A Return to "Operation Garden Plot"?

Army Spy Posed as Anarchist

Dan Stein of SpyTalk @ CQ-Politics reports (excerpt): An Army civilian from a Fort Lewis, Wash., "force protection division" infiltrated a Seattle-area antiwar group posing as an anarchist who could steal classified information for the organization, according to little-noticed news reports.

A member of the antiwar group said documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that his friend and fellow activist "John Jacob" was actually military spy John Towery.

A Fort Lewis spokesman confirmed that Towery was employed on the base but would offer no additional information because he "performs sensitive law enforcement work with the installation law enforcement community."

Comment -- See: "Operation Garden Plot" Sphere: Related Content

Welcome to the 19th Century!

The EMP Threat

Excerpt: Imagine you're a terrorist with a single nuclear weapon. You could wipe out the U.S. city of your choice, or you could decide to destroy the infrastructure of the entire U.S. economy and leave millions of Americans to die of starvation or want of medical care.

The latter scenario is the one envisioned by a long-running commission to assess the threat from electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The subject of its latest, and little discussed, report to Congress is the effect an EMP attack could have on civilian infrastructure. If you're prone to nightmares, don't read it before bedtime.

See also: The Slow Motion Economic Collapse of the U.S.

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The Top 10 KGB operatives

Times Online - WBLG: The Top 10 KGB operatives

Excerpt: Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich was head of the Okhrana, the Tsars' state security outfit, from 1881 to 1904.

Solzhenitsyn ironically mocks his soft-heartedness, his squeamishness about 'perlustration' (the ungentlemanly practice of opening other people's mail) and the pitifully small number of people he sent to Siberia.

Perhaps for these reasons, the institution he once led signally failed in 1917 - a lesson not lost on Lenin and his successors.

Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky
Though not strictly a Russian secret policeman, it is impossible to omit this austere Pole, who was the founding father of the modern Russian state security apparatus.

An intimate associate of Lenin, he was a Jesuitical ideologue who believed that their revolutionary ends had the historical, even the eschatological, importance to justify any means.

Though he died in 1926, the influence of Iron Feliks echoed on throughout the Soviet period.

More . . .Sphere: Related Content

National Forests & Parks Are Drug Cartel Smuggling Havens

Madera Canyon, Coronado National Forest

A future blog will focus on the occupation of hilltops and ridgelines across the U.S. Southwest by armed, organized, paramilitary forces -- operating under the control of drug cartels.

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Pentagon Intel Ops

Comment: Some great links inside the article discussing "Operational Preparation of the Environment." This will make the Oversight guys nervous. I find it kind of reassuring.

Pentagon Intel Ops “Often” Evade Oversight

From the Project on Government Secrecy:

Excerpt: Last month, the House Intelligence Committee complained that the Department of Defense has blurred the distinction between traditional intelligence collection, which is subject to intelligence committee oversight, and clandestine military operations, which are not. Because they are labeled in a misleading manner, some DoD clandestine operations that are substantively the same as intelligence activities are evading the congressional oversight they are supposed to receive.Sphere: Related Content