Amidst the celebrations over dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden's killing, some political figures have passed statements that they really should not be making.
Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta will move to Pentagon to become new US Defence Secretary to replace Robert Gates while his top military commander in Afghanistan Gen David Petraeus is to takeover as the new CIA Director.
Days after Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani called for an end to drone attacks in his country, unmanned American spy planes today unleashed 10 missiles at a compound in the volatile North Waziristan, killing at least 25 people, including civilians.
The 'Maharishi Valmiki International Airport, Ayodhyadham' has become the 68th civil airport terminal in the country to come under the umbrella of the specialised aviation security group of the central force.
Lisa Curtis, erstwhile Central Intelligence Agency South Asia analyst and ex-senior Congressional staffer on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said that the arrest and findings from the investigation of Chicago-based Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative John Coleman Headley, has awakened US officials to the gravity of the threat of the LeT and other Pakistan-based terrorist groups.
The White House has welcomed the release of American Central Intelligence Agency contractor Raymond Davis, arrested by Pakistani authorities after he shot and killed two men in Lahore in January. His release ended one of the most serious diplomatic stand-offs between Islamabad and Washington in nine years of partnering in the fight against terrorism.
The United States on Wednesday expressed its gratitude to the families of two Pakistani men gunned down by Central Intelligence Agency contractor Raymond Davis for pardoning him and said the Department of Justice was investigating the shooting incident.
United States national Raymond Davis, an alleged Central Intelligence Agency contractor who was arrested for gunning down two men in Lahore, on Friday insisted he acted in self defence and had diplomatic immunity during a hearing into murder charges against him at a Pakistani court, which adjourned the trial till March 3.
The United States has condemned the death sentence handed to American-Iranian ex-Marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati in Iran and asked Tehran to release him immediately.
The United States' Central Intelligence Agency, perceived to have the best spy network in the world, appears clueless about a crucial Indian political development."Privatisation of government-owned industries remains stalled and continues to generate political debate; populist pressure from within the UPA government and from its Left Front allies continues to restrain needed initiatives," says the World actbook section of the CIA website about the state of the Indian economy
Sabrina De Sousa, a United States consular officer in Milan, was abandoned by her own government and left to fend for herself in an alleged CIA kidnapping case in Italy. Rediff.com's George Joseph narrates her story.
The Central Intelligence Agency managed to kill one of its most wanted terrorists in the world -- Al Qaeda leader Anwar al Awlaki -- in a drone strike attack in September 2011 after hatching a fake marriage plot with a Croatian woman. Al Awlaki was linked with 2009's Fort Hood shooting and the foiled airplane underwear bomb that happened later in the same year.
'It may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons,' said new CIA chief Porter Goss.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has all but confirmed the Central Intelligence Agency's assertions that certain elements in Pakistan are working with the Al Qaeda and undermining the United States-led war on terror. "I would say they're not our theoretical ally; they are our ally," she said, but acknowledged, "there are elements in Pakistan that one worries that there are connections to the militants in the region."
Davis, whose arrest had sparked diplomatic tensions between the US and Pakistan, was released after paying a blood money of $2.3 million to the families of the victims, whom he shot dead on a road in Lahore in January.
The Barack Obama administration has announced the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate prison abuse cases that were carried out as part of the torture programme during the eight years of the George W Bush era. The announcement in this regard was made by Attorney General Eric H Holder soon after the Justice Department released a long-secret report on Central Intelligence Agency's interrogation techniques during the Bush administration's tenure, post-9/11.
Following the death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in an American drone strike, an interesting question has cropped up -- Will Islamabad offer the promised bounty money of Rs 50 million to the Central Intelligence Agency for killing Pakistan's top militant?The United States government had also announced a $ 5 million bounty on Mehsud. The Pakistan government had announced a reward for the capture, dead or alive, of Baitullah.
According to The Washington Post, the CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of the Afghan administration to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments.
The Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh police are sending special investigation teams to Kerala to assist the ongoing probe into the blast that rocked the Ernakulam district collectorate on July 10.The police teams from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, which have witnessed terror attacks in the past, will share their expertise with the Kerala police. Central intelligence agencies suspect that some activists of the SIMI might have been involved in the blast.
Pakistan People's Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said he can "bridge the gap" between his country and the United States even as he defended the handling of the case of Pakistani doctor who helped the Central Intelligence Agency to track down Osama bin Laden and was sentenced to 33 years in jail.
The government has upgraded the security cover of billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani to the top category of 'Z+' after a review of perceived threat perception to him by central intelligence and security agencies, official sources said on Thursday.
Security and intelligence agencies will soon be provided with a new platform which is technologically advanced, secure and helpful in dealing with new age criminals and anti-social elements, officials said on Wednesday.
"As most of these agencies carry out interrogation in their office(s), CCTVs shall be compulsorily installed in all offices where such interrogation and holding of accused takes place in the same manner as it would in a police station," the bench said in its order.
A hand-written memo in which United States President Barack Obama authorised the Navy SEALs team to "go in and get (Osama) bin Laden" at his hideout in Pakistan one year ago has been made public.
Under the India AI mission, supercomputing, comprising over 10,000 GPUs, will be made available to various stakeholders for creating an AI ecosystem.
United States President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, Retired General Jim Jones, tried to sugar-coat his trip to Pakistan last week along with Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta, describing it as 'a meeting between friends'. But between the lines, he acknowledged that it was to warn Islamabad to crack down on terrorists plotting in Pakistan and using Pakistani Americans against targets in the US.
United States President Barack Obama has visited headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency to congratulate the top spy outfit for its role in killing of the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Jones and Panetta bear the same message that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded a few days ago. Clinton had said that Pakistan would have to face very serious consequences if an attack on the US, which was planned in Pakistan, had succeeded. To avoid coming down heavily on Pakistan, the US has offered to cooperate with them to eliminate such threats.
The United States has sought to play down a former Dutch Prime Minister's revelation that his country did not prosecute Pakistani nuclear scientist A Q Khan for stealing atomic secrets in 1979 at the instance of CIA.
United States' Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta on Thursday met Home Minister P Chidambaram and discussed various issues including terrorism and unrest in neighbouring Pakistan. During the meeting, the two sides expressed satisfaction on the close cooperation between India and the US in the aftermath of the terror strikes on Mumbai in November, official sources said. The two sides also looked for new ways to forge closer alliance between the two countries.
Pictures of Osama bin Laden's dead body will not be released, United States President Barack Obama said on Wednesday, according to CBS news. Obama said in an interview that he would not release the post-mortem images of bin Laden taken to prove his death, the news outlet said in a statement.
Pakistani officials were kept deliberately out of loop by the United States in its operation to get Osama bin Laden as it feared they might "alert" the targets and "jeopardise" the mission, Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta said on Tuesday.
After bin Laden's reported death near Islamabad, rediff.com revisits B Raman's June 2010 analysis
Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta has said that the drone attacks against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban targets inside Pakistan would continue.
It was the American Central Intelligence Agency that made India and Pakistan share highly sensitive evidence after the deadly Mumbai terrorist attacks last November, says a report in the Washington Post.
Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley's plea bargain, under which he confessed to plotting the Mumbai terror attacks, throws light on close links between the Al Qaeda and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, according to former Central Intelligence Agency expert Bruce Riedel.Headley's story showed in clear contours the close relationship between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani militant group LeT, Riedel, who led the review of the Obama administration's Af-Pak strategy,said.
Human rights organisations have been alleging that the Guantanamo Bay military prison, set up by Bush Administration in 2002, was being used to detain and question terror suspects with harsh interrogation measures. The prison camp currently holds about 245 inmates. The executive orders in this regard were signed by Obama at a White House ceremony during his meeting with the retired military officials on Thursday.
Pakistan's fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party has announced it will provide financial aid of Rs 3 lakh to the families of the three men killed in an incident involving suspected Central Intelligence Agency contractor Raymond Davis. This is in a bid to forestall reported efforts by Saudi Arabia to arrange a "blood money" deal to settle the matter.
In a setback to the United States' efforts to seek early release of its national Raymond Davis, who was arrested for double murder, a Pakistani court on Thursday rejected his claim that he has diplomatic immunity and said it would go ahead with his trial. During the last hearing of the case, 37-year-old Davis, a suspected Central Intelligence Agency contractor, had filed an application in which he insisted that he had immunity.
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