Jane Mayer the following: “This was a violation of everything I knew and believed as an American. We were making the Nixon administration look like pikers.” That’s Thomas Drake, whose conscience got the best of him. He leaked information about the NSA to a Baltimore Sun reporter (he insists that he never gave her anything classified). He now faces 35 years in prison for having allegedly retained five classified documents at his house.
Many are alarmed by the government’s behavior in the case:
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who served in the Bush
Justice Department, laments the lack of consistency in leak
prosecutions. He notes that no investigations have been launched into
the sourcing of Bob Woodward’s four most recent books, even though “they
are filled with classified information that he could only have received
from the top of the government.” Gabriel Schoenfeld, of the Hudson
Institute, says, “The selectivity of the prosecutions here is
nightmarish. It’s a broken system.”
Mark Feldstein, a professor of
media and public affairs at George Washington University, warns that,
if whistle-blowers and other dissenters are singled out for prosecution,
“this has gigantic repercussions. You choke off the information that
the public needs to judge policy.”
During his campaign, President Obama said of whistle-blowers that their “acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.” Mayer’s story is yet another example of the gulf that separates his rhetoric before he came to power and his White House behavior. Says J. Kirk Wieb, another former NSA employee, “I feel I’m living in the very country I worked for years to defeat: the Soviet Union. We’re turning into a police state.” Maybe he’s being hyperbolic, or he’s got an axe to grind. But I get chills when so many former staffers from that agency are publicly making remarks of that sort.
One wonders what we’d hear if whistle-blowers weren’t made targets of criminal investigations that could imprison them for decades, even as leakers who don’t embarrass the government or have the right friends in high places are seemingly free to break the very same laws with impunity.
MINNEAPOLIS – The mother of one of two American hikers held in Iran for nearly two years said Monday she’ll be up before dawn on Wednesday waiting for any news as her son and his friend go on trial on allegations of spying for the U.S.
Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal are due to go on trial in Tehran on Wednesday. Their families say the men were hiking in northern Iraq when they were arrested by Iranian soldiers on July 31, 2009. Bauer’s fiancDee, Sarah Shourd, was arrested with them but was released on bail in September and is back in the United States.
Iran has charged them with espionage, but U.S. authorities have repeatedly called for their release and denied that they were involved in spying.
“They’re absolutely not guilty of anything,” said Bauer’s mother, Cindy Hickey.
Bauer and Fattal pleaded not guilty in a first trial session in February, and Shourd pleaded not guilty in absentia. The three have said they did not realize they had crossed into Iran.
Hickey said the families have received no new information on how the 28-year-olds are doing since they received a Christmas card with a one-paragraph message from Bauer in December. Neither their Iranian lawyer nor Swiss diplomats who represent U.S. interests in Iran have been allowed to see them in prison recently, she said.
“It’s time to end the political games they’re playing with Shane and Josh,” Hickey said.
Their last diplomatic visit in prison was last fall not long after Shourd’s release. Hickey said diplomats have made daily requests to see Bauer and Fattal since then to no avail, while their Iranian lawyer, Masoud Shafii, keeps requesting meetings with them, too. She called Shafii “courageous” and expressed confidence he will fight hard for their freedom.
Shourd was freed on $500,000 bail for health reasons but has said she’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of her 14 months in solitary confinement and will not return to Iran for trial. The three became friends as students at the University of California at Berkeley and Bauer and Shourd became engaged in prison.
“She’s the one who can see the prison, smell the prison, feel the prison,” Hickey said.
Hickey said Shourd’s trauma makes the families especially worry about the well-being of Bauer, who grew up in Onamia, Minn., and Fattal, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, because they’ve been held even longer. She said they don’t even know if they’re even being held in the same prison as before.
While the mothers of the three hikers were allowed to visit them last May, Hickey said they decided against going back for the trial.
“We really want them home. We don’t want a visit. We want this to end,” she said.
