1867 US Secret Service
responsibilities were broadened to include "detecting persons
perpetrating frauds against the government." This appropriation
resulted in investigations into the Ku Klux Klan, non-conforming
distillers, smugglers, mail robbers, land frauds, and a number of
other infractions against the federal laws.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1870 US Secret Service
headquarters relocated to New York City.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1874 Secret Service
headquarters returned to Washington, D.C. after 4 years in NYC.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1875 The first commission book
and a new badge were issued to operatives of the US Secret Service.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1877 Congress passed an Act
prohibiting the counterfeiting of any coin, gold or silver bar.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1883 The US Secret Service was
officially acknowledged as a distinct organization within the
Treasury Department.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1893 Apr 7, Allan W. Dulles, US
diplomat, CIA head (1953-61), (Germany's Underground), was born.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1894 The Secret Service began
informal part-time protection of President Cleveland.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1895 US Congress passed
corrective legislation for the counterfeiting or possession of
counterfeit stamps.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1901 Congress informally
requested Secret Service Presidential protection following the
assassination of President William McKinley.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1902 The Secret Service
assumed full-time responsibility for protection of the President.
Two operatives were assigned full time to the White House Detail.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1908 Jul 26, US Attorney
General Charles J. Bonaparte issued an order creating an
investigative agency that was a forerunner of the FBI. Until this
time Pinkerton had served as the America’s unofficial national law
enforcement agency.
(AP, 7/26/97)(ON, 7/06, p.12)
1913 Mar 13, William J. Casey,
headed CIA during Iran Contra scandal (1981-87), was born.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1917 Jul 26, J. Edgar Hoover
got job with the Justice Department.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1919 Nov, Attorney Gen'l. A.
Mitchell Palmer ordered anti-Communist raids supported by his
assistant J. Edgar Hoover. The Palmer raids led to the arrest of
over 450 members of the Union of Russian Workers. [see Jan. 1920]
(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.M6)
1920 Nov, The US Palmer raids
led to the arrest of some 10,000 members of radical clubs. [see Nov.
1919]
(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.M6)
1921 Aug 22, J. Edgar Hoover
became asst. director of FBI.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1924 Mar 6, William H. Webster,
US judge, head FBI and CIA, was born.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1924 May 10, J. Edgar Hoover
was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at age 29.
(TMC, 1994, p.1924)(AP, 5/10/97)(HN, 5/10/98)
1924 Jun 15, J. Edgar Hoover
assumed leadership of the FBI. [see May 10]
(MC, 6/15/02)
1933-1935 The US Justice Department’s War on Crime
took place. In 2004 Bryan Burrough authored “Public Enemies:
America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-1934” a
reconstruction of this period based on FBI files.
(WSJ, 7/15/04, p.D8)(SSFC, 7/25/04, p.M3)
1934 May 15, US Dept. of
Justice offered $25,000 reward for John Dillinger, dead or alive.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1934 Jul 22, A man identified
as bank robber John Dillinger (33) was shot to death by federal
agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater. FBI agent Murray
Faulkner, brother of William Faulkner, helped in the killing.
In 1924 Dillinger was sent to the Indiana State Reformatory for
holding up a grocer, and was later transferred to the Michigan City,
Indiana, State Prison, where he hatched a plan for a mass breakout
with a group of other infamous convicts. When Dillinger was paroled
in 1933, he robbed several banks to provide money for his friends’
escape. He was caught in Ohio, but by then his friends had escaped
and they helped him break out. Dillinger was famous for the size of
his penis, which was "reportedly" severed and shown at exclusive
viewings. Dillinger’s supposed death remains mysterious. Anna Sage,
the "Lady in Red," had agreed to deliver Dillinger to the FBI if
they would stop deportation proceedings against her. The setup went
as planned, and the FBI shot the man with Anna Sage. By some
accounts, the man was not John Dillinger.
(AP, 7/22/97)(SFC,12/26/97, p.C22)(HNPD,
7/22/98)(HN, 7/22/99)
1935 Jan 16, US federal agents
killed gangsters Ma Barker and Freddy, one of her 4 sons, at Lake
Weir, Florida.
(AH, 2/05, p.16)
1936 May 1, FBI's J Edgar
Hoover arrests Alvin Karpis.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1936 Aug 24, FDR gave the FBI
authority to pursuit fascists and communists.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1939 Edwin Sutherland,
sociology prof. at Indiana Univ., coined the term white-collar
crime.
(WSJ, 10/15/03, p.B1)
1942 Jun 27, The FBI announced
the capture of eight Nazi saboteurs who had been put ashore from 2
submarines, one off New York’s Long Island and the other off of
Florida. The men were tried by a military court and 6 were secretly
executed in a DC jail. Ernest Burger and George Dasch were sentenced
to 30 years in prison for their help in revealing the plot. They
were pardoned in 1948 by Pres. Truman.
(AP, 6/27/97)(SFC, 11/30/01, p.A18)
1944 Jun 20, The US Congress
chartered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
(MC, 6/20/02)
1945 Nov 9, FBI agents staked
out a house in Berkeley, Ca., to watch George Eltenton, a suspected
Soviet spy. In 1946 Eltenton admitted that he had tried to obtain
secret data on Berkeley’s radiation lab. Eltenton moved to Britain
in 1947.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1945 Russian code clerk Igor
Gouzenko defected to Canada and Elizabeth Bentley changed her role
from Soviet courier to FBI informant. They helped the West gain an
understanding of Soviet spy rings in North America. In 2003 Lauren
Kessler authored "Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who
Ushered in the McCarthy Era." Bentley provided the FBI with the
names of 150 spies.
(WSJ, 9/22/99, p.A22)(SSFC, 8/17/03, p.M2)(SSFC,
1/11/04, p.M6)
1945 John S. Service (d.1999 at
89), one of the US "China hands" experts, participated in the "Dixie
Mission" as a US Foreign Service officer, and visited Mao Zedong at
Yanan. He reported that Chiang Kai-shek was vulnerable due to
corruption and that the Communists would win the war. The US
ambassador to China, Army Gen'l. Patrick Hurley, ordered him back to
the US and later accused him of handing secret US documents to the
Chinese. In the US Service was arrested by the FBI in the Amerasia
affair and became a target of Joseph McCarthy. He was dismissed from
the State Dept. in 1951 but later vindicated.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.D4)
1946 Jan 22, President Truman
set up the Central Intelligence Group. In late 1945 he had
coordinated various intelligence reform plans considered in the
drafting of the directive that created the CIG. In 1947 it was
re-named the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
(http://tinyurl.com/l3go2n)
1946 Mar 2, Kingman Douglass
became deputy director of CIA.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1947 Jul 26, President Truman
signed the National Security Act, creating the Department of
Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence
Agency, CIA, FBI, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The act forbade the
CIA from operating within the US. The CIA was transformed from the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), founded by Gen. William Donovan
(1941), and was led by Adm. Walter Chilcott Ford (d.1999 at 96)
until 1949.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A2)(AP, 7/26/97)(SFC, 11/25/99,
p.D9)(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
1947 Frank Wisner was recruited
by Dean Acheson to join the US State Department's Office of Occupied
Territories. In 1948, the CIA created a covert action wing,
innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). Frank
Wisner was put in charge of the operation and recruited many of his
old friends from the NYC Carter Ledyard law firm. Wisner later
coined the term “mighty Wurlitzer” to describe the orchestration of
the agency’s activities.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Wisner)
1949 The National Council for a
Free Europe was set up, seemingly the initiative of American
philanthropists, to help refugees. It was later revealed to be a CIA
front group.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.D8)
1950 Mar 14, The FBI began its
"10 Most Wanted" list after a reporter asked for the names and
descriptions of the "toughest guys" the FBI would like to capture.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, Par p.4)
1950 Mar 22, A one-page memo
was addressed to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, then
head of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office. It relayed some
information from an informant. The subject: FLYING
SAUCERS INFORMATION CONCERNING: "An investigator for the Air Force
stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New
Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised
centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by
three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in
metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a
manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test
pilots.” The file was released in April 2011 under the Freedom of
Information Act. The memo is dated nearly three years after the
infamous events in Roswell in July 1947.
(http://tinyurl.com/cwg4uwp)
1951 Mar 10, FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover declined the post of baseball commissioner.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1952 Nov 29, A plane carrying
CIA paramilitary officers on their first overseas assignment, John
T. Downey (22) of New Britain, Conn., and Richard G. Fecteau (25),
of Lynn, Mass., was shot down over Jilin province. Pilots, Robert C.
Snoddy (31), a native of Roseburg, Ore., and Norman A. Schwartz (29)
of Louisville, Ky., did not survive. Downey and Fecteau were
captured. They had been assigned to a covert program called "Third
Force," intended to create a resistance network. Fecteau was
released by China in December 1971 and Downey in March 1973, shortly
after President Richard Nixon publicly acknowledged Downey's CIA
connection.
(SFC, 7/3/98, p.A11)(SFC, 7/10/02, p.A12)(AP,
6/19/10)
1953 Feb 9, General Walter
Bedell Smith, USA, ended term as 4th director of CIA. Allen W.
Dulles, became acting director of CIA and served to 1961.
(MC, 2/9/02)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)
1953 Feb 26, Allen W. Dulles
was promoted from deputy to 5th director of CIA.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1953 Mar, The US CIA’s Tehran
station reported that an Iranian general had approached the US
embassy for support in an army-led coup. Based on this information
Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, approved $1 million to be used to
help bring about the fall of Prime Minister Mossadegh. Pres.
Eisenhower gave the CIA the ok to overthrow the elected government
of PM Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh had nationalized the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. after Britain refused to compromise and split
profits 50-50. In 2003 Stephen Kinzer authored "All the Shah's Men:
An American Coup and the Roots of the Middle East Terror."
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.M6)
1953 Aug 15, In Iran a CIA
plot, masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt, to unseat PM Mossadeq
failed. A 2nd attempt succeeded on August 19.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.92)
1953 Aug 19, Gen'l. Zahedi
ousted PM Mossadegh and became the Premier of Iran in a bloody coup
that left 300 dead. Britain and the US CIA under Allen Dulles
planned a secret mission to overthrow the government. PM Mossadeq
had sought to nationalize the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. The US
government made a formal apology for the coup in 2000. A 1954 CIA
description of the coup was made public in 2000. In 1979 Kermit
Roosevelt (d.2000) published “Countercoup: The Struggle for the
Control of Iran,” an account of his role in the coup. In 2010
Darioush Bayandor authored “Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossadeq
Revisited.”
(SFC, 11/20/53, p.A1)(SFC, 11/15/99, p.E6)(SFC,
5/29/97, p.A4)(WSJ, 3/20/00, p.A1)(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A18)(SFEC,
6/11/00, p.D6)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)(Econ, 5/15/10, p.91)
1953 Pres. Eisenhower gave the
CIA the ok to overthrow the elected government of PM Mohammad
Mossadegh. Mossadegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
after Britain refused to compromise and split profits 50-50. In 2003
Stephen Kinzer authored "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and
the Roots of the Middle East Terror."
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.M6)
1953 The first issue of the US
CIA sponsored British magazine "Encounter" was published under
Irving Kristol and Stephen Spender. It became the West's most
important vehicle for highbrow anti-Marxist commentary. The funding
source did not become known until 1966/7.
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A46)(Econ, 6/19/04, p.81)
1953 Thomas Guinzburg, Donald
Hall, Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014) and George
Plimpton founded the Paris Review. William Styron (1925-2006) helped
establish the Paris Review. Matthiessen later admitted that he was a
CIA recruit and used his work with the Review as a cover.
(SFC, 9/27/03, p.A2)(Econ, 11/11/06, p.95)(SSFC,
4/6/14, p.A18)
1953 Frank Olson, US Army
chemist, jumped to his death from a hotel window while under the
influence of LSD. He was an unwitting subject in the CIA MKULTRA
mind-control project. In 1976 Congress approved a $760,000 payment
to his widow.
(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.A4)
1954 May 19, Postmaster General
Summerfield approved a CIA mail-opening project.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1954 Jun 2, Senator Joseph
McCarthy charged that there are communists working in the CIA and
atomic weapons plants.
(HN, 6/2/98)
1954 Jun 27, CIA-sponsored
rebels overthrew the elected government of Guatemala. A US supported
force of Guatemalan mercenaries invaded from Honduras. Sam Zemurray,
head of United Fruit, helped fund the rebels. Pres. Arbenz was
toppled and replaced by 30 years of military rule. He spent much of
his exile in Cuba. Arbenz died in 1971 in Mexico City. It was
disclosed in 1997 to have been motivated by US economic interests
with 58 Guatemalan politicians put on a list of potential targets
for political killing. In 1982 “Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of
the American Coup in Guatemala” by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen
Kinzer, was published by Doubleday. In 2011 Guatemalan President
Alvaro Colom acknowledged the state's responsibility in overthrowing
Arbenz and apologized to his family.
(NG, 6/1988, p.783)(SFC, 5/24/97, p.A1)(WSJ,
3/3/99, p.A18)(AP, 10/21/11)(SSFC, 7/8/12, p.F5)
1955 Apr 18, Albert Einstein
(76), physicist, died in Princeton New Jersey. Dr. Thomas Harvey,
chief pathologist at Princeton Hospital, performed Albert Einstein’s
autopsy. He removed the brain and took it home. In 2000 Michael
Paterniti authored "Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with
Einstein’s Brain." In 1999 it was reported that Einstein’s inferior
parietal lobe was larger than normal. In 2000 Amir D. Aczel
published "God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding
Universe." [see Apr 15] In 1983 Abraham Pais (d.2000 at 81) authored
"Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein."
In 2000 Dennis Overbye authored "Einstein In Love," on Einstein’s
1st marriage with Mileva Maric. In 2002 Fred Jerome authored "The
Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret War Against the World’s Most
Famous Scientist."
(EnRoute, 11/’95, p.111)(AP, 4/18/97)(SFC,
6/18/99, p.A18)(SFEC, 1/9/00, BR p.4)(SFC, 8/1/00, p.B2)(WSJ,
10/20/00, p.W10)(SSFC, 3/18/01, BR p.6)(SFC, 9/15/02, p.M5)
1955 Aug 4, Eisenhower
authorized $46 million for the construction of CIA headquarters.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1956 John Kerry King (d.2003 at
86), CIA official and consultant (1956-1979), authored "Southeast
Asia in Perspective."
(SFC, 4/12/03, p.A18)
1956 The FBI created its
“Reserve Index,” a list of people who did not meet standards for
another detention list approved by the Justice Department. By 1959
the reserve index totaled 12,784 names.
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.20)
1956 Winston Scott (1909-1971)
was appointed as the American CIA station chief in Mexico.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottW.htm)
1957 Mar 13, The FBI arrested
Jimmy Hoffa on bribery charges.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1957 Jul 22, In El Segundo,
Ca., 2 police officers were shot and killed after pulling over a car
for running a red light. Gerald Mason (68) was arrested in 2003
following fingerprint ID from a new FBI database.
(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A5)
1957 The FBI closed its
investigation on Jay Lovestone (d.1999), a former Communist turned
CIA informer, after 6 years of wiretaps. Lovestone worked as an
executive secretary for the AFL's Free Trade Union Committee which
was primarily supported by CIA funds.
(WSJ, 5/19/99, p.A20)
1957 The first team of 6
Tibetans trained at a Saipan US CIA base and then airdropped back
into Tibet with modern weapons and radios.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1958 A secret war in Indonesia
ended abruptly when Allen Pope, a CIA contract pilot, was downed in
a dogfight. Pope was carrying a trove of documents that revealed the
extent of US involvement. The CIA had been sending weapons and
advisers to anti-government rebels on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island as
mercenaries mounted combat sorties in a fleet of unmarked B-26
bombers. Indonesia later received a batch of 10 C-130 transport
planes from the US in exchange for Pope’s release.
(AP, 4/24/05)(AP, 5/20/09)
1958 The US CIA began
airdropping weapons over Tibet.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.A8)
1960 May 9, US sent a U-2 over
USSR.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1960-1979 The US CIA launched a secret domestic
spying program dubbed MHCHAOS aimed at the US anti-war underground
press. The events were later described in the 1997 book by Angus
McKenzie (d.1997): "Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home."
(http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/2/books-cia.asp)
1961 Apr 17, About 1,500
CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the disastrous Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow the government of
Fidel Castro. The US clandestinely invaded Cuba in the Bay of Pigs
operation and the operation failed completely without any of the
promised air support from the United States. Cuban forces killed 200
rebels and captured 1,197 in less than 72 hours. 26 survivors were
rescued after 3 days of fighting. A single copy of a CIA report
written by inspector general Lyman Kirkpatrick was made public in
1998. The operation, which had been devised during the Eisenhower
Administration, was nonetheless endorsed by the new president, John
F. Kennedy. In 1979 Peter Wyden wrote “Bay of Pigs: The Untold
Story.” Portion of the 1961 Taylor Report was made public in 1977
and 1986. Most of the report was made public in 2000 and it showed
that the CIA knew that the Soviets knew the exact date of the
attack. In 2009 Guadeloupe apologized to Cuba for allowing the CIA
to train Cuban exiles on its soil.
(AP, 4/17/97)(TMC, 1994, p.1961)(SFEC, 2/22/98,
p.A19)(HNQ, 4/11/00)(SFC, 4/29/00, p.A7)
(AP, 2/18/09)
1961 Richard Masato Aoki
(1938-2009), a Japanese-American, began working as an FBI informant
(1961-1977) in the SF Bay Area. He became an early member of the
Black Panthers (1967) gave the Panthers some of their first guns.
(SFC, 8/20/12,
p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/9g5u4zn)(SFC, 9/8/12, p.C2)
1961-1973 The CIA backed a secret army in Laos to
help fight the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese. An
estimated 50,000 Hmong civilians died over this period. CIA director
William Colby acknowledged the US and Hmong alliance in 1994.
(SFC, 6/14/04, p.A1)
1962 May, A memo from the CIA
briefing for Attorney Gen’l. Robert Kennedy revealed that $150,000
was offered to the US mob for the assassination of Fidel Castro. The
mob insisted on doing the job at no charge.
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.A5)
1963 Feb 11, A CIA Domestic
Operations Division was created.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1963 George Joannides, a CIA
agent, was in charge of the Revolutionary Students Directorate
(DRE), one of the most powerful Cuban anti-Castro organizations in
Miami. A few months before the assassination of JFK the DRE had
significant contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald tried to
infiltrate the New Orleans branch of the DRE.
(SSFC, 5/13/07, p.M5)
1963 Winston Scott served as
American CIA station chief in Mexico during the time that Lee Harvey
Oswald visited the Cuban Embassy there. In 2008 Jefferson Morley
authored “Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of
the CIA.” Morley proposed that Scott later covered up CIA operations
that involved Oswald.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottW.htm)(WSJ, 3/20/08, p.D7)
1963-1973 The 1975 US Church committee report on
CIA activity in Chile included a chronology that covered this
period.
(http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/churchreport.htm)
1964
Jan 16, Pres. Johnson approved OPLAN 34A-64, calling for stepped up
infiltration and covert operations against North Vietnam to be
transferred from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the
military."
(http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/lbjohnson)
1964 Feb, Yuri Nosenko
(1927-2008), Soviet KGB officer, defected under CIA guidance in
Geneva. He had begun passing information in June, 1962. He was
incarcerated for his first 3 years in the US and settled there under
a new name in 1969.
(Econ, 9/6/08,
p.101)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko)
1964 Nov 18, FBI Director J.
Edgar Hoover described civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as
"the most notorious liar in the country" for accusing FBI agents in
Georgia of failing to act on complaints filed by blacks.
(AP, 11/18/04)
1964 Nov, The US HONETOL
committee was formed to look into the question of a mole in the CIA,
based on information from Soviet defector Anatoly Golitsin. It was
in existence to April 1965, and consisted of James Jesus Angleton,
Newton S. Miler and Bruce Solie from the CIA's Office of Security,
FBI domestic intelligence chief William C. Sullivan, FBI CIA liaison
Sam Papich and two others. The investigations damaged many careers
including that of case officer Richard Kovich (1926-2006). In 1992
David Wise authored “Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors that
Shattered the CIA.”
(http://tinyurl.com/lqo6j)(SFC, 2/27/06, p.B5)
1964 Fred J. Cook (1911-2003)
authored "The FBI Nobody Knows."
(SFC, 5/5/03, p.B4)
1964-1987 FBI agents in Boston used hit men and
mob leaders as informants and shielded them from prosecution in
exchange for information on the Mafia. This allowed the Winter Hill
Gang to rise in power as the prosecutors brought down the Patriarcha
crime family.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A5)
1965 Mar 12, The SF FBI sent
bureau headquarters a secret 33-page report on Mario Savio, leader
of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.18)
1965 Mar 12, Edward "Teddy"
Deegan was found dead in an alley in Chelsea, Mass. A week later an
FBI memo named 6 men, including Vincent J. Flemmi and Joseph "The
Animal" Barboza, as the killers. Barboza became a star witness and
provided false testimony to convict 4 innocent men. The New England
Mafia shotgunned Barboza in SF in 1976. Over the next 3 decades FBI
informants in Boston murdered over 20 people.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A5)(SFC, 11/21/03, p.A3)
1967 Feb 14, Ramparts Magazine
published an ad in the NY Times and Washington Post saying “In its
March issue, Ramparts magazine will document how the CIA has
infiltrated and subverted the world of American student leaders over
the past fifteen years.”
(WSJ, 1/23/08,
p.D8)(www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mackenzie-secrets.html)
1967 Sidney Gottlieb (d.1999 at
80) rose to the top of the technical services division of the CIA.
For 22 years he experimented with LSD and participated in the
MKULTRA program of secret experiments with mind-altering drugs.
(SFC, 4/6/99, p.)
1967 Luis Posada Carriles,
Cuban-born CIA agent since 1965, moved to Venezuela and rose to
become head of a government counterintelligence security agency.
(SFC, 5/18/05, p.A9)
1967 Feb 14, Ramparts Magazine
published an ad in the NY Times and Washington Post saying: “In its
March issue, Ramparts magazine will document how the CIA has
infiltrated and subverted the world of American student leaders over
the past fifteen years.”
(WSJ, 1/23/08,
p.D8)(www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mackenzie-secrets.html)
1968 May 10, FBI director
Hoover sent all field offices an urgent memo escalating the FBI’s
attack on dissent. It authorized an operation called
“Counterintelligence Program – New Left.”
(SFCM, 10/10/04, p.23)
1968 Mar 8, The Russian K-129,
a Golf-II class, diesel-electric submarine armed with nuclear
missiles and 98 seamen aboard, sank in 16,000 feet of water
northwest of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Russian officials
suspected that the K-129 was struck by an American submarine, the
USS Swordfish. The US Navy said the vessel suffered a catastrophic
internal explosion. A US sub, the Halibut, found the Soviet vessel 6
months later and recovered 3 missiles with nuclear warheads, Soviet
code books and an encryption machine. In August 1974 the CIA
recovered part of the sub. A 100 foot section was pulled in by the
Glomar Explorer with 2 nuclear tipped torpedoes and the bodies of 6
Russian sailors.
(SFC, 7/15/96, p.A6)(SFC, 7/5/96, p.A19,21)(AP,
9/11/07)(AP, 2/13/10)
1968 Jul 31, In Boston 4 men
were convicted for shooting Edward "Teddy" Deegan in a Chelsea,
Mass., alley in 1965. In 2007 a federal judge in Boston ordered the
government to pay a record nearly $102 million for the FBI's role in
the wrongful murder convictions of the 4 men. Two of the men
convicted, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo, died behind bars. The
others, Peter Limone (73) and Joseph Salvati (74) spent three
decades in prison.
(www.justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/fbi%27s_legacy_of_shame.html)
1968 The A-12 Blackbird spy
plane was retired. Lockheed Martin had built 15 such planes, a
forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird. It had originated as part
of the CIA’s “Oxcart” program.
(WSJ, 1/26/06, p.A1)
1969 Jan 29, Allan Welsh Dulles
(b.1893), US diplomat, director (CIA 1953-61), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles)
1969 Jul 16, Vu Ngoc Nha
(d.2002), top aide to presidents Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu,
was arrested in Saigon. The CIA uncovered him as the head of a
Communist espionage ring. He and 2 others were convicted of
treason and sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A20)
1969 Jul 17, An FBI memo titled
"New Left and Extremist Movements" revealed Gov. Reagan’s plans for
the destruction of disruptive elements on California college
campuses through "psychological warfare" and other methods.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F8)
1970 Sep 22, President Richard
M. Nixon signed a bill giving the District of Columbia
representation in the U.S. Congress. Pres Nixon requested 1,000 new
FBI agents for college campuses.
(HN, 9/22/98)(http://tinyurl.com/5qrct8)
1971 Mar 8, Catholic radicals
in Media, Pa., broke into the local FBI offices and stole documents
that revealed the agency’s illegal activities against radical groups
and leaked them to the media. In 2014 Betty Medsger authored “The
Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.”
(SFEC, 2/16/97, BR p.8)(SSFC, 1/12/14, p.F1)
1971 Aug 20, FBI began a covert
investigation of CBS journalist Daniel Schorr.
(www.theatlantic.com/politics/polibig/wisepres.htm)
1971 US CIA funding for Radio
Free Europe and Radio Liberty was disclosed. In 2000 Arch
Puddington, deputy director of RFE/RL’s new York bureau from 1985 to
1993, authored "Broadcasting Freedom." The Munich headquarters were
closed in 1994 and the organization moved to an afterlife in Prague.
(WSJ, 6/5/00,
p.A30)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe)
1972 May 2, J. Edgar Hoover,
head of the FBI (1924-72), died in Washington at age 77. Hoover had
come to the forefront of federal law enforcement during the "Red
Scare" of 1919 to 1920. The Watergate affair subsequently revealed
that the FBI had illegally protected President Richard Nixon from
investigation. Ronald Kessler later published "The FBI: Inside the
World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency."
(AP, 5/2/97)(SFEC, 6/6/99, p.A19)(MC, 5/2/02)
1972 Jun 17, Chile president
Allende formed a new government and the CIA prepared to oust him.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1972 Jun 19, Two days after the
botched Watergate break-in, FBI official W. Mark Felt secretly
assured Bob Woodward that The Washington Post could safely make a
connection between the burglars and a former CIA agent linked to the
White House, E. Howard Hunt. Woodward’s secret source for
information became known as Deep Throat, and Felt’s name was not
made public until 2005. In 2006 Mark Felt and John O’Connor authored
“A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being “Deep Throat,” and the Struggle for
Honor in Washington.”
(http://tinyurl.com/cva26)(SSFC, 5/21/06, p.M3)
1972 Jul 17, The first women
since the 1920s were officially hired as special FBI
agents.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dillinger/peopleevents/p_women.html)
1973 Mar 4, Khalid Duhham
Al-Jawary (b.1947), and possibly others readied cars with bombs in
anticipation of Israeli PM Golda Meir's visit to NYC. The bombs
failed to detonate and were discovered after two cars on Fifth
Avenue were towed. The FBI learned about a third car at JFK and
notified police. In 1979 Border police stopped Al-Jawary's car as he
and another man tried to cross into Germany from Austria. In the
trunk of the car, police found 88 pounds of high explosives,
electronic timing-delay devices and detonators hidden in a suitcase.
They also unearthed cash and nine passports inside a portable radio
that could be used to monitor transmissions from ships, airplanes or
the police. Germany released Al-Jawary long before the FBI knew that
he had been taken into custody. In 1991 he was detained in Rome and
picked up by the FBI. In 1993 a jury convict Al-Jawary, just days
after the first attack on the World Trade Center, based on evidence
that included his fingerprints on one of the NYC bombs. In 2009
Al-Jawary was deported to Sudan after completing only about half his
term, including time served prior to his sentencing and credit for
good behavior.
(AP, 1/25/09)(SFC, 2/27/09, p.A5)(WSJ, 3/5/09,
p.A6)
1973 Mar 11, An FBI agent was
shot at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1973 Apr 2, ITT pleaded guilty
to asking CIA to "influence" Chilean presidential elections.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1973 Apr 27, Acting FBI
Director L. Patrick Gray resigned after it was revealed that he had
handed over bureau files on the Watergate burglary to the Nixon
White House.
(AP, 4/27/08)
1973 May, CIA director James R.
Schlesinger (b.1929), in response to the unfolding Watergate
scandal, ordered employees to report activities which might be
construed to be outside the legislative charter of the agency.
(AH, 10/07, p.16)
1973 Jun 7, Pres. Nixon
nominated Clarence M. Kelley (1911-1997), chief of police in Kansas
City, to succeed J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI. Kelley
retired in 1978 when Pres. Carter selected William Webster to serve
as the director.
(SFC, 8/6/97,
p.A14)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_M._Kelley)
1973 Jul 2, CIA director James
R. Schlesinger (b.1929), nominated on May 10 by Pres. Nixon, became
the 12th US Sec. of Defense.
(www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/schlesinger.htm)
1973 Jul 13, In Chile a strike
began that lasted until the September 11 coup. More than a million
workers were on strike demanding that Allende go. American CIA
funding was involved.
(WSJ, 10/30/98,
p.A19)(http://foia.state.gov/reports/churchreport.asp)
1973 Sep 4, William E Colby
(1920-1996), became the 10th director of the CIA.
(http://ngothelinh.tripod.com/wcolby.htm)
1973 Oct 24, John Lennon sued
the US government to admit FBI was tapping his phone.
(http://tinyurl.com/4xox8x)
1974 Columnist Jack Anderson
blew the cover of CIA agent James Lilley, attached to the US
representative office in Beijing. In 2004 James and Jeffrey Lilley
authored “China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espionage and
Diplomacy in Asia.”
(WSJ, 5/6/04, p.D10)
1974 Aug, The CIA in Project
Azorian recovered part of a Soviet submarine that had sunk in the
Pacific on March 8, 1968. A 100 foot section of K-129 was pulled in
by the Hughes Glomar Explorer with 2 nuclear tipped torpedoes and
the bodies of 6 Russian sailors. The US Navy’s fully
submersible dry dock, called the Hughes Mining Barge, was used under
the Glomar Explorer to position a claw to recover the submarine.
Claude Barnes Capehart worked on the Howard Hughes’ deep-sea
research vessel, Glomar Explorer, that under CIA sponsorship raised
part of the Soviet submarine. Later in Chowchilla, Ca., he told his
girlfriend that he was in Texas when Kennedy was assassinated, and
that "Oswald wasn’t the only one involved." Just before a scheduled
interview in 1989, Capehart dropped dead of a heart attack. In 1996
the Glomar Explorer began under going remodeling for work as a
deep-sea drilling ship. The barge was later used to house the Navy’s
$195 million Sea Shadow, an experimental stealth ship made public in
1993. In 2006 the barge and Sea Shadow were put to rest in Suisun
Bay, near San Francisco.
(SFC, 7/15/96, p.A6)(WSJ, 2/24/09, p.A6)(AP,
2/13/10)
1975 Jan 4, Pres. Ford’s signed
Executive Order No. 11828 on CIA Activities within the US. He
directed the Commission, chaired by VP Nelson A. Rockefeller, to
determine whether or not any domestic CIA activities exceeded the
Agency's statutory authority and to make appropriate
recommendations.
(www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/1975.html)(http://tinyurl.com/5ukhxo)
1975 Jan 27, The US Senate
voted to establish a special 11-member investigating body to examine
FBI and CIA activities. Under the chairmanship of Idaho Senator
Frank Church, with Texas Senator John Tower as vice-chairman, the
select committee was given nine months and 150 staffers to complete
its work. On November 20 the committee released a report, charging
both US government agencies with illegal activities.
(http://tinyurl.com/2tb7rc)(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Church_Committee)
1975 Jun 2, Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller said his commission had found no widespread
pattern of illegal activities at the Central Intelligence Agency.
(AP, 6/2/97)
1975 Jun 10, The Rockefeller
panel reported on illegal CIA files on Americans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975)
1975 Sep 22, President Gerald
R. Ford dodged a second assassination in less than three weeks. Sara
Jane Moore, an FBI informer and self-proclaimed revolutionary,
attempted to shoot President Ford outside a San Francisco hotel, but
missed. Oliver Sipple (1941-1989), a disabled former Marine, knocked
Moore’s arm aside. A bullet she fired slightly wounded a man in the
crowd. Moore was sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled at the
end of 2007 after serving over 30 years without getting into
trouble.
(AP, 9/22/97)(SFC, 1/1/08, p.A1)(SSFC, 2/2/14, DB
p.42)
1975 Oct 5, Democratic Senator
Frank Church of Idaho charged that the CIA tried to kill Cuban
President Fidel Castro during the administrations of three US
presidents. The 1975 Church Committee hearings revealed the FBI’s
worst secrets of surveillance and intimidation.
(MC, 10/5/01)(WSJ, 10/27/04, p.D12)
1975 Dec 23, Richard S. Welch,
the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Athens, was shot
and killed outside his home. The left-wing November 17 urban
guerrilla group was responsible. In 2002 Pavlos Serifis was arrested
in connection with the murder.
(AP, 12/23/00)(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A9)
1976 Jan 30, George Bush became
the 11th director of the CIA replacing William E. Colby. Bush
revived the reputation of the organization and left it Jan 20, 1977.
(SFEC, 1/16/00, Par
p.2)(http://tinyurl.com/2mm8r9)
1976 May 19, The US Senate
established congressional oversight over the CIA with the permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
(SFC, 9/17/97, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/3cc2yh)
1976 Aug 8, John Roselli, hired
by CIA to kill Castro, was found murdered.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1977 Mar 9, Admiral Stansfield
Turner took office as head of the CIA under Pres. Carter.
(www.espionageinfo.com/Cou-De/DCI-Director-of-the-Central-Intelligence-Agency.html)
1977 Jul 14, US House
established a permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1977 Christopher Boyce was
convicted of espionage. He had gained access to CIA communications
during his job at TRW and sold classified documents to the Russian
Embassy in Mexico City. His story was told in the 1985 film "The
Falcon and the Snowman." Boyce was paroled in 2003.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A2)
1978 Jan 7, Michael Josselson
(b.1908), Estonia-born director of the Congress for Cultural
Freedom, died. The organization was a CIA front to gain the support
of the non-Communist left for the US. In 2000 Frances Stonor
Saunders authored "The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of
Arts and Letters."
(SFEC, 7/16/00, BR p.4)
1978 Aug 18, Bechtel Corp.
hired Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, as a consultant.
Former government officials George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger were
also recently hired.
(SFC, 8/15/03, p.E9)
1980 Feb 2, Reports surfaced
that the FBI had conducted a sting operation targeting members of
Congress using phony Arab businessmen in what became known as
"Abscam," a codename protested by Arab-Americans.
(AP, 2/2/00)
1980 Oct 24, David H. Barnett,
former CIA agent, was indicted. He pleaded guilty to spying for the
Soviet Union from 1976-1979 while based in Indonesia. He admitted to
exposing the identities of 30 US agents.
(SFC, 11/19/96,
p.A17)(www.agentsnotes.com/spycases.html)
1981 Jan 28, William J. Casey
(1913-1987) became the 13th director of CIA replacing Adm.
Stansfield Turner.
(www.espionageinfo.com/Cou-De/DCI-Director-of-the-Central-Intelligence-Agency.html)
1981 May 1, Harrison Williams
(Sen-D-NJ) was convicted on FBI Abscam charges.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam)(AP, 5/1/01)
1981 Dec 4, President Reagan
broadened the power of the CIA by allowing spying in the U.S. This
was Executive Order on Intelligence No 12,333. The order also
barred assassinations.
(HN, 12/4/98)(Econ, 2/20/10,
p.57)(www.tscm.com/EO12333.html)
1981 Barry Seal (1939-1986),
gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert CIA operative, began his
operations at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena, Arkansas.
Seal was murdered by Colombian assassins in Feb, 1986, after he had
testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami
for the US government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.
According to a 1986 letter from the Louisiana attorney general to
then US attorney general Edwin Meese, Seal had "smuggled between $3
billion and $5 billion of drugs into the US." Among the aircraft
flown in and out of Mena was Seal's C-123K cargo plane, christened
Fat Lady. Records show that Fat Lady, serial number 54-0679, was
sold by Seal months before his death. On Oct 5, 1986, Fat Lady was
shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the
Contras.
(www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/crimesOfMena.html)
1981 Roger Wheeler, chairman of
Telex Corp. and owner of World Jai Alai, was shot execution style at
a Tulsa country club. In 2001 2 reputed Boston mobsters, James
Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, were charged. Jai Alai executive John B.
Callahan was murdered in Aug 1982 in Miami. In 2001 hitman John
Vincent Martorano (60) pleaded guilty to wheeler’s murder and was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. In 2003 former FBI agent H. Paul
Rico (78) was arrested and charged with murder for helping to setup
the hit.
(SFC, 3/15/01, p.A8)(SFC, 5/4/01, p.D5)(SFC,
10/10/03, p.A3)
1982 Jun, "Farewell," a C.I.A.
campaign of computer sabotage, stayed secret because the blast,
estimated at three kilotons, took place in the Siberian wilderness,
with no casualties known. "The pipeline software that was to run the
pumps, turbines and valves was programmed to go haywire," writes
Reed, "to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures
far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The
result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever
seen from space." "At the Abyss," by Thomas C. Reed, was published
by Random House in 2004.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/opinion/02SAFI.html)
1982 Jul 31, Jai Alai executive
John B. Callahan (45) was fatally shot in Miami by mob hit man John
Martorano. Callahan’s body was found Aug 2 in the trunk of his
Cadillac. In 2008 former FBI agent John Connolly was convicted of
2nd degree murder for leaking information to mobsters that led to
the shooting death of Callahan. In Jan, 2009, Connolly was sentenced
to 40 years in prison.
(SFC, 11/6/08,
p.A9)(http://mafiatoday.com/?p=442)(SFC, 1/16/09, p.A2)
1983 Jul 19, In Honduras Reyes
Mata, a Cuban-trained doctor and guerrilla leader, led a unit of 96
Nicaraguan-trained rebels and Rev. James F. Carney into the Olancho.
They were routed by the Honduran army. American CIA records,
disclosed in 1998, reported that Mata was tortured and executed by
the Honduran army.
(SFC, 11/5/98,
p.C4)(www.fas.org/sgp/congress/hr051198/valladares.html)
1983 Edwin Wilson was convicted
of running arms to Libya. In 2003 the conviction was thrown out
because prosecutors knew he worked for the CIA and misled the court.
(WSJ, 10/29/03, p.A1)
1984 May, Marta Healy, a
Nicaraguan exile, contacted George Morales, a champion power boat
racer and big-league drug trafficker under indictment in the US, to
arrange a meeting with contra rebels at her Miami home. Her aim was
to broker a deal to help the rebels financially. The rebels got an
ok from the CIA to accept airplanes and cash from the drug dealer
while still receiving CIA money under the table.
(SFC, 10/31/96,
p.A7)(www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9712/ch11p1.htm)
1984 Oct 2, Richard W. Miller
became the first FBI agent to be arrested and charged with
espionage. Miller was tried three times; he was sentenced to 20
years in prison, but was released after nine years.
(AP, 10/2/04)
1984 Oct 15, The Central
Intelligence Agency's Freedom of Information Act was signed into law
by Pres. Reagan.
(www.asne.org/index.cfm?ID=453)
1984 Nov, The CIA told the US
Congress in 1987 that it had concluded in Nov., 1984, that it could
not resume aid to the Costa Rican-based Contras because "everybody
around Pastora was involved in cocaine."
(SFC, 10/31/96, p.A7)
1985 Mar 6, Mexican authorities
found the body of US drug agent Enrique C. Salazar.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1985 May 20, FBI arrested John
A. Walker. US Navy Chief Petty Officer Walker began spying for the
Soviet Union in 1968 for $1,000 per week. Walker’s ex-wife turned
him into the FBI.
(www.dss.mil/training/espionage/1985.htm)
1985 Jun 3, Jerry A. Whitworth
was arrested by the FBI, accused of being part of a spy ring headed
by John A. Walker Jr. Whitworth was later sentenced to 365 years in
prison.
(AP, 6/3/05)
1985 Mar 8, In Lebanon a
massive car bomb killed 80 people. It targeted Grand Ayatollah
Sayyed Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, but he escaped injury. Reporter
Bob Woodward later wrote that CIA director William Casey, while
lying on his deathbed, admitted personal culpability in the attack,
which he suggests was carried out with funding from Saudi Arabia.
(Econ, 7/10/10,
p.48)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Beirut_car_bombing)
1985 Aug 9, A federal judge in
Norfolk, Va., found retired Navy officer Arthur J. Walker, brother
of John A. Walker Jr., guilty of 7 counts of spying for the Soviet
Union.
(AP, 8/9/97)
1985 Sep 6, Tscherim Soobzokov
(b.1924), a former Waffen SS soldier, was killed by a bomb at his
home in Patterson, NJ. In 2006, declassified documents of the
Central Intelligence Agency confirmed that Soobzokov had been a CIA
agent in Jordan and that the agency had misled the United States
Immigration and Naturalization Service on Soobzokov's Nazi past.
(SSFC, 11/14/10,
p.A18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tscherim_Soobzokov)
1985 Oct 28, The leader of the
so-called "Walker family spy ring," John A. Walker Jr., pleaded
guilty to giving U-S Navy secrets to the Soviet Union.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1985 Sep, Edward Lee Howard,
CIA officer, vanished from Santa Fe, NM. He fled the US to Russia
while under FBI investigation for spying for the Soviet Union. He
was accused of disclosing CIA agents in Moscow. Howard died in 2002
of a broken neck from an accident at his residence outside Moscow.
In 1995 Howard’s memoir "Safe House" was ghost written by Richard
Cote.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)(SFC, 7/22/02, p.A6)
1985 Oct 7, The United States
announced it would no longer automatically comply with World Court
decisions. This was in response to a June 25, 1985, World Court
ruling that U.S. involvement in Nicaragua violated international
law. The ruling stemmed from a suit brought in April 1984 after
revelations that the CIA had directed the mining of Nicaraguan
ports. The U.S. later vetoed two U.N. resolutions calling for
compliance to the World Court ruling.
(HNQ, 6/9/99)
1985 Nov 23, Retired CIA
analyst Larry Wu-tai Chin was arrested and accused of spying for
China. He committed suicide a year after his conviction.
(AP, 11/23/97)
1985 Four off-duty US Marines
and 9 others were killed at sidewalk restaurants in the Zona Rosa
section of San Salvador. Pedro Antonio Andrade Martinez (aka Mario
Gonzalez), a Marxist guerrilla, was one of the reputed masterminds
of the massacre. Andrade later became an informant for the CIA and
sought US asylum. Andrade was deported from the US in 1997.
(SFC, 11/22/96, p.A21)(SFC,11/6/97, p.C3)
1985 American CIA clerk in
Ghana Sharon Scranage pleaded guilty to disclosing the names of US
agents to her Ghanaian boyfriend. She was prosecuted under a 1982
federal law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)(LAT, 7/15/05)
1985 The American CIA rewrote
its 1983 training manual for security forces after public uproar
over another manual that taught Nicaraguan contra rebels about
neutralizing enemies and holding demonstrations that could provoke
violence.
(SFC, 1/28/97, p.A3)
1985-1986 Celerino Castillo III, a US agent for
the DEA, reported Contra drug flights from Nicaragua to the US to US
Embassy officials. His testimony in 1996 followed reports that the
CIA was involved in smuggling drugs to southern California with the
proceeds going to support Contra forces at war with the Sandinista
government.
(SFC, 9/24/96, p.A7)
1985-1994 Aldrich H. Ames, a CIA
counterintelligence official, passed over this time information to
the Soviet Union that included the names of US agents. The deaths of
at least 9 agents were blamed on his disclosures. In 1994 Ames and
his wife, Rosario, pleaded guilty to spying for the Soviet Union.
(SFC, 11/19/96, p.A17)
1986 Feb 19, Barry Seal
(b.1939), gunrunner, drug trafficker, and covert CIA operative
extraordinaire, was murdered in a hail of bullets by Medellin cartel
hit men outside a Salvation Army shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He had testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and
Miami for the US government against leaders of the Medellin drug
cartel.
(www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/crimesOfMena.html)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Seal)
1986 Jul 11, President Ronald
Reagan placed the Contras, who were fighting the government of
Nicaragua, under CIA jurisdiction.
(HN, 7/11/98)
1986 Jul 14, Richard W. Miller
became the 1st FBI agent convicted of espionage.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1986 Peter Mass authored
“Manhunt,” the story of Edwin Wilson (1928-2012). Wilson had worked
for the CIA but was arrested in 1982 for selling 20 tons of
explosives to Libya. He was sentenced to 52 years in prison for
smuggling arms and plotting to murder his wife.
(SSFC, 9/23/12, p.C10)
1986 Osama bin Laden began
building a tunnel complex under mountains in Afghanistan near
Pakistan as part of a CIA-funded project.
(SSFC, 5/9/04, p.M6)
1987 Apr 15, A jury in
Northampton, Mass., found Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 other
protesters innocent of charges stemming from a demonstration against
CIA recruiters at the University of Massachusetts.
(AP, 4/15/97)
1989 May 5, A federal judge
ordered sweeping changes in the FBI's promotion system, months after
the judge found that the bureau had systematically discriminated
against its Hispanic employees in advancements and assignments.
(AP, 5/5/99)
1987 May 6, William J. Casey,
CIA Director (1981-1987), died at age 74.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1987 Jul 10, Lt. Col. Oliver
North told the Iran-Contra committees that the late CIA director
William J. Casey had embraced a fund created by arms sales to Iran
because it could be used for secret operations other than supplying
the Contras.
(AP, 7/10/97)
1990 May 24, Darryl Cherney and
Judi Bari (11/7/49-3/2/97), environmental activists in the Earth
First! movement, were injured after a pipe bomb exploded in their
car as they drove through Oakland, Ca. They were arrested while in
the hospital on charges of transporting a bomb but the charges were
never filed. They later filed a suit against the FBI and Oakland
police for false arrest, illegal search and seizure and conspiracy
to violate free-speech rights. Bari died of liver cancer in 1997. In
2002 a jury awarded $2.9 million to Bari’s estate and $1.5 million
to Cherney saying the FBI had framed them as eco-terrorists. In 2004
the government settled civil suits for $2 million.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.C2)(SFC,10/21/97, p.A20)(SFC,
6/12/02, p.A1)(SFC, 4/23/04, p.B1)
1990 Nov 3, The Kryptos
sculpture, created by sculptor Jim Sanborn, was dedicated in the
courtyard of the CIA headquarters in Virginia.
(SSFC, 11/21/10,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos)
1991 May 8, CIA Director
William H. Webster announced his retirement; he was eventually
succeeded by Robert Gates.
(AP, 5/8/01)
1991 The president of Rochester
Inst. of Technology (RIT) resigned following a scandal over CIA
influence on research and curriculum, and his own work for the
agency.
(WSJ, 10/4/02, p.A1)
1993 Jan 23, FBI Director
William S. Sessions dismissed a Justice Department report accusing
him of ethical abuses, accusing former Attorney General William P.
Barr of a "crassly calculated attack."
(AP, 1/23/98)
1993 Jul 18, FBI Director
William Sessions continued to resist White House suggestions he step
down, saying he would resign only if President Clinton asked him to.
Sessions was fired by Clinton the next day.
(AP, 7/18/03)
1993 Aug 6, Louis Freeh won US
Senate confirmation to be director of the FBI.
(AP, 8/6/98)
1993 Aug 8, Freddie Woodruff
(b.1947), CIA agent chief in Tbilisi, Georgia, was shot and killed
during an outing with friends. Georgian authorities charged Anzor
Sharmaidze (20), a volunteer soldier, with the murder. Sharmaidze
confessed under torture and later said he was framed for the murder.
In 2008 Sharmaidze was granted parole from prison.
(WSJ, 10/18/08,
p.A1)(http://public.cq.com/docs/hs/hsnews110-000002604568.html)(WSJ,
10/27/08, p.a12)
1993 Sep 1, Louis Freeh was
sworn in as director of the FBI.
(AP, 9/1/99)
1994 Jun 4, Gregory Scarpa,
nicknamed The Grim Reaper, died in a Minnesota prison. He was a
soldier for the Colombo crime family and an informant for the FBI.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Scarpa_Sr.)
1994 Sep 11, Anthony Marceca
visited Craig Livingstone at the White House and secretly perused
his own personal FBI file. He obtained the names of 2 women, Lanny
Stephenson and Joyce L. Montag, who had provided the FBI background
information and sued them for slander.
(WSJ, 6/28/96,
p.A9)(www.judicialwatch.org/archive/ois/cases/filegate/SubCertBrief.htm)
1994 Dec 23, John Connolly, FBI
agent, came to the Winter Hill gang’s headquarters in a Boston
liquor store and warned Kevin Weeks of pending FBI arrests for
mobsters James Bulger, Stephen Flemmi and Francis Salemme. Connolly
was convicted for corruption in 2002 and sentenced to 121 months.
(SFC, 5/29/02, p.A3)(SFC, 9/17/02, p.A5)
1994 David Corn authored “Blond
Ghost,” a biography of former CIA chief Theodore Shackley.
(SSFC, 9/23/12, p.C10)
1995 Jan 5, A warrant was
issued for the arrest of James “Whitey” Bulger (b.1929), top mobster
of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang. He had disappeared with his girlfriend
just days before the warrant was issued. Bulger was linked to 21
murders and in 2000 became a fixture on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted”
list. In 2007 Kevin Weeks authored “Brutal: The Untold Story Of My
Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob.”
(http://tinyurl.com/2c8u37f)(SSFC, 1/30/05,
p.A13)(http://tinyurl.com/29unfq4)
1995 Mar 11, President Clinton
nominated Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch to be CIA director.
(AP, 3/11/00)
1995 Apr 20, In the aftermath
of the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI announced it was looking for
two men suspected of renting the truck used to carry the explosive;
rescue teams suspended the search for survivors so that the
remaining structure of the Alfred P. Murrah Building could be shored
up.
(AP, 4/20/00)
1995 Jul 14, Under pressure
from Congress, FBI Director Louis Freeh removed his friend Larry
Potts as the bureau’s deputy director because of controversy over
Potts’ role in a deadly 1992 FBI siege in Idaho.
(AP, 7/14/00)
1995 Aug 22, FBI agent Lon
Horiuchi shot at Randy Weaver's cabin in Idaho.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1995 Sep 13, The FBI made at
least a dozen arrests, capping a nationwide two-year investigation
of pedophiles and pornographers using the America Online computer
network.
(AP, 9/13/00)
1996 Feb 23, FBI agents
arrested Robert Lipka, a former army clerk at the National Security
Agency, for espionage in the late 1960s.
(WSJ, 11/21/96, p.A1)
1996 Apr 3, FBI agents arrested
a suspect thought to be the Unabomber. Theodore John Kaczynski was
arrested near Lincoln, Montana on a tip from his brother. His mail
bombs had killed 3 and injured 23 over the last 17 years. An
original draft of his manifesto "Industrial Society and Its Future"
was found some days later.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-1)(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-1)(AP,
4/3/97)
1996 Apr 27, William Egan Colby
(76), CIA Director, died. In 2003 John Prados authored "Lost
Crusador," a biography of Colby.
(MC, 4/27/02)(WSJ, 6/5/03, p.D8)
1996 May 5, The FBI released
preliminary figures showing that serious crimes reported to police
fell for the fourth straight year in 1995.
(AP, 5/5/97)
1996 May 6, The body of former
CIA director William E. Colby was found on a riverbank near his
southern Maryland vacation home, eight days after he'd disappeared.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1996 May 24, The Pleasant Hill
Baptist Church in Lumberton, N.C., burned down. Arson was suspected
and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Robert Gates (b.1943),
former director of the CIA (1991-1993), authored his autobiography
“From the Shadows.”
(Econ, 8/8/09,
p.29)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates)
1996 The CIA obtained an
al-Qaida training manual that suggested a 10-position leadership
structure for members held in prison. In 2006 a report was made
public that said prisoners at Guantanamo followed this structure.
(SFC, 7/20/06, p.A12)
1997 Mar 10, The White House
and the FBI clashed in a rare public quarrel after President Clinton
said he should have been alerted when the bureau told national
security officials that the Chinese government might be trying to
influence U.S. elections.
(AP, 3/10/98)
1997 Apr 9, The CIA announced
that its own errors may have led to demolition of an Iraqi
ammunition bunker filled with chemical weapons at Kamisiyah in 1991.
The CIA apologized to Gulf War veterans for failing to do a better
job in supplying information to U.S. troops who blew up an Iraqi
bunker later found to contain chemical weapons.
(SFC, 4/10/97, p.A1)(AP, 4/9/98)
1997 Jun 5, Harold J.
Nicholson, the highest-ranking CIA officer ever caught spying
against his own country, was sentenced to 23 1/2 years in prison for
selling defense secrets to Russia after the Cold War. Officials
later claimed that he and his son continued to make contact with
Russian operatives. In 2009 Nicholson and his son were arraigned on
charges of money laundering and acting as agents of a foreign
government.
(AP, 6/5/98)(WSJ, 1/30/08, p.A3)
1997 Jul 16, Hundreds of FBI
agents, some handing out photos in gay bars and hotels, blanketed
south Florida in the continuing hunt for alleged
prostitute-turned-serial killer Andrew Phillip Cunanan, who was
suspected of killing designer Gianni Versace.
(AP, 7/16/98)
1997 Aug 15, The Justice
Department decided not to prosecute senior FBI officials in
connection with an alleged cover-up that followed the deadly 1992
Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho.
(AP, 8/15/98)
1997 Aug 27, A secret CIA
report acknowledged that the CIA knew of human rights abuses by the
Honduran military in the 1980s. It was declassified in 1998.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A3)
1997 The FBI began Operation
Black Widow to infiltrate the Nuestra Familia gang. This led to
indictments of 22 members in 2001.
(SFC, 11/29/03, p.A15)
1998 Jan 23, A judge in
Fairfax, Va., sentenced Mir Aimal Kasi to death for an assault rifle
attack outside CIA headquarters in 1993 that killed two men and
wounded three other people. Kasi was executed November 2002.
(AP, 1/23/03)
1998 Feb 27, FBI arrested
suspected serial killer Tony Ray Amati, their 10th most wanted.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1998 Mar 20, George Tenet,
director of the CIA, disclosed that $26.7 billion was the 1998
budget secret intelligence activities, one-tenth the overall US
military budget.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A4)
1998 Apr 3, Douglas Fred Groat,
a disgruntled spy fired by the CIA, was charged with espionage and
extortion. Groat later pleaded guilty to extortion, and was
sentenced to five years in prison.
(AP, 4/3/03)
1999 May 16, The Justice
Department said preliminary figures from the FBI indicated a decline
in serious crime in 1998 for the seventh consecutive year.
(AP, 5/16/00)
1999 Aug 20, In a highly
unusual move, the CIA pulled the security clearances for former
Director John Deutch for keeping secret files on an unsecured home
computer.
(AP, 8/20/00)
1999 Aug 25, The FBI, reversing
itself after six years, admitted that its agents might have fired
some potentially flammable tear gas canisters on the final day of
the 1993 standoff with the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, but
said it continued to believe law enforcement agents did not start
the fire which engulfed the cult’s compound.
(AP, 8/25/00)
1999 Aug 26, Attorney General
Janet Reno pledged that a new investigation of the 1993 Waco, Texas,
siege would "get to the bottom" of how the FBI used potentially
flammable tear gas grenades against her wishes and then took six
years to admit it.
(AP, 8/26/00)
1999 Sep 1, Attorney General
Janet Reno ordered US marshals to FBI headquarters to seize an
infrared videotape containing a recording of FBI communications made
during the 1993 FBI assault of the Branch Davidian sect in Waco,
Texas. FBI officials had stated that no tape of that stage of the
operation existed.
(SFC, 9/2/99, p.A3)(SFC, 9/3/99, p.A3)
1999 Gary Webb (1955-2004), San
Jose news reported, authored “Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras,
and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.”
(SFC, 12/13/04, p.B3)
1999 The FBI helped launch the
1st Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL) to support
federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies. By 2005 there
were 6 such labs.
(Econ, 3/12/05, TQ p.32)
2000 Apr 8, The Central
Intelligence Agency confirmed that personnel action had been taken
following the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy during the
NATO war against Yugoslavia; one employee was reportedly fired.
(AP, 4/8/01)
2000 Apr, The FBI issued an
alert to American agencies warning of a possible al Qaeda attack. It
was based on allegations by Niaz Khan, a Briton of Pakistani descent
who turned himself in to US authorities.
(WSJ, 6/7/04, p.A8)
2003 The US CIA paid $15
million to Polish intelligence or use of a secret prison site,
handing over the cash in two cardboard boxes. This only became
public in 2014 when the Washington Post cited former CIA officers
regarding the ‘black site.”
(AP, 1/24/14)
2001 Jan 5, In 2007 it was
reported that a French intelligence document dated to this day
warned that al-Qaida was at work on a hijacking plot. The
information was passed on to the CIA. Documents on Osama bin Laden's
terror network were drawn up by the French spy service, the DGSE,
between July 2000 and October 2001.
(AP, 4/16/07)
2001 Feb 18, Robert Philip
Hanssen (56), senior FBI agent, was arrested for spying. He had
allegedly passed information to the Russians for 15 years. It was
believed that he had betrayed the construction of a tunnel under the
Soviet Embassy in Washington. He pleaded guilty July 3 to avoid
execution. His disclosures were later reported to have played a role
in the execution or jailing of at least 3 Russians and threatened
the identity of another 50 people. In 2002 David A. Wise authored:
"The Bureau and the Mole." Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison
on May 10, 2002.
(SFC, 2/21/01, p.A1)(SSFC, 3/4/01, p.A6)(SFC,
7/4/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/8/02, p.A16)(AP, 2/18/02)(SSFC, 4/7/02,
p.A14)(SFC, 5/11/02, p.A3)
2001 Mar 23, It was reported
that the Bush administration had removed the CIA as a broker between
Israeli and Palestinian security services.
(SFC, 3/23/01, p.D4)
2001 Apr, Mr. Behrooz Sarshar,
in his position as FBI interpreter/translator, attended a meeting
between a long-term, reliable FBI asset and two additional FBI
agents from the Washington Field Office. That FBI asset told the two
FBI agents that his sources in Afghanistan had information of an
al-Qaeda plot to attack America in a suicide mission involving
planes.
(http://impudicus.wordpress.com/)
2001 May 14, The FBI found in
Baltimore another batch of undisclosed records on Timothy McVeigh.
(SFC, 5/15/01, p.A1)
2001 May 16, Former FBI agent
Robert Hanssen was indicted on charges of spying for Moscow. Hanssen
later pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and was sentenced to
life in prison without parole.
(AP, 5/16/02)
2001 Jul 5, Kenneth Williams,
an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona, wrote to bureau headquarters that
al Qaeda could be sending terrorists to train as student pilots. He
urged the investigation of Middle Eastern men enrolled in American
flight schools. [see Jul 10]
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.A19)(SFC, 5/22/02, p.A18)
2001 Jul 10, George Tenet,
director of the CIA, allegedly met with Condoleeza Rice and warned
her of an imminent al-Qaida attack. News of the meeting was only
made public in 2006.
(SFC, 10/2/06, p.A4)
2001 Jul 17, John Ashcroft, US
Attorney Gen’l. reported that 184 FBI laptops and nearly 450 guns
were stolen or lost over the last decade.
(SFC, 7/18/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 16, Zacarias Moussaoui
(33), a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was arrested in Eagan,
Minnesota, on immigration charges. He was taking lessons on flying
Boeing jets with no interest in taking off or landing. He was later
suspected as a 5th member of one of the Sep 11 WTC attack teams. In
Nov the FBI reported that Moussaoui wanted to learn how to take off
and land but not to fly. Mueller also said Ramzi Omar of Yemen, aka
Ramsi Binalshibh, may have been the 20th hijacker. The local FBI
contacted the CIA for action on Moussaoui when FBI managers failed
to take action. Agent Coleen Rowley later charged that senior
officials fumbled an opportunity to possibly prevent the Sep 11
terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 11/8/01, p.A7)(SFC, 11/15/01, p.A12)(WSJ,
2/4/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/24/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/25/02, p.A1)(SFC, 6/6/02,
p.A14)
2001 Aug 23, Brian Regan (38),
retired US Air Force master sergeant and cryptanalyst, was arrested
by the FBI at Dulles Int’l. Airport on charges of spying. In 2002
Regan was accused of trying to spy for Iraq, Libya and China. On
February 20, 2003, Regan was found guilty of three charges of
attempted espionage including two counts of attempted espionage
related to attempts to sell information to Iraq and China, and one
count of gathering national defense information. He was acquitted of
attempting to provide US secrets to Libya. On March 20, 2003, Regan
was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(http://cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Regan_1.htm)(SFC, 8/29/01,
p.A6)(WSJ, 2/15/02, p.A1)
2001 Sep 10, Attorney General
John Ashcroft rejected a proposed $58 million increase in FBI
financing for counter-terrorism programs.
(SFC, 6/1/02, p.A1)
2001 Oct 26, Pres. Bush signed
a sweeping anti-terrorism bill into law. It gave police and
intelligence agencies vast new powers to fight terrorism. The USA
Patriot Act included Section 215 that gave the FBI authority to
obtain library and bookstore records without evidence of wrongdoing.
(SFC, 10/27/01, p.A3,6)(SSFC, 6/23/02, p.A5)
2001 The FBI tracked 8,322 US
bank robberies this year, up 17% from 2000.
(WSJ, 10/8/02, p.A1)
2001-2002 The US Navy Engineering Logistics Office
issued at least 10 classified contracts to US aviation companies to
fly terror suspects to countries known to practice torture. The CIA
also played a role in the operations.
(SSFC, 9/25/05, A4)
2002 Feb, Joseph C. Wilson IV,
former US diplomat and veteran of the diplomatic wars of Iraq and
Africa, was sent on a secret mission to Niger to determine if Iraqis
had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Africa to build
nuclear weapons. Wilson spent a week in Niger chatting with locals
about the allegation, coming to the conclusion that the yellowcake
charges were probably unfounded. His wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA
operative.
(WP, 7/17/05)(WSJ, 7/18/05, p.A4)
2002 Mar 18, The FBI "Operation
Candyman" snared over 90 people following a 14-month investigation
of child pornography over the Internet.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A3)
2002 Mar, In Cuba Anthony
Boadle began working as Reuters' bureau chief and continued through
2008. He published reports favoring local counterrevolutionaries and
the interests of the United States and the European Union. In 2011
Cuban state-television accused Boadle of working as a CIA operative.
(AP, 4/5/11)
2002 May 29, FBI Director
Robert Mueller acknowledged that the bureau did not pursue "red
flags" in the weeks before Sep 11, and suggested for the first time
that investigators might have uncovered the plot if they had been
more diligent about pursuing leads. A reorganization plan for the
bureau was announced with a focus on terrorist attacks.
(SFC, 5/30/02, p.A1)(AP, 5/29/03)
2002 Jun 4, Pres. Bush said the
CIA and FBI had failed to communicate adequately before the Sept.
11, 2001, terror attacks; Congress began extraordinary closed-door
hearings into intelligence lapses.
(AP, 6/4/03)
2002 Jun 17, A converted C-130
air tanker crashed over a flaming ridge near Walker in Mono County,
Ca., and 3 crew members were killed. It was later reported that the
1956 plane had been used by the CIA and lacked maintenance records.
(SFC, 6/17/02, p.A1)(SFC, 1/7/03, p.A3)
2002 Sep 3, Louisiana State
Univ. fired Dr. Steven J. Hatfill after the Justice Dept. said the
school could not use him on grants funded by the agency. The firing
came following FBI investigations of Hatfill and naming him as a
"person of interest."
(SFC, 9/5/02, p.A6)(WSJ, 9/4/02, p.A1)
2002 Oct 22, Richards Helms
(89), CIA director who was fired by Richard Nixon, died. In 2003 his
autobiography "A Look Over My Shoulder," co-written with William
Hood, was published.
(WSJ, 10/24/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/5/03, p.D8)
2002 Oct 29, Gul Rahman,
suspected of links to al-Qaida, was picked up from a home in
Islamabad and taken with four other people to a CIA black site
called the Salt Pit near the Kabul Airport. He was stripped naked,
doused in cold water and then left to die in the CIA-run prison.
Rahman died Nov. 20, 2002, but his identity was not known until
revealed by an Associated Press investigation in March 2010.
(AP, 1/5/11)
2002 Nov 12, Former FBI
Director William Webster resigned under pressure as head of a
special accounting oversight board created by Congress to rebuild
public confidence shaken by a cascade of business scandals.
(AP, 11/12/03)
2002 Nov 21, Al-Qaida leader
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the network's chief of operations in the
Persian Gulf, was reported to have been captured earlier in the
month. The Saudi of Yemeni descent was captured in Dubai and flown
to a CIA prison in Afghanistan and then onto Thailand where he was
waterboarded and interrogated. He had allegedly planned the Oct 12,
2000, attack on the US Navy destroyer Cole.
(AP, 11/21/02)(SFC, 9/29/11, p.A2)
2003 Feb 17, American CIA
operatives snatched Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (Abu
Omar) from his house in Milan and took him to Egypt, where he was
jailed, tortured and released. In 2005 an Italian judge ordered the
arrest of 13 American suspects on charges of kidnapping. In 2009
Nasr asked for euro10 million (nearly $15 million) in damages from
the American and Italian defendants charged in his abduction.
(Econ, 7/2/05, p.48)(AP, 10/7/09)(SFC, 10/8/09,
p.A2)
2003 Mar 2, Iraq crushed
another six Al Samoud II missiles, as ordered by UN weapons
inspectors. Iraqi scientist Mahmud Faraj Bilal al-Samarrai,
implicated in Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
surrendered to the CIA. He was freed in 2012.
(AP, 3/2/08)(AFP, 4/15/12)
2003 May 8, A federal grand
jury indicted Chinese-born California socialite Katrina Leung on
charges that she'd illegally taken, copied and kept secret documents
obtained from an FBI agent. A federal judge later dismissed the case
against Leung, rebuking prosecutors for misconduct.
(AP, 5/8/08)
2003 Mar 19, EU officials found
electronic bugs in a building in Brussels where a summit was set to
open the next day. Belgian police suspected the US.
(WSJ, 1/20/02, p.A1)
2003 Apr 9, James Smith (59), a
senior FBI counterintelligence agent, was arrested in LA along with
Katrina Leung (49), prominent venture capitalist, for the alleged
theft and transfer of a classified defense document to the Chinese
government. In 2004 Smith pleaded guilty failing to disclose his
2-year sexual relationship with Leung.
(SFC, 4/10/03, p.A9)(NW, 4/21/03, p.6)(SFC,
5/13/04, p.A3)
2003 Jun 23, Judith Miller,
reporter for the NY Times, met with Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of
staff for VP Dick Cheney, who gave her information about CIA
operative Valery Plame. Reporter Bob Woodward also spoke with Libby
on this day and on June 27 and in 2005 testified that Libby made no
mention of Plame. Woodward did say another senior government
official told him about Plame and her role in the CIA in mid-June.
(SFC, 10/22/05, p.A3)(SFC, 11/17/05, p.A3)(WSJ,
11/17/05, p.A5)
2003 Jul 6, Joseph Wilson,
former American ambassador, alleged that Pres. Bush had falsely
accused Iraq of trying to buy uranium from Niger. Two White House
officials soon called at least 6 Washington journalists and told
them that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA agent
who had worked in Niger. [see Jul 14]
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.28)(SFC, 7/16/05, p.A4)
2003 Jul 9, Karl Rove, senior
advisor to Pres. Bush, spoke with syndicated columnist Robert Novak
about diplomat Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. About this
same time Rove also spoke with Matthew Cooper, Time’s White House
correspondent, and mentioned Wilson and Plame. In 2006 Novak
acknowledged that 3 administration sources, including Rove and CIA
spokesman Bill Harlow, had provided him information.
(SFC, 7/16/05, p.A4)(SFC, 12/12/05, p.A3)(SFC,
7/12/06, p.A3)
2003 Jul 11, CIA Director
George Tenet took blame for Pres. Bush's State of the Union
discredited claim that uranium from Africa had been shipped to Iraq.
(SFC, 7/18/03, p.A14)
2003 Aug 12, The FBI arrested
Hemant Lakhani, an Indian-born British arms dealer, in a sting
operation in New Jersey and foiled a contrived plot aimed at
smuggling a shoulder-fired missile for some $80,000 to US-based
terrorists. It involved cooperation between the intelligence
services of the US and Russia.
(AP, 8/13/03)(WSJ, 8/13/03, p.A1)(SFC, 8/14/03,
p.A3)
2003 Sep 29, US The Justice
Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who
leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of
ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and President Bush the next day
directed his White House staff to cooperate fully.
(AP, 9/30/03)(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(SFC, 10/4/03,
p.A3)
2003 Sep 30, The FBI began a
full-scale criminal investigation into whether White House officials
had illegally leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie
Plame.
(AP, 9/30/08)
2003 Oct 25, In Afghanistan CIA
operatives William Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, N.C., and
Christopher Glenn Mueller, 32, of San Diego were ambushed and killed
near the village in Shkin in Paktika province while "tracking
terrorists."
(AP, 10/29/03)
2003 Oct, Donald Rumsfeld
approved a CIA request to hold a suspected Iraqi terrorist in secret
and shield his detention from the Red Cross.
(WSJ, 6/17/04, p.A1)
2003 Dec 31, Security forces
boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named
Khaled el-Masri (b.1963). For the next five months, el-Masri was a
ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked
to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan. He was the
wrong guy. El-Masri was dumped in Albania in a remote hillside on
May 28, 2004, without explanation or apology. Five months later
Germany withdrew warrants for the arrest of 13 CIA agents. In 2012
el-Masri took his case to Europe’s human rights court.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri)(AP, 2/9/11)(SSFC,
3/6/11, p.F6)(SFC, 5/17/12, p.A4)
2003 Dec, Dennis Montgomery, a
California computer programmer, reported that hidden in the crawl
bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about
specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that
were hijacking targets. CIA officials rushed the information to
Pres. Bush, who ordered those flights to be turned around or
grounded before they could enter American airspace. Montgomery had
patented computer codes that he claimed could find terrorist plots
hidden in broadcasts of Al Jazeera. His codes were later believed to
be fake. In 2011 Montgomery faced charges of trying to pass $1.8
million in bad checks at Las Vegas casinos.
(SSFC, 2/20/11, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/5rur55y)
2004 Jan 28, David Kay, former
head of the CIA's weapons search team in Iraq, told Congress no
weapons of mass destruction had been found and that prewar
intelligence was "almost all wrong." In 2007 Bob Drogin authored
“Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War.”
Curveball was the code name for an Iraqi chemical engineer who
turned up in Germany in 1999 and served as the source for Iraq’s
chemical and biological weapons pro-grams. In 2011 Rafid Ahmed Alwan
al-Janabi, identified as the informer called "Curveball," said he is
proud that he lied about his country developing mobile biological
warfare labs.
(SSFC, 4/11/04, p.A22)(WSJ, 10/13/07, p.W8)(Econ,
11/3/07, p.100)(AP, 2/16/11)
2004 Feb 12, Behrooz Sarshar,
an Iranian emigre in his mid-sixties and former FBI translator,
stated he was forced to retire from the FBI (in November 2002) after
a two-and-a-half year OPR investigation in which he was accused of
talking about FBI matters with non-FBI people.
(http://cryptome.org/nara/behrooz-sarshar.pdf)
2004 Mar 12, An FBI proposal
was made public to require all broadband Internet providers to
support easy wiretapping.
(SFC, 3/13/04, p.C2)
2004 May 6, The US FBI, using
fingerprint evidence, arrested Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield as
part of the investigation into the Madrid, Spain, train bombings.
The bureau later said Mayfield's arrest had been a mistake, and
apologized. In 2006 the US government agreed to pay Mayfield $2
million to settle a lawsuit.
(AP, 5/6/05)(SFC, 11/30/06, p.A7)
2004 May 26, The FBI issued an
alert warning of a possible major terrorist attack in the US this
summer. Photos of 7 suspects were released.
(SFC, 5/26/04, p.A1)(SFC, 5/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar, The US CIA worked
closely with Moammar Gadhafi's intelligence services in the
rendition of terror suspects to Libya for interrogation as revealed
by documents uncovered in 2011. The documents appear to be American
correspondence to Libyan officials to arrange for the rendition of
Abdel-Hakim Belhaj (nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq), a leader of
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) with links to al-Qaida.
Belhadj later claimed to have been tortured by CIA agents at a
secret prison, then returned to Libya. Belhaj was detained in
Thailand and transferred to Tripoli, where he spent years in prison.
In 2013 he sued the British government over its alleged role in his
detention and rendition offered to settle for 3 pounds ($4.50) and
an apology.
(AP, 9/3/11)(Econ, 9/10/11, p.62)(AP, 3/4/13)
2004 Jun 3, Pres. Bush said CIA
Director George Tenet, has resigned for personal reasons.
(AP, 6/3/04)
2004 Jun 3, FBI Director Robert
Mueller proposed the creation of an intelligence service within the
FBI with clear authority over all FBI activities.
(SFC, 6/4/04, A5)
2004 Aug 10, Pres. Bush
nominated Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican congressman, to head
the CIA. Goss spent most of his career as a clandestine operative in
Latin America.
(AP, 8/11/04)(WSJ, 8/11/04, p.A1)
2004 Nov 4, John H. Waller
(b.1923), CIA official and historian, died. His books included
“Beyond the Khyber Pass: The Road to British Disaster in the First
Afghan War” (1990).
(SSFC, 11/7/04, p.A23)
2004 Nov 12, John McLaughlin,
deputy director of the CIA, resigned after a series of
confrontations over the past week between senior operations
officials and Patrick Murray, the CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new
chief of staff. The riff left the agency in turmoil.
(SFC, 11/13/04, p.A6)
2004 Nov 15, Top CIA officials,
Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick announced their resignations after
reported disputes with new Director Peter J. Goss.
(SFC, 11/16/04, p.A1)
2004 Dec 8, The US Senate
approved an intelligence restructure bill. The legislation called
for a new director of national intelligence.
(SFC, 12/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Victor Cherkashin, former
KGB chief at the Soviet embassy in Washington, authored “Spy
Handler: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and
Aldrich Ames.”
(WSJ, 12/30/04, p.D8)
2004 Richard Gid Powers
authored “Broken: The Troubled Past and Uncertain Future of the
FBI.”
(WSJ, 10/27/04, p.A1)
2004 The CIA hired Blackwater
USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top
operatives of Al-Qaida. Blackwater of North Carolina, later renamed
Xe Services, helped with planning, training and surveillance until
the unsuccessful program was cancelled.
(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A2)
2005 Jan 14, The US Justice
Department's Office of the Inspector General released an
unclassified summary of its investigation into the March, 2002,
termination of Sibel Edmonds. She had discovered and reported
several problems inside the FBI, including shoddy translation work,
a large backlog of untranslated documents and employees with
questionable alliances. The report concluded that Edmonds was fired
for reporting serious security breaches and misconduct in the
agency's translation program, and that many of her allegations were
supported.
(www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel05/011405.htm)
2005 Jan 19, It was reported
that the FBI had shelved its surveillance technology, once know as
Carnivore and later renamed DCS-1000, and switched to unspecified
commercial software to eavesdrop on computer traffic.
(SFC, 1/19/05, p.A3)
2005 Jan 24, Jeffrey Royer,
former FBI agent, and Anthony Elgindy, Internet penny stock advisor,
were convicted for mining government computers for confidential
information to manipulate stocks.
(SFC, 1/25/05, p.E3)
2005 Jan, Lindsay Moran
authored “Blowing My Cover: My Life As a CIA Spy.”
(WSJ, 2/4/05, p.W12)
2005 Jun 30, Time editor Norman
Pearlstein agreed to hand over notes relating to the CIA-leak probe.
The next day Lawrence O’Donnell broke the story that the e-mails
that Time turned over to the prosecutor that day reveal that Karl
Rove is the source Matt Cooper is protecting. [see Jul 14,
2003, Sep 29, 2003]
(WSJ, 7/1/05,
p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/83v7r)(SSFC, 7/3/05, p.A8)
2005 Jul 6, NY Times reporter
Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to name her CIA-leak source
(2003) for a never-written article on CIA officer Valerie Plame.
(WSJ, 7/6/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 20, A Milan prosecutor
sought arrest warrants for six more purported CIA operatives,
accusing them of helping plan the kidnapping of an Egyptian radical
Muslim cleric.
(AP, 7/20/05)
2005 Jul, Carlos Enrique
Perez-Melara, a student from El Salvador, was indicted for selling
spyware. He had created and sold an $89 program called Loverspy for
users to help catch cheating lovers. In 2013 Perez-Melara (33) was
added to the FBI’s most wanted cybercriminals list.
(SFC, 11/8/13, p.A16)
2005 Admiral Stansfield Turner,
former CIA chief (1977-1980) authored “Burn Before Reading,” an
examination of how American presidents have interacted with their
intelligence chiefs.
(WSJ, 10/11/05, p.D8)
2005 The US CIA destroyed at
least 2 videotapes documenting the interrogation of 2 al-Qaida
operatives, including Abu Zubaydah, dating back to 2002. CIA lawyers
had told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005 that the CIA did not
possess recordings of interrogations. The tapes were destroyed at
the order of Jose Rodriquez Jr., head of the CIA’s clandestine
service. In 2010 it was made public that Porter J. Goss, director of
the CIA at the time, approved the Rodriguez decision shortly after
the tapes were destroyed.
(SFC, 12/7/07, p.A6)(SFC, 4/16/10, p.A12)
2006 Apr 20, The CIA fired Mary
McCarthy, a top intelligence analyst, who admitted leaking
classified information about a network of secret CIA prisons. She
had provided information that contributed to a Washington Post story
last year disclosing secret US prisons in Eastern Europe.
(AP, 4/22/06)
2006 Apr 26, EU Parliament
investigators said the CIA has conducted more than 1,000 undeclared
flights over European territory since 2001, a clear violation of an
international treaty.
(AP, 4/26/06)
2006 May 30, US Air Force Gen.
Michael Hayden was sworn in as CIA director.
(AP, 5/30/07)
2006 Jun 7, Swiss senator Dick
Marty, the head of an investigation into alleged CIA clandestine
prisons, said 14 European nations colluded with US intelligence in a
"spider's web" of secret flights and detention centers that violated
international human rights law.
(AP, 6/7/06)
2006 Jun 22, In Florida FBI
agents arrested 7 people in the Liberty City area of Miami in
connection with a nascent plot to attack the Sears Tower and federal
buildings in south Florida. Narseal Batiste (32), the alleged
ringleader, called the group “Seas of David.” In 2009 five Miami men
were convicted of plotting to start an anti-government insurrection
by destroying Chicago's Sears Tower and bombing FBI offices. One man
was acquitted.
(SFC, 6/23/06, p.A10)(Econ, 7/1/06, p.26)(AP,
5/12/09)
2006 James Risen authored
“State of War.” One chapter recounted botched efforts by the CIA
during the Clinton administration to to trick Iranian scientists. In
2010 former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was accused of being
Risen’s source. Sterling was indicted on Espionage Act charges.
(SFC, 7/20/13, p.A6)
2007 Feb 13, Brent Wilkes, a
former CIA official, was indicted on corruption charges related to
ex-Congressman Randy Cunningham and defense contractors.
(SFC, 2/14/07, p.A3)
2007 Feb 13, David Passaro, a
former CIA contract employee, was sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison
for beating Afghan detainee Abdul Wali in July, 2003. Wali died 48
hours after interrogation.
(SFC, 2/14/07, p.A3)
2007 Feb 16, An Italian judge
indicted 26 Americans and five Italians in the abduction of an
Egyptian terror suspect on a Milan street in what would be the first
criminal trial stemming from the CIA's extraordinary rendition
program.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2007 Mar 8, In Iran Robert
Levinson, a retired FBI agent, disappeared from the island of Kish,
a free trade zone. Levinson retired from the FBI in 1998 and became
a private investigator. He was investigating cigarette smuggling in
early 2007, and his family has said that effort took him to Iran. In
2010 the AP confirmed Levinson’s ties to the CIA. In late 2010 his
family received proof that the father of seven was alive.
(AP, 3/4/11)(AFP, 3/4/11)(SFC, 12/14/13, p.A5)
2007 Mar 9, The top two US law
enforcement officials acknowledged the FBI broke the law to secretly
pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and
vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.
(AP, 3/10/07)
2007 Apr 3, An AP investigation
said CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn
of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19
countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for
torture and abuse.
(AP, 4/3/07)
2007 Jun 8, A European
investigator issued a report saying the CIA ran secret prisons in
Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 to interrogate detainees in the
war on terror.
(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 8, In Italy the first
trial involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program opened in
the absence of all 26 American defendants accused of kidnapping an
Egyptian terrorist suspect.
(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 27, A Swiss
investigator said European governments have built a "wall of
silence" surrounding their complicity with a CIA program that
included holding terrorist suspects in secret jails.
(AP, 6/27/07)
2007 Jul 19, A federal judge
dismissed a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame,
who was demanding money from Bush administration officials she
blamed for leaking her agency identity.
(AP, 7/19/08)
2007 Jul 24, Chinese officials
said the FBI and Chinese police have busted two software piracy
gangs and seized programs worth an estimated $500 million in a joint
campaign that began in 2005.
(AP, 7/24/07)
2007 Sep 6, FBI agents arrested
12 people, including 11 public officials, in New Jersey on charges
of taking bribes in exchange for influencing the awarding of public
contracts. Mims Hackett Jr., mayor of Orange, was among those
arrested.
(SFC, 9/7/07, p.A3)(WSJ, 5/27/08, p.A2)
2007 Oct 15, Ernest Withers
(b.1922), African American freelance photographer, died. In 2012 the
FBI admitted that had served as an informant, revealing a 14-year
history between the noted civil rights photographer and the agency.
(SFC, 7/5/12,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Withers)
2007 Nov 19, The FBI reported
hate crime incidents rose nearly 8 percent in 2006.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2007 Dec 7, US Congressional
Democrats demanded a full Justice Department investigation into
whether the CIA had obstructed justice by destroying videotapes
documenting the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.
(AP, 12/7/08)
2007 Dec 11, The US Senate
Intelligence Committee took closed-door testimony from CIA Director
Michael Hayden on how videotapes of terror suspect interrogations
were made, then destroyed.
(AP, 12/11/08)
2007 Joseph Dominick Pistone
(b.1939), alias Donnie Brasco, authored “Donnie Brasco: Unfinished
Business.” Pistone, a former FBI agent, worked undercover for six
years infiltrating the Bonanno family and to a lesser extent the
Colombo Family, branches of the Mafia in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Brasco)
2007 Tim Weiner authored
“Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.”
(WSJ, 1/14/07, p.P8)
2008 Jan 16, CIA analyst Tom
Donahue disclosed that criminals have been able to hack into
computer systems via the Internet and cut power to several cities
outside the US. He offered few specifics on what actually went
wrong.
(www.pcworld.com/article/id,141564-c,hackers/article.html)
2008 May 18, A Yemeni-American
on the FBI's Most Wanted list of terror suspects was jailed in Yemen
after an appeals court upheld his 10-year prison sentence. Jaber
Elbaneh has been accused of belonging to al-Qaida, convicted of
plots to attack oil installations in Yemen and of involvement in a
2002 attack on the French tanker Limburg off Yemen's coast that
killed one person. On November 8 Elbaneh’s sentence was cut to 5
years after winning an appeal.
(AP, 5/19/08)(AP, 11/8/08)
2008 May 30, In Florida 2
veteran police officers were charged with providing protection for
purported shipments of cocaine and stolen goods in what was actually
an undercover FBI operation.
(AP, 5/30/08)
2008 Aug, In Puerto Rico FBI
agents and police officers launched the late-night raid in the city
of Carolina to free a Dominican man. Police say kidnappers were
holding him in the trunk of a car and demanding $650,000 in ransom.
A Puerto Rican policeman was killed by “friendly fire” during the
gunbattle with kidnappers. In 2009 authorities charged FBI agent
Jared Hewitt with negligent homicide for shooting 12-year police
veteran Orlando Gonzalez Ortiz.
(AP, 8/7/09)
2008 Sep 17, A CIA
missile strike in South Waziristan killed 6 people as US Adm. Mike
Mullen assured Pakistan’s leaders that the US respects Pakistan’s
sovereignty.
(SFC, 9/19/08, p.A6)
2008 Sep 29, Kyle Dustin Foggo
(53), former executive director of the CIA, pleaded guilty to
defrauding the government. His guilty plea to a single charge wiped
out 27 additional counts. The case was linked to the corruption
scandal involving Randy Cunningham, former Republican congressman
from San Diego. In 2009 Foggo was sentenced to 37 months in prison.
(SFC, 9/30/08, p.A3)(SFC, 2/27/09, p.A5)
2008 Sep, From Algeria Andrew
Warren, a CIA station chief and a convert to Islam, was sent back to
the United States after two women came forward with charges of rape
after lacing their drinks with a drug.
(AP, 1/29/09)(SFC, 7/1/09, p.A4)
2008 Oct 2, The US FBI arrested
Puerto Rico Sen. Jorge de Castro Font (45) for providing political
favors in exchange for cash and services totaling roughly half a
million dollars. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on 31
criminal counts including bribery, wire fraud and money laundering.
(AP, 10/2/08)
2008 Oct 27, An FBI spokesman
said 642 arrests in 29 cities were made last week during a 3-day
sting operation, Operation Cross Country II, focusing on people who
forced teens into prostitution. 100 adults were arrested in the SF
Bay Area.
(SFC, 10/28/08, p.B1)
2008 Nov 19, An FBI agent was
shot and killed while serving a warrant at a home near Pittsburgh. A
roundup of drug suspects was happening in the greater Pittsburgh
area.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Dec 18, W. Mark Felt (95),
former FBI second-in-command, died. He revealed himself as "Deep
Throat" in 2005, 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the
Watergate scandal that toppled Pres. Nixon.
(AP, 12/19/08)
2008 John Diamond authored “The
CIA and the Culture of Failure: US Intelligence From the end of the
Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq.”
(SFC, 9/7/08, Books p.1)
2008 Hugh Wilford authored “The
Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America,” an account of the
CIA’s post war front groups.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.D8)
2009 Jan 5, Pres. Elect Obama
named William Panetta (70) to head the CIA.
(SFC, 1/6/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 23, The FBI said it
has rescued more than 45 suspected teenage prostitutes, some as
young as 13, in a nationwide 3-night sweep, Operation Cross Country,
to remove kids from the illegal sex trade and punish their accused
pimps.
(AP, 2/23/09)
2009 Mar 2, The Obama
administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets,
revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional
search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed
nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of
terror suspects.
(AP, 3/2/09)
2009 Mar 6, The CIA destroyed a
dozen videotapes of harsh interrogations of terror suspects,
according to documents filed in a lawsuit over the government's
treatment of detainees. The 12 tapes were part of a larger
collection of 92 videotapes of terror suspects that the CIA
destroyed. The extent of the tape destruction was disclosed through
a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the
government.
(AP, 3/7/09)
2009 Mar 11, Italy's highest
court sided with the government and threw out key evidence in an
alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect in Italy,
dealing a blow to the trial of 26 Americans charged in the case.
(AP, 3/11/09)
2009 Mar 15, Richard Masato
Aoki (b.1938), former Japanese-American FBI informant (1961-1977)
and early member of the Black Panthers (1967), died in Oakland, Ca.,
from complications relating to diabetes. He had given the Panthers
some of their first guns.
(SFC, 8/20/12,
p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/9g5u4zn)(SFC, 9/8/12, p.C2)
2009 Apr 2, In Puerto Rico FBI
agents and police arrested at least 35 suspects in an alleged drug
trafficking ring blamed for seven murders.
(AP, 4/2/09)
2009 Apr 9, FBI hostage
negotiators joined US Navy efforts to free an American ship captain
held captive on a lifeboat by Somali pirates. A US destroyer and a
spy plane kept close watch in the high-seas standoff near the Horn
of Africa.
(AP, 4/9/09)
2009 Apr 15, In Washington, DC,
the FBI arrested Walter Kendall Myers (72) and his wife, Gwendolyn
(71), for spying. For three decades, Myers and his wife had shuffled
secrets to their Cuban contacts. Kendall Myers first worked for the
State Department as a lecturer at the Foreign Service Institute and
later as a European analyst in the department's intelligence arm,
the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, from 2000 until his
retirement in October 2007. On Nov 20 Myers and his wife pleaded
guilty to serving as covert agents since 1979. Myers agreed to serve
life in prison and his wife agreed to serve 6-7½ years.
(AP, 6/6/09)(SFC, 11/21/09, p.A4)
2009 Apr 16, President Barack
Obama announced his decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who
used interrogation practices described by many as torture. He
condemned the aggressive techniques, including waterboarding,
shackling and stripping, used on terror suspects while promising not
to legally pursue the perpetrators.
(AP, 4/17/09)
2009 Jun 23, CIA director Leon
Panetta, learned of a nascent CIA counterterrorism program within
the CIA, terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting
with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of
the program and that it was canceled. Former Vice President Dick
Cheney had directed the CIA in 2001 not to inform Congress about the
nascent counterterrorism program, which developed plans to dispatch
small teams to kill senior Al-Qaida terrorists.
(AP, 7/12/09)(SFC, 7/14/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 23, In Illinois
Michael Finton (29) was arrested in Springfield after federal
officials said he attempted to detonate what he believed to be
explosives in a van in Springfield. The FBI had provided the decoy
devices.
(SFC, 9/26/09, p.A6)
2009 Oct 13, It was reported
that the FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on
millions of motorists comparing driver’s license photos with
pictures of convicts. The project in North Carolina had already
helped nab at least one suspect.
(SFC, 10/13/09, p.A6)
2009 Oct 19, American
scientists Stewart D. Nozette (52) of Chevy Chase, Md., was arrested
for attempted espionage after passing classified information to an
undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence operative. In
2011 Nozette pleaded guilty to espionage and agreed to a 13-year
prison term.
(SFC, 10/21/09, p.A5)(SFC, 9/8/11, p.A8)
2009 Oct 21, Lithuanian
lawmakers demanded an investigation into allegations that the CIA
had established a prison there for al-Qaida suspects. Leaders have
denied that Lithuania had hosted clandestine detention centers.
(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A2)
2009 Oct 27, The NY Times
reported that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been
getting regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency. The
paper said Ahmed Wali Karzai is a suspected player in Afghanistan's
opium trade and has been paid by the CIA over the past eight years
for services that included helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary
force that operates at the CIA's direction in and around the
southern city of Kandahar. Ahmed Wali Karzai denied reports that he
has received regular payments from the CIA for much of the past
eight years.
(Reuters, 10/28/09)(AP, 10/28/09)
2009 Oct 31, In Canada 2 men
sought by the FBI and linked to a Detroit Muslim leader killed by US
authorities were arrested in Windsor, Ontario. Mohammad Al-Sahli
(33) and Yassir Ali Kahn (30) were wanted by the FBI for conspiracy
to commit federal crimes.
(Reuters, 10/31/09)
2009 Nov 4, An Italian judge
found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty in the kidnapping of an
Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions
anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's
extraordinary renditions program. The Americans and Italian agents
were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as
Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S.
bases in Italy and Germany.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 5, Lithuania's
parliament voted to investigate allegations that the Baltic state
hosted a secret CIA prison for al Qaeda suspects.
(Reuters, 11/5/09)
2009 Dec 4, The New York Times
reported that the White House has authorized the CIA to expand the
use of unmanned aerial drones in Pakistan to track down and strike
suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members.
(AFP, 12/4/09)
2009 Dec 22, Lithuania said it
may have hosted two 'war on terror' lock-ups used by American agents
to interrogate suspected Al-Qaeda members. Arvydas Anusauskas, the
head of an inquiry commission, said the first project was developed
from 2002 and that a 2nd site was created in 2004. The probe found
that five CIA-linked aircraft landed on Lithuanian soil from 2003 to
2006. Two touched down in Vilnius on February 3, 2003, and October
6, 2005. In the second case, border guards were barred from checking
the plane. Three other aircraft landed at Palanga, on the Baltic
coast, around 330 km from Vilnius, on January 2 and February 18,
2005, and March 25, 2006.
(AFP, 12/22/09)
2009 Dec 30, In Afghanistan
bombings killed 14 people, including 8 Americans and an Afghan in a
suicide attack at a CIA base at the edge of eastern Khost city, and
4 Canadian soldiers and a journalist by a roadside bomb in the
southern Kandahar province. CIA employees were believed to be among
the victims. An airstrike by international forces killed and wounded
civilians in Helmand province. Suspected Taliban militants kidnapped
two French journalists working for France's public television
broadcaster and three Afghan companions in eastern Kapisa province.
(AP, 12/31/09)(AFP, 12/31/09)
2009 Dec 31, In northwest
Pakistan a suspected US missile strike near Mir Ali hit a house and
killed 3 people. In 2010 Pakistani tribesman Kareem Khan sought 500
million dollars in compensation from the CIA after his son and
brother were killed in the drone attack.
(AP, 1/1/10)(AFP, 11/29/10)
2009 The US shut down a
$24 million off the books intelligence-gathering program to track
down suspected insurgent leaders in Afghanistan. The CIA and some
military officials had complained that Michael Furlong, a senior
Defense Dept. official, had hired contractors to run the program.
(SFC, 3/24/10, p.A7)
2009 Juanita Castro 76 authored
"Fidel and Raul, My Brothers, the Secret History." It was co-written
with Mexican journalist Maria Antonieta Collins. From 1961-1964 she
collaborated with the US CIA against her brothers' rule before going
into exile in Miami.
(Reuters, 10/26/09)
2010 Feb 16, Pakistani
intelligence officials said the Taliban's top military commander has
been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation. Mullah Abdul Ghani
Baradar, the group's No. 2 leader behind Afghan Taliban founder
Mullah Mohammad Omar and a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was
captured 10 days ago in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi.
(AP, 2/16/10)
2010 May, US undercover FBI
agent 4599, portraying himself as a La Cosa Nostra member, was
introduced to Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a SF Chinatown gangster who
had claimed to have gone straight. This led to indictments of gun
trafficking and bribery in 2014 against Chow, California state Sen.
Leland Yee and 24 others.
(SFC, 3/28/14, p.A8)
2010 Jun 10, In Puerto Rico
Jose Claudio Montes, also known as "Chiki Bazooka," was captured by
the FBI inside a housing project where he allegedly controlled the
trade of heroin, cocaine and marijuana. 532 pounds (241kg) of
cocaine was seized hidden on a pleasure craft named "La Burla" —
Spanish for "Mockery." It was intercepted off Puerto Rico's west
coast. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested the two
Puerto Rican men and one Dominican man aboard.
(AP, 6/11/10)
2010 Jun 23, An industry source
said the CIA has hired Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater
Worldwide, to guard facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The
contract was said to be worth about $100 million.
(SFC, 6/24/10, p.A6)
2010 Jun 28, The FBI announced
the arrests of 10 alleged deep cover Russian agents after tracking
the suspects for years. They were accused of attempting to
infiltrate US policymaking circles while posing as ordinary
citizens. All 10 were charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of
a foreign government without notifying the US attorney general. The
offense carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. An 11th
person allegedly involved in the Russian spy ring was arrested
the next day in Cyprus.
(AP, 6/29/10)
2010 Jul 13, A US law
enforcement official said the FBI's investigation into a Russian spy
ring that operated in the United States has resulted in another
Russian being detained, and he soon will be deported.
(Reuters, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 18, In Slovenia a
cyber mastermind, suspected of creating a malicious software code
that infected 12 million computers worldwide and orchestrating other
huge cyber scams, was arrested and questioned. His arrest came about
five months after Spanish police broke up the massive cyber scam,
arresting three of the alleged ringleaders who operated the Mariposa
botnet, which stole credit cards and online banking credentials. On
July 28 the FBI later said that a 23-year old Slovene known as
Iserdo was picked up in Maribor, after lengthy investigation by
Slovenian police, FBI and Spanish authorities. The FBI also
identified, for the first time, the three individuals arrested in
connection with the case in Spain: Florencio Carro Ruiz, known as
"Netkairo;" Jonathan Pazos Rivera, known as "Jonyloleante;" and Juan
Jose Bellido Rios, known as "Ostiator.
(AP, 7/28/10)
2010 Aug 18, CIA Director Leon
Panetta said the CIA is opening a counterproliferation center to
combat the spread of dangerous weapons and technology, a move that
comes as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new nuclear power
plant.
(AP, 8/18/10)
2010 Aug 21, Roland Haas (58),
a Georgia-based former Army Reserve intelligence officer, was found
dead from a gunshot wound that pierced his femoral artery. In 2007
Haas had authored “Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA
Assassin.” Several former CIA officials denounced the book as a
hoax.
(SFC, 8/26/10, p.A10)
2010 Aug 27, The Washington
Post reported that the CIA is making payments to a significant
number of officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's
administration. The Post also cited a former CIA official as saying
that the CIA payments to Afghan officials were necessary because
"the head of state is not going to tell you everything" and because
Karzai often seems unaware of moves that members of his own
government make.
(Reuters, 8/27/10)
2010 Sep 17, In New Mexico
scientist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni (75) and his wife Marjorie Roxby
Mascheroni (67), who both once worked at Los Alamos National
Laboratory, were arrested after an FBI sting operation. They were
charged with offering to help develop a nuclear weapon for
Venezuela.
(AP, 9/18/10)
2010 Sep 20, Libya's daily Oea
newspaper reported that Douglas O'Reilly, a Canadian man, was
detained after meeting a US diplomat suspected of being a CIA agent.
He was detained on suspicion of spying on a planned BP offshore
drilling project. O'Reilly claimed to be an archaeologist seeking to
warn of the BP project's potential impact on archaeological sites.
O'Reilly was given freedom to leave Libya on Sep 22.
(AP, 9/21/10)(AP, 9/22/10)
2010 Sep 22, A US official in
Washington confirmed reports that the CIA is running an all-Afghan
paramilitary group in Afghanistan that has been hunting al-Qaida,
Taliban, and other militant targets for the agency. A security
professional in Kabul familiar with the operation said the
3,000-strong force was set up in 2002 to capture targets for CIA
interrogation.
(AP, 9/22/10)
2010 Sep, The FBI and its
counterparts in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Britain took down a
cyber-theft ring they first got wind of in May 2009 when a financial
services firm tipped the bureau's Omaha, Neb., office to suspicious
transactions. Since then, the FBI's Operation Trident Breach has
uncovered losses of $14 million and counting.
(AP, 11/22/10)
2010 Oct 6, In Puerto Rico FBI
agents began arresting police officers accused of corruption. Local
newspaper El Nuevo Dia reported that police and corrections officers
were among 133 people named in the federal indictments, yet to be
opened.
(AP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Oregon a former
Bend police captain and his wife, who have been under investigation
by the FBI and IRS over their real estate dealings in Oregon and
Indiana, were indicted on fraud charges. Kevin (56) and Tamara (47)
"Tami" Sawyer were charged with 21 counts of various crimes that
include conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and
money laundering. Prosecutors claim the fraud cost investors more
than $4.4 million.
(AP, 10/23/10)
2010 Oct 22, In Virginia Glenn
Shriver (28) of Detroit pleaded guilty to trying to get a job with
the Central Intelligence Agency in order to spy for China and to
hiding contacts and money he got from Chinese intelligence agents.
Shriver acknowledged that he met with Chinese officials about 20
times beginning in 2004 and that he received a total of about
$70,000 from Chinese intelligence officers. His plea agreement
called for a sentence of 48 months in prison.
(Reuters, 10/22/10)
2010 Oct 27, Farooque Ahmed, a
Pakistani-born Virginia man, was arrested and charged with trying to
help people posing as Al-Qaida operatives to bomb Washington-area
subway stations. The plot was a bombing ruse by the FBI who
monitored his activities the whole time.
(SFC, 10/28/10, p.A8)
2010 Nov 22, The FBI raided
three hedge funds in NYC as part of a sweeping investigation into
insider trading.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.82)
2010 Dec 3, A US federal court
search warrant said Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer Minkyu Martin
(22) was under investigation for passing classified information to
an FBI agent he thought was a foreign intelligence agent.
{USA, Espionage, FBI}
(http://cicentre.net/wordpress/index.php/tag/bryan-minkyu-martin/)(SFC,
12/7/10, p.A8)
2010 Dec 3, In Kenya two
attacks in Nairobi killed three police officers. Police asked the US
FBI for help and hoped that advanced forensics would determine
whether the attacks were linked and if they were carried out by
terrorists.
(AP, 12/4/10)
2010 Dec 8, In Maryland federal
authorities arrested Antonio Martinez (21) for attempting to blow up
a military recruitment center in Catonsville, with what he thought
was a vehicle bomb.
(SFC, 12/9/10, p.A22)
2010 Dec 18, Pakistan's top spy
agency denied that it helped unmask the CIA's station chief in
Islamabad, dismissing speculation it was retaliating for a US
lawsuit linking the Pakistani intelligence chief to the 2008 attacks
in Mumbai, India. The station chief in Islamabad has operated as a
virtual military commander in the US war against al-Qaida and other
militant groups hidden along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. His
recall was made public a day earlier.
(AP, 12/18/10)
2010 Bob Woodward authored
“Obama’s Wars.” In it he alleged that some 3,000 CIA operatives are
active in the tribal regions of Pakistan.
(Econ, 9/25/10, p.44)(Econ, 10/9/10, p.58)
2010 The US had 13.1 million
arrests this year. Drug violations accounted for just over 1.6
million of the arrests according to FBI data released in 2011.
(Econ, 9/24/11, p.40)
2011 Jan 20, US FBI agents
dealt another major blow to New York's five Mafia crime families by
arresting some 127 suspected mobsters throughout the Northeast on
charges including murder, extortion and narcotics trafficking.
(AP, 1/20/11)(Econ, 1/29/11, p.29)
2011 Feb 14, Iran’s security
forces cut phone lines and blockaded the home of an Iranian
opposition leader in attempts to stop him attending a planned rally
in support of Egypt's uprising. Eyewitnesses reported sporadic
clashes in central Tehran's Enghelab or Revolution square between
security forces and opposition protesters. Turkish President
Abdullah Gul, who is on a visit to Iran, urged governments in the
Middle East to listen to the demands of their people. Student Sanee
Zhaleh (26) was shot dead during the opposition rally. Authorities
later announced the arrest today of an Iranian man allegedly working
for the CIA.
(AP, 2/14/11)(AP, 2/16/11)(AP, 2/24/11)
2011 Mar 16, Pakistan freed CIA
contractor Raymond Allen Davis, who had shot and killed two
Pakistani men, after the US paid $2.34 million in "blood money" to
the victims' families. Davis, who was acquitted in court, claimed he
acted in self-defense when he killed the two men on the street in
the eastern city of Lahore.
(AP, 3/16/11)
2011 Mar 30, US officials
revealed that the CIA has sent small teams of operatives into
rebel-held eastern Libya while the White House debates whether to
arm the opposition. The British government said Libyan Foreign
Minister Moussa Koussa had arrived in Britain from Tunisia and
resigned.
(AP, 3/31/11)
2011 Apr 8, In Texas Luis
Posada Carriles (83), a Cuban native and former CIA agent, was
acquitted of allegations that he lied during US immigration
hearings. He had worked for decades to destabilize communist
governments throughout Latin America and was often supported by
Washington.
(AP, 4/9/11)
2011 Apr 13, The US Justice
Dept. and FBI said they have seized computers and filed a civil
complaint in a bid to disable a malicious botnet system called
Coreflood, which has operated for nearly a decade stealing personal
passwords and private financial information. The civil complaint was
against 13 John Doe defendants related to the Coreflood botnet.
(SFC, 4/14/11, p.D6)
2011 Apr 19, Sony Corp. in the
US noticed unauthorized activity on its network, and discovered that
data had been transferred off the network the next day. The
company's general counsel gave the FBI information about the breach
on April 22.
(AP, 5/4/11)
2011 Apr, Richmond, Ca., police
officers Danny Harris (31) and Ray Thomas (34) quit following the
report of an FBI probe regarding a security company they ran on the
side. They had tried to frame their supervisor by having him lured
into an extramarital affair and paid private investigator
Christopher Butler $1,800 to create a video using a decoy. On March
7, 2012, Thomas admitted to his role in trying to thwart a federal
grand jury’s inquiry into their business. On March 9 Harris pleaded
guilty to buying firearms for young men at his security firm. On Aug
21 Harris was sentenced to 6 months in a half-way house. Thomas was
sentenced to 6 months of home detention.
(SFC, 2/29/12, p.C1)(SFC, 3/10/12, p.C2)(SFC,
8/22/12, p.C2)
2011 May 9, Pakistan met US
demands for an inquiry into how Osama bin Laden lived for years
under the noses of its military but refused to be blamed alone for
Al-Qaeda or its mastermind. Pakistan’s spy agency gave the name of
the CIA station chief to the Nation, a conservative daily newspaper.
(AFP, 5/9/11)(SFC, 5/10/11, p.A3)
2011 May 21, Iran's
Intelligence Ministry claimed that it has arrested at least 30
people allegedly linked to a CIA-run spy network in accusations that
also could spill over into the country's deepening political power
struggles.
(AP, 5/21/11)
2011 May, Pakistani Dr. Shakeel
Afridi, who helped the CIA track Osama bin Laden, was arrested by
the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate three weeks after the
May 2 Abbotabad raid. In October a government inquiry recommended
that Afridi be charged with treason.
(SFC, 10/7/11, p.A4)
2011
Jun 15, In another hacker attack, a group known as Lulz Security
(LulzSec) was able to take down the public website of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). The group announced the attack at 6pm by
sending out a message on Twitter. Service was restored on the CIA
site later in the evening, and sources at the agency said no
sensitive files were breached.
(Reuters, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 20, British police
arrested a man (19) suspected of hacking attacks on int’l.
businesses and intelligence agencies. The arrest took place
following a joint operation by its Internet crimes unit and the FBI.
Police would not say whether the man is believed to be linked to
either the Anonymous or Lulz Security (LulzSec) hacking collectives,
which have called for "war" on governments that control the Internet
and claimed responsibility for a string of high-profile attacks on
targets such as Sony, the CIA web page and the US Senate computer
system.
(AP, 6/21/11)(SFC, 6/23/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 22, Mob boss James
"Whitey" Bulger (81) was captured near Los Angeles, along with
longtime girlfriend Catherine Greig, after 16 years on the run that
embarrassed the FBI and exposed the bureau's corrupt relationship
with its underworld informants.
(AP, 6/23/11)
2011 Jun, The FBI and Interpol
conducted "Operation Hive," which resulted in the arrests of two
Metulji operators in Bosnia and Slovenia. The world's biggest
criminal botnet, that has enslaved tens of millions of computers
across 172 countries, was named “Metulji," Slovenian for
"butterfly."
(http://tinyurl.com/4346r4y)
2011 Jul 6, In Maryland the FBI
arrested Mohammad Hassan Khalid (18), a high school honors student
and legal immigrant from Pakistan, at his home near Baltimore for
helping Colleen LaRose, aka “Jihad Jane,” plot to kill Swedish
artist Lars Vilks. LaRose (48) pleaded guilty this year to 4 federal
charges. On May 4, 2012, Khalid pleaded guilty to helping LaRose. On
April 17, 2014 Khalid was sentenced to five years in prison.
(SFC, 10/21/11, p.A11)(SFC, 5/4/12, p.A5)(SFC,
4/18/14, p.A7)
2011 Sep 5, Pakistan military
said intelligence officers working with the CIA in Quetta have
arrested 3 members of al-Qaida including Younis al-Mauritani, a top
operative believed to have been tasked by Osama bin Laden with
targeting American economic interests around the world. It named the
other two detainees as Abdul-Ghaffar al-Shami and Messara al-Shami.
(AP, 9/5/11)
2011 Sep 6, Newly retired Gen.
David Petraeus was sworn in as the 20th director of the CIA.
(SFC, 9/7/11, p.A6)
2011 Sep 29, Amnesty Int’l.
called on Lithuania to reopen its investigation into CIA prisons and
the alleged torturing of terrorist suspects based on what they said
was new evidence of a rendition flight to the Baltic state. A Boeing
727 allegedly carrying an al-Qaida suspect, Abu Zubaydah, landed in
the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on Feb. 17, 2005, after taking off
from Morocco and refueling in Jordan. Reprieve, a human rights
organization, announced earlier this year that it had provided
investigators with confidential information that Abu Zubaydah, a
Palestinian repeatedly tortured by US investigators had been
secretly imprisoned in Lithuania between 2004 and 2006.
(AP, 9/29/11)
2011 Nov 21, US officials said
Hezbollah has partially unraveled the CIA’s spy network in Lebanon.
Several foreign spies working for the CIA were reported captured by
Hezbollah in recent months.
(SFC, 11/22/11, p.A4)
2011 Nov 24, Iran’s official
IRNA news agency reported that Iran has arrested 12 agents of the
American Central Intelligence Agency. Parviz Sorouri, a member of
the powerful parliamentary committee on foreign policy and national
security, said the alleged agents were operating in coordination
with Israel's Mossad and other regional agencies, targeting the
country's military and its nuclear program.
(AP, 11/24/11)
2011 Dec 29, In Puerto Rico FBI
agent Daniel Knapp (43) drowned after trying to rescue a swimmer in
distress at Hidden Beach in the coastal city of Fajardo.
(AP, 12/30/11)
2011 Glenn Carle, former CIA
official, authored “Te Interrogator: An Education.”
(Econ, 7/9/11, p.82)
2012 Jan 9, Iran’s state radio
reported that an Iranian court has convicted Amir Mirzaei Hekmati
(28), an American man, of working for the CIA and sentenced him to
death. The case added to the accelerating tension between the United
States and Iran. In March the Supreme Court tossed out his death
penalty and said a new trial would held. In 2014 the death sentence
was overturned and reduced to 10 years in jail.
(AP, 1/9/12)(SFC, 3/6/12, p.A3)(AFP, 4/13/14)
2012 Jan 14, Iran’s Foreign
Ministry sent a diplomatic letter to the US saying that it has
"evidence and reliable information" that the CIA provided "guidance,
support and planning" to assassins "directly involved" in the Jan 11
assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan.
State media IRNA also reported that Iran delivered a letter to
Britain accusing London of having an "obvious role" in the killing.
(AP, 1/14/12)
2012 Jan 20, A US federal
appeals court in Boston upheld multimillion-dollar judgments that
found the federal government liable for the deaths of 3 people
allegedly murdered by James “Whitey” Bulger. The FBI had used Bulger
and associate Stephen Flemmi as informants and had shielded them
from prosecution.
(SSFC, 1/22/12, p.A7)
2012 Jan 20, The FBI announced
that it had closed down one of the world's largest file sharing
sites Megauploader.com. The site, which had over 180 million
registered users, was accused of copyright violation and its founder
Kim Dotcom (37), aka Kim Schmitz, was arrested in New Zealand.
Shortly after, Anonymous launched an attack on several US based
sites, including the FBI and Universal Music.
(AFP, 1/20/12)
2012 Jan 24, In Connecticut 4
police officers, including the president of the local police union,
were arrested by the FBI on charges that they assaulted illegal
immigrants and covered up abuses in a New Haven suburb where a
federal investigation found life was made miserable for Hispanics.
(AP, 1/25/12)
2012 Feb 10, A Russian military
court convicted Lt. Col. Vladimir Nesterets of providing the CIA
with secret information on Russia's new intercontinental ballistic
missiles and sentenced him to 13 years in prison. The Federal
Security Service said Nesterets pleaded guilty to passing on that
classified information in exchange for money.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 17, The FBI arrested
Amine El Khalifi (29) of Morocco in Washington DC. He was charged by
criminal complaint with attempting to use a weapon of mass
destruction against US property. He had a MAC-10 automatic weapon
and wore a suicide-bomber vest given to him by FBI undercover agents
posing as accomplices in the sting operation. If convicted, he could
receive a maximum sentence of life in prison.
(SFC, 2/18/12, p.A12)
2012 Mar 6, Five members of
Anonymous and Lulz Security were charged in an indictment unsealed
in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. They
included 2 men from Britain, 2 from Ireland and an American. Hector
Xavier Monsegur (28), who pleaded guilty in August, served as an FBI
informant leading to the new charges.
(AFP, 3/6/12)(SFC, 3/7/12, p.A7)
2012 Apr 26, US officials said
the White House has given the CIA and the Pentagon broader authority
to carry out drone strikes in Yemen against terrorists who imperil
the US.
(SFC, 4/27/12, p.A2)
2012 Apr 30, In Ohio 5 people,
claiming to be anarchists, were arrested in Cleveland for trying to
blow up a four-lane bridge across the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The explosive devices were inoperable and controlled by an
undercover FBI agent. On Sep 5 three of the men admitted their roles
in the bomb scheme in a move to avoid life in prison. A 4th had
pleaded guilty earlier. On Oct 7, 2013, Joshua Stafford (25), the
last of the five defendants, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(http://tinyurl.com/7p5kn2k)(SFC, 9/6/12,
p.A5)(SFC, 10/8/12, p.A5)
2012 Sep 10, Edwin Wilson
(b.1928), former US spy and tycoon, died in Seattle. He had worked
for the CIA but was arrested in 1982 for selling 20 tons of
explosives to Libya. He was sentenced to 52 years in prison for
smuggling arms and plotting to murder his wife. He served 22 years.
The 1986 book “Manhunt” by Peter Maas was about Mr. Wilson.
(SSFC, 9/23/12, p.C10)(Economist, 9/29/12, p.98)
2012 Sep 14, Undercover FBI
agents arrested Adel Daoud (18) for trying to detonate what he
believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar. An
undercover operation in which an agent pretending to be a terrorist
had provided him with a phony car bomb and watched him press the
trigger. Prosecutors the next day said Daoud was offered several
chances to change his mind and walk away from the plot.
(AP, 9/15/12)
2012 Oct 17, The FBI arrested
21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a banker’s son from
Bangladesh, after he tried to detonate a fake 1,000-pound
(454-kilogram) car bomb at the Federal Reserve Bank in NYC. On Feb
7, 2013, Nafis pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. On Aug 9, 2013,
Nafis was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 10/18/12)(SFC, 2/8/13, p.A16)(SFC, 8/10/13,
p.A4)
2012 Oct 24, FBI agents
arrested NYC police Officer Gilberto Valle, a 6-year veteran, after
they uncovered several of his plots to kidnap women, including one
whom he threatened to cook and eat.
(SFC, 10/26/12, p.A13)
2012 Nov 9, David Petraeus, the
retired four-star general renowned for taking charge of the military
campaigns in Iraq and then Afghanistan, abruptly resigned as
director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair. Petraeus
carried on the affair with his biographer and reserve Army officer
Paula Broadwell.
(AP, 11/10/12)
2012 Nov 9, Mexican prosecutors
charged 14 federal police officers with trying to kill two CIA
agents and a Mexican navy captain in an August 24 ambush south of
the capital.
(AP, 11/9/12)
2012 Nov 22, In Mexico fugitive
Jose Luis Saenz, one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted, was arrested in
Guadalajara after a joint operation with the Mexican government.
Saenz, suspected in 4 slayings, was returned to Los Angeles to face
murder, kidnapping and rape charges.
(SSFC, 11/25/12, p.A11)
2012 Nov 27, The Open Society
Justice Initiative said four suspects in the Jul 11, 2010, bombings
in Uganda claimed men who identified themselves as US FBI agents
beat them up during questioning. Human rights groups have said Kenya
and Tanzania circumvented their extradition laws to illegally deport
suspects to Uganda where they could be interrogated at length by
local and foreign agents without scrutiny.
(AP, 11/27/12)
2012 Dec 10, Iran's
Revolutionary Guard said it has decoded all of the data from a
RQ-170 Sentinel craft, an advanced CIA spy drone captured in Dec
2011.
(AP, 12/10/12)
2012 Dec 11, In Georgia
Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair and Randy Wilson were charged with
conspiring to kill persons or damage property outside the US. FBI
agents arrested one at the Atlanta airport and the other at a bus
station in Augusta.
(SFC, 12/12/12, p.A5)
2012 Dec 13, The European Court
of Human Rights ruled in favor of Khaled El-Masri, a German man, who
says the CIA illegally kidnapped him and took him to a secret prison
in Afghanistan in 2003. It said the government of Macedonia violated
El-Masri's rights repeatedly and ordered it to pay €60,000 in
damages.
(AP, 12/13/12)
2012 Seth Rosenfeld authored
“Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise
to Power.”
(SSFC, 8/19/12, p.G1)
2012 Tim Weiner authored
“Enemies: A History of the FBI.”
(SSFC, 2/26/12, p.F3)
2013 Jan 4, Omar Hammami, an
Alabama native who moved to Somalia to wage jihad alongside
al-Shabab militants, was given 15 days to surrender to militants or
be killed. The FBI has named Hammami as one of its most-wanted
terrorists.
(AP, 1/18/13)
2013 Jan 7, President Obama
nominated former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for secretary of Defense
and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to head the Central
Intelligence Agency.
(AP, 1/7/13)
2013 Jan 22, US officials said
the Pentagon has found that Gen. John Allen did not engage in
inappropriate communications with Jill Kelley, a civilian woman
linked to the sex scandal that led retired Gen. David Petraeus to
resign as CIA director.
(SFC, 1/23/13, p.A6)
2013 Jan 25, CIA veteran John
Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison for leaking a covert
officer’s identity to a reporter.
(SFC, 1/26/13, p.A6)
2013 Jan, Iran arrested Slovak
national Matej Valuch (26) and accused him of spying for the
US CIA. On Feb 8 Valuch was released and returned home.
(AP, 2/8/13)
2013 Feb 1, In Italy a Milan
appeals court vacated acquittals for a former CIA station chief and
two other Americans, and instead convicted them in the 2003
abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part
of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The court sentenced
former CIA Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli to seven years, and
handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and
Ralph Russomando. All three were tried in absentia at both levels.
(AP, 2/1/13)
2013 Feb 12, A Milan appeals
court convicted two former Italian spy chiefs for their role in the
kidnapping of a terror suspect as part of the CIA's extraordinary
rendition program. The court sentenced Nicolo Pollari, the former
head of Italian military intelligence, to 10 years, and Marco
Mancini, a former deputy and head of counterintelligence, to nine.
Three other Italian agents also were convicted and handed six-year
sentences. All the convictions can be appealed.
(AP, 2/12/13)
2013 Feb 27, In Ireland Ali
Charaf Damache (47) was arrested while leaving a courthouse in
Waterford. He had just walked free from the court, after three years
in prison when detectives acting on an American extradition warrant
rearrested and escorted him, handcuffed, to an unmarked police car.
The FBI and US Justice Department accuse Damache of being the
ringleader behind an unrealized 2009 conspiracy to target artist
Lars Vilks in Sweden over his series of drawings depicting the
Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog.
(AP, 2/27/13)
2013 Feb 28, Sulaiman Abu
Ghaith, the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was captured by the FBI
in Jordan as he was being deported to Kuwait from Turkey. On March 9
he pleaded not guilty in federal court in NY to conspiring to kill
Americans.
(SFC, 2/9/13, p.A5)
2013 Mar 27, Eric Harroun of
Phoenix, Az., was arrested upon returning to the US from Turkey,
where he had described to FBI agents his bizarre journey to the
front lines of Syria's civil war with fighters from the al-Nusra
Front, a designated terrorist organization also referred to as al
Qaeda in Iraq. Harroun served in the US Army from 2000 to 2003.
(AP, 3/29/13)
2013 Apr 5, Italy's Pres.
Giorgio Napolitano pardoned Joseph Romano, a US Air Force colonel,
convicted in absentia by Italian courts in the CIA-conducted
abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street. He
hoped the move would keep American-Italian relations strong,
especially on security matters.
(AP, 4/5/13)
2013 Apr 16, A letter was
intercepted in Maryland, postmarked from Memphis and mailed to
Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker's DC office. It contained
the toxic substance ricin, forcing the temporary closure of a Senate
post office and prompting a federal investigation. The next day FBI
agents detained Paul Kevin Curtis at his home in Corinth, Miss.
(The Ticket, 4/17/13)
2013 Apr 19, Federal agents
swarmed Watertown, Mass., after local police were involved in a car
chase and shootout with 2 men identified by the FBI as Suspect 1 and
Suspect 2 in the April 15 Boston bombings. The shootout occurred
after a gunfight erupted near the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where MIT police officer, Sean Collier (26), was shot
and later died. Suspect 1, identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev (26), was
killed in the shootout. Suspect 2, identified as Dzhokhar A.
Tsarnaev (19), a second-year student, was wounded but escaped. He
was soon found hiding under a boat tarp in a neighborhood backyard.
The brothers' family was originally from Chechnya.
(AP, 4/19/13)(AP, 4/20/13)
2013 Apr 27, The FBI arrested
Everett Dutschke (41) at his Tupelo, Miss., home in connection with
poisoned letters sent to the president and others.
(AP, 4/27/13)
2013 Apr 28, A New York Times
report, citing current and former advisers to Afghan Pres. Karzai,
said tens of millions of US dollars in cash were delivered by the
CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office
of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade.
(Reuters, 4/28/13)
2013 May 14, Russia's security
services said they have caught a US diplomat who they claim is a CIA
agent in a red-handed attempt to recruit a Russian agent. Ryan
Fogle, a third secretary at the US Embassy in Moscow, was carrying
special technical equipment, disguises, written instructions and a
large sum of money when he was detained overnight.
(AP, 5/14/13)
2013 May 17, Two FBI agents
were killed in a training accident off the coast of Virginia Beach,
Va.
(SFC, 5/20/13, p.A4)
2013 May 18, Arkansas Treasurer
Martha Shoffner was arrested in an FBI sting operation. She accused
of taking at least $36,000 from a broker who later came to manage a
large share of the state’s $3.3 billion stock and bond portfolio.
(SFC, 5/21/13, p.A5)(SFC, 5/22/13, p.A5)
2013 May 22, In Florida Ibragim
Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando early today as he
was "about to sign a statement" admitting to a role, along with
Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in an unsolved
triple murder in Massachusetts on Sep 11, 2011. Todashev and
Tamerlan Tsarnaev both fought mixed martial arts in the name of
Boston's Wai Kru gym, where one of the 2011 triple murder victims,
Brendan Mess, also trained.
(ABCNews, 5/22/13)
2013 Jun 9, Britain’s Guardian
newspaper said that Edward Snowden (29), a contractor who says he
worked at the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence
Agency, is the source of leaks about a phone records monitoring
program and an Internet scouring program called PRISM. Snowden was
working in an NSA office in Hawaii until he left for Hong Kong on
May 20.
(AP, 6/10/13)(Econ, 6/15/13, p.11)
2013 Jul 17, Robert Seldon Lady
(59), a former CIA base chief convicted in the 2003 abduction of a
terror suspect from an Italian street, was detained in Panama after
Italy requested his arrest in one of the most notorious episodes of
the US program known as extraordinary rendition. After barely a day
in detention, he was put on a plane to the US by the Panamanian
government.
(AP, 7/18/13)(AP, 7/19/13)
2013 Jul 29, US officials said
the FBI has arrested 150 people across the country on charges of
holding children against their will for prostitution in a three-day
weekend sweep. Officials called this the largest-ever operation
against child sex-trafficking.
(Reuters, 7/29/13)
2013 Aug 10, US FBI agents
killed James Lee DiMaggio (40) in the Idaho wilderness. He was
suspected of killing a California woman Christina Anderson (44) and
her young son a week earlier before fleeing with her daughter,
Hannah Anderson (16).
(SSFC, 8/11/13, p.A10)
2013 Aug 15, A CIA history was
released that referred to Area 51 in Nevada by name and described
some of the activities that took place there.
(SFC, 8/17/13, p.A5)
2013 Oct 2, FBI agents in San
Francisco arrested Ross William Ulbricht (29) at the Glen Park
library and accused him of being the “Dread Prince Roberts,” the
once-anonymous mastermind behind an online drug marketplace known as
Silk Road. Ulbricht used Bitcoin virtual currency for transactions
and was indicted in Manhattan on Feb 4, 2014.
(SFC, 10/3/13, p.A1)(SFC, 2/5/14, p.A8)
2013 Oct 22, Amnesty
International called on the US to investigate reports of civilians
killed and wounded by CIA drone strikes in Pakistan in a report that
provided new details about the alleged victims of the attacks,
including a 68-year-old grandmother hit on Oct 24, 2012, while
farming with her grandchildren.
(AP, 10/22/13)
2013 Nov 14, Donald Sachtleben
(55), a former FBI agent, was sentenced to more than three years in
prison for disclosing confidential national security information
about a foiled bomb plot to an Associated Press reporter. He had
worked for the FBI from 1983 until 2008 as a bomb technician and,
after his retirement, was hired as a security contractor.
(AFP, 11/14/13)
2013 Mark Mazzetti authored
“The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends
of the Earth.
(SSFC, 4/14/13, p.F1)
2014 Jan 8, Seventeen people
related to the San Diego street gang BMS were arrested in California
and New Jersey by police and FBI agents for operating a prostitution
ring that spanned 46 cities in 23 states.
(SFC, 1/10/14, p.A5)
2014 Mar 11, Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
said the CIA improperly searched a stand-alone computer network
established for Congress in its investigation of allegations of CIA
abuse in a Bush-era detention and interrogation program. She said
the CIA's own inspector general has referred the matter to the
Justice Department.
(AP, 3/11/14)
2014 Mar 26, In California
state Sen. Leland Yee was arrested in an FBI sting on charges that
he conspired to traffic in firearms and traded favors in Sacramento
for bribes. Yee represented half of San Francisco and most of San
Mateo County. Yee was one of 26 people ensnared in a 5-year federal
investigation that targeted Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, a Chinatown
gangster who had claimed to have gone straight.
(SFC, 3/27/14, p.A1)
