Israel Matzav

CIA gets lots of job applicants from Hamas, Hezbullah and al-Qaeda

A document turned over to the Washington Post by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden shows that the United States government investigates thousands of employees every year for suspected terror ties, and that Hamas, Hezbullah and al-Qaeda members have repeatedly sought employment with the CIA.

The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds raised questions, roughly one out of every five had “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The groups cited most often were Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but the nature of the connections was not described in the document.

So sharp is the fear of threats from within that last year the NSA planned to launch at least 4,000 probes of potentially suspicious or abnormal staff activity after scrutinizing trillions of employee keystrokes at work. The anomalous behavior that sent up red flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.

This shrouded, multimillion-dollar hunt for insider threats has suffered from critical delays in recent years and uneven implementation across agencies, the budget records show. And the spy agencies’ detection systems never noticed that Snowden was copying highly classified documents from different parts of the NSA’s networks.

The hunt is apparently motivated by Wikileaks. But it's not being done efficiently. As noted, Snowden fell through the cracks, because he was a contractor and not an employee.

Fellow Israelis: Aren't you glad we share intelligence information with the United States while they spy on us? What could go wrong?

Labels: al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, Hamas, Hezbullah, intelligence, Wikileaks

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:32 PM