Posted on 12/26/2005 9:08:18 AM PST by shezza
CIA's BUNGLED ITALY JOB:
Sloppy use of cell phones, other missteps help police unravel cleric's 2003 abduction
By John Crewdson
Tribune senior correspondent
Published December 25, 2005
MILAN, Italy -- The trick is known to just about every two-bit crook in the cellular age: If you don't want the cops to know where you are, take the battery out of your cell phone when it's not in use.
Had that trick been taught at the CIA's rural Virginia training school for covert operatives, the Bush administration might have avoided much of the current crisis in Europe ....
(usual Trib copyright restrictions...click here to read article)
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
The CIA needs a total rebuilding, or closing down.
Think the senior Bush would be amenable to coming back to run the CIA again until it can get cleared out of the incompetent and the untrustworthy?
If a trick is well-known, then it's probably obsolete. Removing the battery may be false security. The only counter-measures that are overly paranoid are those that make you look nervous or otherwise betray normalcy.
On the other hand, there's nothing like a cool head to accomplish when technology can't. Recall what 19 such heads did to us once.
Did you read the linked article? Aaaack! The imbecilic mistakes -- made repeatedly -- make you wonder what sort of training these "spies" really do go through. Appalling, to say the least.
Common wisdom is that the CIA became a risk-adverse bureaucracy after the Church hearings and subsequent Congressional oversight. Seems like the common wisdom may be right, and the agency needs to go back to Spycraft 101. The leaks alone should prompt the Bush administration to clean house.
Keystone Cops redux. Even more alarming is the fact that all these tools used by the Italians to track every movement of the CIA agents is now exposed and a lesson to our enemies of what not to do.
I'd like to read the article, but I'm not going to do a personal data dump to the Chicago Tribune.
Yep, Then you have Valerie Plame making political contributions listing "Brewster Jennings" while commuting to Langley each day.
Thanks!
Some of these geniuses even used their own names while checking into hotels for this secret operation, for crying out loud. I don't know how PlameGate is more of a threat to our national security than this debacle. Keep in mind, these doofuses (doofi?) are charged with keeping the American people safe from terrorism.
You've got FReepmail.
BUMP!
2-way radios carry their risks but I'm betting they don't have the trackability that cell-phones do. Gee, maybe this is why the Cold-War spies used archaic methods of hand signals, predetermined meeting points, memorizing information and burning note-papers, and staying OFF the phones.
Just incredible. I am being completely honest when I say that any ten SEALs or SF enlisted men (chosen at random and given no extra training) would have done a better job of this.
For one thing, they would not have used cell phones at all. For another, they would not have driven the target onto a US military base, that is the LAST place they would take him. He'd more likely have been on a "fishing boat" (rented for cash) and taken offshore to a submarine.
All cash, of course, and no cell phones.
Amen.
Well stated.....seems these days the NOC is not......too bad.
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