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United States intelligence operations abroad

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The United States is widely considered to have one of the most extensive and sophisticated intelligence network of any nation in the world, with organizations including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, amongst others. It has conducted numerous espionage operations against foreign countries, including both allies and rivals. Its operations have included the use of industrial espionage,[1] cyber espionage.[2] and mass surveillance.[3][4][5]

Many of these operations have generated public criticism as being unethical; examples include the overthrow of foreign governments, nonconsensual human experiments, extraordinary rendition, torture, targeted killings, assassinations, and the funding and training of militants who would go on to kill civilians and non-combatants.[3][4][5] Through a combination of hacking and secret court orders against American technology companies, the United States has also employed mass surveillance of ordinary individuals, both American and foreign nationals alike.[4]

Edward Snowden disclosures on global surveillance

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Main article: Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present)

A cache of top secret documents leaked in 2013 by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who obtained them while working for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest contractors for defense and intelligence in the United States.,[6] revealed operational details about the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its international partners' global surveillance[7] of foreign nationals and U.S. citizens. In addition to a trove of U.S. federal documents, Snowden's cache reportedly contains thousands of Australian, British and Canadian intelligence files that he had accessed via the exclusive "Five Eyes" network. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian, attracting considerable public attention.[8] The disclosure continued throughout the entire year of 2013, and a significant portion of the full cache of the estimated 1.7 million documents[9] was later obtained and published by many other media outlets worldwide, most notably The New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Der Spiegel (Germany), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), L'espresso (Italy), NRC Handelsblad (the Netherlands), Dagbladet (Norway), El País (Spain), and Sveriges Television (Sweden).[10]

These media reports have shed light on the implications of several secret treaties signed by members of the UKUSA community in their efforts to implement global surveillance. For example, Der Spiegel revealed how the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) transfers "massive amounts of intercepted data to the NSA",[11] while Sveriges Television revealed the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) provided the NSA with data from its cable collection, under a secret treaty signed in 1954 for bilateral cooperation on surveillance.[12] Other security and intelligence agencies involved in the practice of global surveillance include those in Australia (ASD), Britain (GCHQ), Canada (CSEC), Denmark (PET), France (DGSE), Germany (BND), Italy (AISE), the Netherlands (AIVD), Norway (NIS), Spain (CNI), Switzerland (NDB), as well as Israel (ISNU), which receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens that is shared by the NSA.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]

The disclosure provided impetus for the creation of social movements against mass surveillance, such as Restore the Fourth, and actions like Stop Watching Us and The Day We Fight Back. On the legal front, the Electronic Frontier Foundation joined a coalition of diverse groups filing suit against the NSA. Several human rights organizations have urged the Obama administration not to prosecute, but protect, "whistleblower Snowden": Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, and the Index on Censorship, inter alia.[21][22][23][24]

Cyber espionage

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Snowden's revelations confirmed that the United States, together with Israel, conducted Operation Olympic Games, a covert and still unacknowledged campaign of sabotage by means of cyber disruption, directed at Iranian nuclear facilities. As reported, it was one of the first known uses of offensive cyber weapons.[25] Started under the George W. Bush administration in 2006, Olympic Games was accelerated under President Obama, who heeded Bush's advice to continue cyber attacks on Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz.[25] Amongst other things, they created the computer worm Stuxnet, which spread beyond Iran's nuclear facilities to the internet, causing collateral damage in other nations such as India and Indonesia.

Industrial espionage

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In 1994, United States trade officials were accompanied with CIA agents to various international locations such as London and Geneva to spy on Japanese auto executives and government officials during Japan-U.S. negotiations on automotive trade.[26]

An article in the New York Times[26] wrote:

Spying on allies for economic advantage is a crucial new assignment for the C.I.A. now that American foreign policy is focused on commercial interests abroad. President Clinton made economic intelligence a high priority of his Administration, specifically information to protect and defend American competitiveness, technology and financial security in a world where an economic crisis can spread across global markets in minutes.

Targeted killings and assassinations

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In April 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama placed Anwar al-Awlaki on a list of people whom the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was authorized to kill because of terrorist activities.[27][28][29] The "targeted killing" of an American citizen was unprecedented. Al-Awlaki's father and civil rights groups challenged the order in court.[27][29][30][31] Al-Awlaki was believed to be in hiding in Southeast Yemen in the last years of his life.[32] The U.S. deployed unmanned aircraft (drones) in Yemen to search for and kill him,[33] firing at and failing to kill him at least once,[34] before succeeding in a fatal American drone attack in Yemen on September 30, 2011.[35] Two weeks later, al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was born in Denver, was killed by a CIA-led drone strike in Yemen.[36][37][38] Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar's father, released an audio recording condemning the killings of his son and grandson as senseless murders.[39] In June 2014, a previously classified memorandum issued by the United States Department of Justice was released, justifying al-Awlaki's death as a lawful act of war.[40]

Intelligence activity by location

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Europe

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France

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In 1993, the CIA's Paris station launched an economic espionage operation to gain an advantage in negotiations over the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. They attempted to use a female operative posing as a public relations director for a save-the-rain-forest foundation as a honeypot trap to ensnare Henri Plagnol, an aide to French prime minister Édouard Balladur. However, Plagnol was warned by French counterintelligence officers who had seen through the plot and told him to play along. Over the course of two years, the French used Plagnol to turn the tables on the CIA, uncovering multiple CIA operatives and ultimately publicly expelling the CIA Paris station chief along with other key agents from the country.[26]

Germany

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Main article: American espionage in Germany

The CIA recruited over a dozen spies working in multiple German industries, including a double agent in German intelligence. These spies were uncovered in raids on the Ministry of Defense by German authorities in 2014. Angela Merkel, whose personal cellphone was tapped by the NSA, ordered the CIA's Berlin station chief to leave the country.[41][42]

In May 2021, Denmark's public service broadcaster, DR, revealed that the Danish Defence Intelligence Service helped the NSA spy on European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2012 to 2014, in a scheme codenamed as "Operation Dunhammer". Intelligence was also collected on other officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway.[43]

Middle East

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Iran

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Main article: 1953 Iranian coup d'état
See also: Tudeh Party and Iran hostage crisis

In 1953, the CIA worked with the United Kingdom to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who had attempted to nationalize Iran's petroleum industry, threatening the profits of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as BP.[44] Declassified CIA documents show that Britain was fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry and pressed the U.S. to mount a joint operation to depose the prime minister and install a puppet regime.[45] In 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the petroleum fields of the country.[45][46]

The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt). With help from British intelligence, the CIA planned, funded and implemented Operation Ajax.[47] In the months before the coup, the UK and U.S. imposed a boycott of the country, exerted other political pressures, and conducted a massive covert propaganda campaign to create the environment necessary for the coup. The CIA hired Iranian agents provocateurs who posed as communists, harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home to turn the Islamic religious community against the government. For the U.S. audience, the CIA hoped to plant articles in U.S. newspapers saying that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi's return to govern Iran resulted from a homegrown revolt against what was being represented to the U.S. public as a communist-leaning government. The CIA successfully used its contacts at the Associated Press to put on the newswire in the U.S. a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written.[45]

The coup initially failed and the Shah fled the country. After four days of rioting, Shi'ite-sparked street protests backed by pro-Shah army units defeated Mossadeq's forces and the Shah returned to power.[48]

The CIA subsequently used the apparent success of their Iranian coup project to bolster their image in American government circles. They expanded their reach into other countries, taking a greater portion of American intelligence assets based on their record in Iran.[48]

In August 2013 the CIA admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.[49] The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government."[50] The National Security Archive said it that while it "applauds the CIA's decision to make these materials available, today's posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to national security."[51]

East Asia

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The New York Times reported in May 2017 that "the Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward. Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades."[52]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Snowden Documents Show U.S. Spied on Petrobras, Globo TV Reports ", Bloomberg, September 8, 2013
  2. ^ "N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat", New York Times, March 22, 2014
  3. ^ a b Resolution 1507 (2006). Archived June 12, 2010, at the Wayback Machine Alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states
  4. ^ a b c DeYoung, Karen; Walter Pincus (2007-06-22). "CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-06-22.
  5. ^ a b Priest, Dana (2005-11-02), "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", Washington Post, retrieved 2007-02-19
  6. ^ "Who holds security clearances?". The Washington Post. June 10, 2013. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  7. ^ Barton Gellman (December 24, 2013). "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 25, 2013. Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system ...
  8. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (6 June 2013). "NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily". The Guardian. Retrieved August 16, 2013. Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama
  9. ^ "Pentagon Says Snowden Took Most U.S. Secrets Ever: Rogers". Bloomberg. Retrieved January 9, 2014. The Pentagon concluded that Edward Snowden committed the biggest theft of U.S. secrets in history, downloading about 1.7 million intelligence files, including information that could put personnel in jeopardy, according to lawmakers.
  10. ^ "NSA Primary Sources". Electronic Frontier Foundation. 19 November 2013. Retrieved December 14, 2013.
  11. ^ Hubert Gude, Laura Poitras & Marcel Rosenbach (August 5, 2013). "German intelligence Sends Massive Amounts of Data to the NSA". Der Spiegel. Retrieved December 14, 2013.
  12. ^ Gunnar Rensfeldt. "NSA "asking for" specific exchanges from FRA – Secret treaty since 1954". Sveriges Television. Retrieved December 14, 2013. This document, dated April 18th of this year, clearly shows that the relation is very close indeed, seemingly growing even closer. 'NSA's relationship with the FRA, an extremely competent, technically innovative, and trusted Third Party partner, continues to grow. The FRA provided NSA with access to its cable collection in 2011'
  13. ^ Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras & Ewen MacAskill (September 11, 2013). "NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel". The Guardian. Retrieved September 14, 2013.
  14. ^ Tim Leslie & Mark Corcoran (8 November 2013). "Explained: Australia's involvement with the NSA, the US spy agency at heart of global scandal". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  15. ^ Julian Borger. "GCHQ and European spy agencies worked together on mass surveillance". The Guardian. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  16. ^ Greg Weston; Glenn Greenwald; Ryan Gallagher. "Snowden document shows Canada set up spy posts for NSA". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved December 13, 2013.
  17. ^ "Denmark is one of the NSA's '9-Eyes'". The Copenhagen Post. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  18. ^ Jacques Follorou. "La France, précieux partenaire de l'espionnage de la NSA". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  19. ^ Christian Fuchs, John Goetz und Frederik Obermaier. "Verfassungsschutz beliefert NSA". Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  20. ^ Kjetil Malkenes Hovland. "Norway Monitored Phone Traffic and Shared Data With NSA". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  21. ^ "USA must not persecute whistleblower Edward Snowden". Amnesty International. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  22. ^ "US: Statement on Protection of Whistleblowers in Security Sector". Human Rights Watch. 18 June 2013. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  23. ^ Transparency International Germany. "Transparency International Germany: Whistleblower Prize 2013 for Edward Snowden". Transparency International. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  24. ^ "US needs to protect whistleblowers and journalists". Index on Censorship. 24 June 2013. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  25. ^ a b Sanger, David (1 June 2012). "Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 October 2012. President Barack Obama "secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America's first sustained use of cyber weapons"
  26. ^ a b c "Emerging Role For the C.I.A.: Economic Spy", New York Times, October 15, 1995
  27. ^ a b Miller, Greg (April 6, 2010). "Muslim cleric Aulaqi is 1st U.S. citizen on list of those CIA is allowed to kill". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 9, 2010.
  28. ^ Shane, Scott (April 6, 2010). "U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 8, 2010. Retrieved April 6, 2010.
  29. ^ a b Leonard, Tom (April 7, 2010). "Barack Obama orders killing of US cleric Anwar al-Awlaki". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on April 11, 2010. Retrieved April 8, 2010.
  30. ^ "Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta; American Civil Liberties Union". Aclu. September 13, 2012. Retrieved October 23, 2012.
  31. ^ Perez, Evan (December 8, 2010). "Judge Dismisses Targeted-Killing Suit". The Wall Street Journal.
  32. ^ "Yemen charges U.S.-born cleric with plot to kill foreigners", Associated Press. November 2, 2010; retrieved November 2, 2010.
  33. ^ Coughlin, Con; Sherwell, Philip (May 2, 2010). "American drones deployed to target Yemeni terrorist". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  34. ^ "Anwar al-Awlaki Targeted By U.S. Drones After Osama Bin Laden Raid". ABC News. May 6, 2011. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  35. ^ "Islamist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki 'killed in Yemen'". BBC News. September 30, 2011. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
  36. ^ Kasinov, Laura, "Fatal Strikes Hit Yemen as Violence Escalates", The New York Times, 15 October 2011
  37. ^ Herridge, Catherine, "Obama Administration Pressed for Accountability After Americans Killed in Anti-Terror Airstrikes", Fox News, October 25, 2011 [1]
  38. ^ Erdbrink, Thomas (October 18, 2011). "Anwar al-Awlaki's family speaks out against his son's death in airstrike". The Washington Post.
  39. ^ "Official: Drone attack kills Al-Awlaki's son in Yemen". CNN. October 15, 2011. Archived from the original on December 20, 2011.
  40. ^ Lauter, David (June 23, 2014). "Memo justifying drone killing of American Al Qaeda leader is released". Los Angeles Times.
  41. ^ Chambers, Madeline (July 20, 2014). "Berlin tells CIA station chief to leave in spy scandal". Reuters. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  42. ^ Brennan, Margaret (July 11, 2014). "Germany booted, but didn't "expel" CIA chief". CBS News. Retrieved April 25, 2021.
  43. ^ "NSA spying row: Denmark accused of helping US spy on European officials". BBC. 31 May 2021.
  44. ^ The New York Review of Books, "A Crass and Consequential Error," reviewing the book Patriot of Persia: Muhammad Mossadegh and a Tragic Anglo-American Coup by Christopher de Bellaigue, 16 August 2012.
  45. ^ a b c "Special Report: Secret History of the CIA in Iran". New York Times. 2000.
  46. ^ "Country Studies: Iran". Library of Congress. Retrieved March 7, 2007.
  47. ^ National Security Archive, cited in "National Security Archive Muhammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran", edited by Mark J. Gasiorowski and Malcolm Byrne, Syracuse University Press 2004.
  48. ^ a b Bayandor, Darioush (April 2010). Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-57927-9.
  49. ^ Dehghan, Saeed Kamali; Norton-Taylor, Richard (19 August 2013). "CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup". The Guardian.
  50. ^ Dan Merica; Jason Hanna (19 August 2013). "In declassified document, CIA acknowledges role in 1953 Iran coup". CNN Politics.
  51. ^ Byrne, Malcolm, ed. (August 19, 2013). "CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup". National Security Archive. Retrieved April 28, 2021.
  52. ^ Mazzetti, Mark; Goldman, Adam; Schmidt, Michael S.; Apuzzo, Matt (20 May 2017). "Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-05-20.
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