Sunday, February 20, 2011

Document of the Week #5 Qaddafi's Borderless Wrath

Facing what may be the most serious challenge to his reign since seizing power in 1969, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi is, not surprisingly, lashing out at his opposition with a great deal of force, with reports of snipers, mercenaries, and the military all being deployed to smash those aligned against him. This is keeping with Kaddafi's style which at one time included dispatching his security and intelligence apparatus abroad to hunt down and eliminate exile opposition and to monitor the Libyan diaspora in order to thwart and deter the formation of threats to his regime.


This Document of the Week is a 12/15/1993 Counterterrorist Center Commentary from the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterterrorist Center regarding the disappearance of Mansur Kikhia who was mostly likely abducted by Libyan security services while in Cairo for a meeting of a Arab human rights group and with members of his family. Mansur Kikhia's disappearance has never been resolved, nor have many of the assassinations and vanishings of other exiled Libyan leaders, activists, and opponents of Qaddafi's regime.  

If Qaddafi survive, inevitably those opposing him will be driven into exile and likely hunted in a renewed effort to stamp out diasporic opposition to the Libyan dictator. 

12/15/1993 CIA Report Regarding Mansur Kikhia                                                                   

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

NSA Releases Special Research History and Related Indexes

In response to a FOIA request that I had submitted, the National Security Agency recently declassified and released two indexes listing over four hundred different NSA or related agencies histories on a variety of historical topics ranging from Japanese-Burma to instructions how to handle Ultra intelligence. Among the more interesting titles are:

SRH-019 Blockade-Running Between Europe and the Far East by Submarines, 1942-1944
SRH-026 Marshall Letter to Eisenhower on the Use of  "Ultra" intelligence, March 15, 1944
SRH-087 Mongolian Independence. 3 August 1945
SRH-162 History of Security Monitoring. WWI to 1955

The first aid contains not only a more complete list of Special Research histories ( 415 listed in total) but ; however these lists are not complete. The index also has a page count for each document thus allowing an astute requester to avoid fees and acquire dozens of NSA histories. There are a number of other report collections available to the curious. SRMA which are labeled as being "Discrete Records of Historical Cryptologic Import: U.S. Army." SRMD- "Discrete Records of Historical Cryptologic Import: Joint Server and/or U.S. Government Cryptologic Agencies." Other available include series which is for SRMN "Discrete Records of Historical Cryptologic Import: U.S. Navy," and SRNS which stands for "Summaries: Japanese Naval Radio Intelligence." This lists are not complete either but for the records that are listed, they do include a title for and page count of the relevant record.

New NSA SRH index                                                            

The second, older index only contains a partial list of Special Research Histories. However, it has annotated notes from what I suspect is someone who has processed a prior FOIA request for information contained within the histories. The notes reveal that certain SRHs are related to other SRHs. Fuller titles of some of the SRHs are also presented here.

OLD NSA SRH Idex                                                            

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Hunter S. Thompson Did Not Work for the NSA

The National Security Agency has confirmed that Hunter S. Thompson, founding practitioner of Gonzo journalism and the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 as well as working as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, ESPN as a sports columnist, among other journalistic pursuits did not work for the National Security Agency. However, it invoked Glomar with regard to any further information pertaining to Hunter S. Thompson.

Given the NSA's prior disclosure of information pertaining to Jack Anderson in response to the FOIA request that I had submitted to the NSA in that regard, I honestly believe that this decision is the product of a misunderstand on the part of the National Security Agency who probably did not recognize Hunter Stockton Thompson as being Hunter S. Thompson. As such, I have had a FOIA appeal submitted to the NSA and expect a prompt correction to this unfortunate decision to neither confirm nor deny possessing records or information on Hunter S. Thompson.

Final Response Letter from NSA RE: Hunter S. Thompson