MATTHEW M. AID
JULY 17, 2013
[When the NSA can't break into your computer, these guys break into your house.]
During a coffee break at an intelligence conference held in The Netherlands a few years back, a senior Scandinavian counterterrorism official regaled me with a story. One of his service's surveillance teams was conducting routine monitoring of a senior militant leader when they suddenly noticed through their high-powered surveillance cameras two men breaking into the militant's apartment. The target was at Fridayevening prayers at the local mosque. But rather than ransack the apartment and steal the computer equipment and other valuables while he was away -- as any right-minded burglar would normally have done -- one of the men pulled out a disk and loaded some programs onto the resident's laptop computer while the other man kept watch at the window. The whole operation took less than two minutes, then the two trespassers fled the way they came, leaving no trace that they had ever been there.
It did not take long for the official to determine that the two men were, in fact, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives conducting what is known in the U.S. intelligence community as either a "black bag job" or a "surreptitious entry"operation.
Back in the Cold War, such a mission might have involved cracking safes, stealing code books, or photographing the settings on cipher machines. Today, this kind of break-in is known inside the CIA and National Security Agency as an "off-net operation," a clandestine human intelligence mission whose specific purpose is to surreptitiously gain access to the computer systems and email accounts of targets of high interest to America's spies.
As we've learned in recent weeks, the National Security Agency's ability to electronically eavesdrop from afar is massive. But it is not infinite. There are times when the agency cannot gain access to the computers or gadgets they'd like to listen in on. And so they call in the CIA's black bag crew for help.
The CIA's clandestine service is now conducting these sorts of black bag operations on behalf of the NSA, but at a tempo not seen since the height of the Cold War. Moreover, these missions, as well as a series of parallelsignals intelligence (SIGINT) collection operations conducted by the CIA's Office of Technical Collection, have proven to be instrumental in facilitating and improving the NSA's SIGINT collection efforts in the years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Over the past decade specially-trained CIA clandestine operators have mounted over one hundred extremely sensitive black bag jobs designed to penetrate foreign government and military communications and computer systems, as well as the computer systems of some of the world's largest foreign multinational corporations. Spyware software has been secretly planted in computer servers; secure telephone lines have been bugged; fiber optic cables, data switching centers and telephone exchanges have been tapped; and computer backup tapes and disks have been stolen or surreptitiously copied in these operations.
In other words, the CIA has become instrumental in setting up the shadowy surveillance dragnet that has now been thrown into public view. Sources within the U.S. intelligence community confirm that since 9/11, CIA clandestine operations have given the NSA access to a number of new and critically important targets around the world, especially in China and elsewhere in East Asia, as well as the Middle East, the Near East, and South Asia.(I'm not aware of any such operations here on U.S. soil.)
In one particularly significant operation conducted a few years back in a strife-ridden South Asian nation, a team of CIA technical operations officers installed a sophisticated tap on a switching center servicing several fiber-optic cable trunk lines, which has allowed NSA to intercept in real time some of the most sensitive internal communications traffic by that country's general staff and top military commanders for the past several years.
In another more recent case, CIA case officers broke into a home in Western Europe and surreptitiously loaded Agency-developed spyware into the personal computer of a man suspected of being a major recruiter for individuals wishing to fight with the militant group al-Nusra Front in Syria, allowing CIA operatives to read all of his email traffic and monitor his Skype calls on his computer.
The fact that the NSA and CIA now work so closely together is fascinating on a number of levels. But it's particularly remarkable accomplishment, given the fact that the two agencies until fairly recently hated each others' guts.
Ingenues and TBARs
As detailed in my history of the NSA, The Secret Sentry, the CIA and NSA had what could best be described as a contentious relationship during the Cold War era. Some NSA veterans still refer to their colleagues at the CIA as 'TBARs,' which stands for 'Those Bastards Across the River,' with the river in question being the Potomac. Perhaps reflecting their higher level of educational accomplishment, CIA officers have an even more lurid series of monikers for their NSA colleagues at Fort Meade, most of which cannot be repeated in polite company because of recurring references to fecal matter.
One retired CIA official described his NSA counterparts as "a bunch of damn ingenues." Another CIA veteran perhaps put it best when he described the Cold War relationship amongst and between his agency and the NSA as "the best of enemies."
The historical antagonism between the two agencies started at the top. Allen W. Dulles, who was the director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961, disliked NSA director General Ralph Canine so intensely that he deliberately kept the NSA in the dark about a number of the agency's high-profile SIGINT projects, like the celebrated Berlin Tunnelcable tapping operation in the mid-1950s.
The late Richard M. Helms, who was director of the CIA from 1966 to 1973, told me over drinks at the Army-Navy Club in downtown Washington, D.C. only half jokingly that during his thirty-plus years in the U.S. intelligence community, his relations with the KGB were, in his words, "warmer and more collegial" than with the NSA.
William E. Colby, who served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1973-1976, had the same problem. Colby was so frustrated by his inability to assert any degree of control over the NSA that he told a congressional committee that "I think it is clear I do not have command authority over the [NSA]." And the animus between CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner (CIA director from 1977-1981) and his counterpart at the NSA, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, was so intense that they could only communicate through intermediaries.
But the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed the operational dynamic between these two agencies, perhaps forever. In the thirteen years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the NSA and CIA have largely, but not completely, moved past the Cold War animus. In addition, both agencies have become increasingly dependent on one another for the success of their respective intelligence operations, leading to what can best be described as an increasingly close symbiotic relationship between these two titans of the U.S. intelligence community.
While the increasingly intimate relationship between the NSA and CIA is not a secret, the specific nature and extent of the work that each agency does for the other is deemed to be extremely sensitive, especially since many of these operations are directed against friends and allies of the United States.
For example, the Special Collection Service (SCS), the secretive joint CIA-NSA clandestine SIGINT organization based in Beltsville, Maryland, now operates more than 65 listening posts inside U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. While recent media reports have focused on the presence of SCS listening posts in certain Latin America capitals, intelligence sources confirm that most of the organization's resources have been focused over the past decade on the Middle East, South Asia,and East Asia. For example, virtually every U.S. embassy in the Middle East now hosts a SCS SIGINT station that monitors, twenty-four hours a day, the complete spectrum of electronic communications traffic within a one hundred mile radius of the embassy site. The biggest problem that the SCS currently faces is that it has no presence in some of the U.S. intelligence community's top targets, such as Iran and North Korea, because the U.S. government has no diplomatic relations with these countries.
At the same time, SIGINT coming from the NSA has become a crucial means whereby the CIA can not only validate the intelligence it gets from its oftentimes unreliable agents, but SIGINT has been, and remains the lynchpin underlying the success over the past nine years of the CIA's secret unmanned drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere around the world.
But the biggest changes have occurred in the CIA's human intelligence (HUMINT) collection efforts on behalf of NSA.
Over the past decade, foreign government telecommunications and computer systems have become one of the most important targeting priorities of the CIA's National Clandestine Service (NCS), which since the spring of this year has been headed by one of the agency's veteran Africa and Middle East hands. The previous director, Michael J. Sulick, is widely credited with making HUMINT collection against foreign computer and telecommunications systems one of the service's top priority targets after he rose to the top of the NCS in September 2007.
Today, a cadre of several hundred CIA NCS case officers, known as Technical Operations Officers, have been recruited and trained to work exclusively on penetrating foreign communications and computer systems targets so that NSA can gain access to the information stored on or transmitted by these systems.Several dozen of these officers now work fulltime in several offices at NSA headquarters at Fort George G. Meade, something which would have been inconceivable prior to 9/11.
CIA operatives have also intensified their efforts to recruit IT specialists and computer systems operators employed by foreign government ministries, major military command headquarters staffs, big foreign multinational corporations, and important international non-governmental organizations.
Since 9/11, the NCS has also developed a variety of so-called "black boxes" which can quickly crack computer passwords, bypass commercially-available computer security software systems, and clone cellular telephones -- all without leaving a trace.
To use one rudimentary example, computer users oftentimes forget to erase default accounts and passwords when installing a system, or incorrectly set protections on computer network servers or e-mail accounts. This is a vulnerability which operatives now routinely exploit.
For many countries in the world, especially in the developing world, CIA operatives can now relatively easily obtain telephone metadata records, such as details of all long distance or international telephone calls, through secret liaison arrangements with local security services and police agencies.
America's European allies are a different story. While the connections between the NSA and, for example, the British signals intelligence service GCHQ are well-documented, the CIA has a harder time obtaining personal information of British citizens. The same is true in Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, which have also been most reluctant to share this sort of data with the CIA. But the French intelligence and security services have continued to share this sort of data with the CIA, particularly in counterterrorism operations.
U.S. intelligence officials are generally comfortable with the new collaboration. Those I have spoken to over the past three weeks have only one major concern. The fear is that details of these operations, including the identities of the targets covered by these operations, currently reside in the four laptops reportedly held by Edward Snowden, who has spent the past three weeks in the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow waiting for his fate to be decided. Officials at both the CIA and NSA know that the public disclosure of these operations would cause incalculable damage to U.S. intelligence operations abroad as well as massive embarrassment to the U.S. government.
If anyone wonders why the U.S. government wants to get its hands on Edward Snowden and his computers so badly, this is an important reason why.
Conversation on FP.com
Nasser_Alyassi
In the discussion of the American history in espionage and covert actions, one controversial issue has been how to execute such operations without endangering the old morale and ethical reputation of the USA as being the beacon of freedom, liberty and equality. When it comes to the national security and stability, does the United States welling to sell its claimed values? If the US did so, isn't hypocrisy? On The one hand, many members of the US intelligence community (since their training is based on the military doctrine) believe in the Machiavellian rule “ends justify means". For them, national security is paramount, and therefore such idealistic values should not come across the road of eliminating the enemies of liberty and democracy. Moreover, they believe that espionage and covert actions contrarily will secure these values against a wild savage world that hates the American freedom.
On the other hand, however, many will argue that derailing the moral and ethical values is in fact an undermining for the foundations of the US and its constitution that came from the struggle of the founding fathers against a tyrannical, authoritarian British regime at that time. If the US gave up its own core values, it will lose its credibility and its exceptionalism against other nations. They even contend that by doing so the US will lose the war of ideology against the barbaric nations.
Although I agree with the former argument on the importance of preserving the national security against all threats, I fully find myself attracted to the second argument. Yes, losing the ethical basis of the US is an existential threat. I would argue that it is the number one threat that has the ability to drag the US into unprecedented situation similar to the Civil War in 1861. First, the US political structure is nested on the constitution and the bill of rights. Any attempts (intentionally or non-intentionally) to liquidate them will result in weakening the adhesiveness of the only glue that holding the diverse elements of the American nation. By spying on its own citizens, the US will suffer from a long-term mistrust especially from the minorities and new immigrants who primarily fled prosecution and security monitoring. Second, the baseless spying will add another reason (beside the unequal distribution of wealth in America) for the remnants of 99% movement. The protesting spirit is still there in the US, and the failure of the polarized government to deliver its people expectation would boil up the American streets. Losing the only ideological advantage will take off the last fig leaf, and will revive the 99% movement in a new form. Finally, the US would find itself in a worse position than the dictatorship regimes in the Middle East. At least in those regimes, people already noticed that they are being monitored by the security apparatus. While in America the US government is not only abusing people’ rights, it is lying about it.
I believe that the major problem with the US security strategy that it has a frozen ideology of the Cold War Era. The Intelligence community failed to free itself from the prison of George Kennan doctrine which in public claims it is taking peaceful diplomatic approach, while behind the scene it is executing an aggressive covert actions against its enemies, allies, and most important of all its own people.
John Newcomb
Interesting that the CIA-NSA tiff seems to reflect something also going on in Canada, between CSIS and RCMP, as evidenced in recent Royal Canadian Navy spy working for Russia probably being fingered by NSA, and then passed on to FBI, and then the delay while CSIS and RCMP got their act together - but probably only when goaded by FBI.
CSIS knew of navy spy's activity, left RCMP in the dark:
Don't know what the Dutch government thinks about NSA/CIA, but for the British, appears that at least one parliamentary committee doesn't seem to have to much of a problem. Ditto the Germans if NSA or CIA work helped get their Russian spys:
UK spy agency's use of U.S. data was legal - parliament:
Spy trade: Russian agents in Germany may be up for exchange:
HughO
ARE = acronym rich environment: BFW to all you 3-letter acronyms. This whole ghastly article is a paean of praise to creepy sleaze-ball spooks - those slithery slimy creatures of the night found under stones, devoid of any moral purpose or deed beyond the perceived need for more and more information. And yet, no matter how much data you acquire, you lack both brains and integrity to serve any useful purpose to Mankind. Why don't you measure your success by the number of lives you have saved or improved, rather than aiding ghoulish corporates? Try and understand that though we may not be American, our lives have equal value.
Why don't you get yourself a real job doing something useful - like mending shoes? God Bless Ed Snowden.
Kaliban
HughO A) As far as any government but your own is concerned, your life does not have equal value. That goes for the Americans, the British, the Chinese, Brazilians, anyone.
b) By their very nature most intelligence agencies are only know for their failures, not their successes. The CIA and NSA have both saved lives but we rarely hear about it until long after that fact because that is the way intelligence works.
c) Grow up. No matter what country you live, I can guarantee you only have the ability to sit at a computer and complain because someone, somewhere is spying and killing to keep it that way.
HughO
Kaliban a) According to International Law my life has equal value. It is your government that is in defiance of International Law.
b) I suggest that you are talking rot. Think of the millions killed at CIA behest in ideologically-driven programmes conducted in Indonesia, Vietnam, Central and South America. Its a pretty long indictment of murder, torture, terror and injustice. And you can bet your bottom dollar if these murdering thugs ever saved any life, their propaganda machine would make it known (in articles like this above).
c) "Grow up" to you = accept the status quo. As we say in NZ, "yeah, right" = I don't think so. Why do you think anyone needs or wants extreme violence and subterfuge? The CIA/NSA is a business designed primarily to foment wars and insurrections to justify their own existence and to ensure that arms manufacturers more business.
One can only presume that you yourself are a part of this spying and killing regime, or perhaps some cog in its propaganda vomitorium. So when you stop killing and spying, I'll stop complaining. Until then, get used to it.
SeandaRealist
HughO
What programs are you referring to that the CIA has killed millions?
Apparently you have access to some information the rest of the world needs to know about. Come on, don't keep it to your self, share with the rest of the world all of these dastardly deeds.
And be specific, with details and dates and places. We don't want to have any vague or misleading information floating around. Inquiring minds want to know. Where are all of the bodies and evidence to back up your claims.
Don't delay, you could be saving a life after all..........
Wikipedia and SNOG lyrics won't count mate!