Intelligence Services

There has long been a tradition at Oxford--it was certainly going strong in my day in the late '60s--in which certain tutors would discreetly suggest to select students that they "might care to have a word with a few fellows from the Foreign Office." Thus were Britain's future spooks recruited for the fabled MI6. Sebastian, a friend of mine tapped in this manner, was an obvious choice: brilliant, fluent in several languages, socially well-connected and, or rather but, flamboyantly gay.

Like savvy boxers with knockout punches, Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, and the Muslim Brotherhood have circled each other warily since the Arab Spring toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. But after the SCAF-appointed election commission's banning last week of 10 candidates for the May presidential elections, including the Brotherhood's nominee, Khairat Shater, the phase of circumspection may be ending. Egyptians could be in for rougher times. The SCAF abandoned Mubarak only after it realized that Egyptian protesters would not succumb to intimidation and force.

For Americans who travel abroad, the world looks like a more menacing place. Since Sept. 11, a swarm of travel intelligence services and executive tracking programs have emerged, capitalizing on the fear of things foreign. Most aim to inform business junketeers about the potential for disease, delays and danger. Business, they say, has been vigorous. "We're adding double the number of clients per month than we were before Sept.

Twenty years ago, a reunified Germany opened the archives of the East German secret police, the dreaded Stasi, to the public. Thousands of Germans were horrified to learn that their friends and neighbors had been spying on them for the repressive East German government. Now, Germans are once again dismayed by their country's intelligence service. First, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution came under fire after the revelation that a group of neo-Nazis had allegedly committed at least 10 killings while eluding authorities with apparent ease.

They made an unlikely pair: One was a jolly Kurdish intelligence officer, the other a Falloujan with ties to the insurgency. Yet twice a week for several months, Gen. Hussain Ali Kamal, head of the Interior Ministry's spy service, broke bread with a burly man in his 20s code-named Muslah, or the reformer, who often wore a traditional Arab dishdasha robe. "What did Saddam Hussein ever do for Iraq?"

The FBI pressed ahead Friday with plans to restructure its intelligence operations, even as the announced departure of CIA Director George J. Tenet stirred debate over the future shape of the nation's intelligence agencies. Bureau officials offered up details of a proposed intelligence service within the FBI, a "directorate of intelligence" that would have budget authority over FBI intelligence assets and programs.

At night, when the lawns are empty and the lamps along the walking paths are the only source of light, Topcider Park on the outskirts of Belgrade is a perfect meeting place for spies. It was here in 1992, as the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic violence, that a wary CIA agent made his way toward the park's gazebo and shook hands with a Serbian intelligence officer. Jovica Stanisic had a cold gaze and a sinister reputation.

At H-hour, 1 a.m. Wednesday, a team of 20 Navy SEAL commandos stole onto Paitilla airfield intent on disabling the airplanes that Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega was expected to use to flee the massive American onslaught. According to intelligence reports, the airfield was lightly defended. But instead of the expected cakewalk, the SEALs encountered three armored personnel carriers full of heavily armed and well-trained troops. A "hellacious fire-fight" ensued.

Twenty years ago, a reunified Germany opened the archives of the East German secret police, the dreaded Stasi, to the public. Thousands of Germans were horrified to learn that their friends and neighbors had been spying on them for the repressive East German government. Now, Germans are once again dismayed by their country's intelligence service. First, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution came under fire after the revelation that a group of neo-Nazis had allegedly committed at least 10 killings while eluding authorities with apparent ease.

The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence "surge" that will make the agency's station there among the largest in CIA history, U.S. officials say. When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the CIA already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.

Germany's intelligence service came under sharp criticism Monday after revelations that a neo-Nazi terrorist group had been operating in the country virtually undetected for more than a decade and allegedly killed at least 10 people, most of them Turkish immigrants. Authorities say a group calling itself the National Socialist Underground was responsible for the slayings of eight people of Turkish origin, a Greek and a policewoman, some of whom were shot in the face at point-blank range.

India's home minister said Thursday that it was too early to blame any particular militant group or individual for the deadly blasts that struck Mumbai at rush hour a day earlier, but that the coordinated attack was the work of terrorists. He also defended the intelligence services' record in the run-up to the three explosions, adding that they had no information that an attack was coming. "Whoever planned this attack worked in a very, very clandestine manner," Palaniappan Chidambaram told reporters Thursday morning.

The message could hardly have been clearer, or more brutally delivered: the beheaded corpse of a respected provincial politician, dumped by the roadside. Jawad Zehak, whose decapitated remains were recovered Tuesday, was the leader of the provincial council in Bamian, perhaps the most peaceful of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. It is one of seven areas across the country where the Afghan police and army are supposed to begin taking over security responsibility next month. Afghanistan's main intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, swiftly blamed insurgents for Zehak's abduction and killing, and declared it part of a deliberate pattern of intimidation in the areas slated for security transition.

When the highway shootouts and roadblocks by gunmen in her hometown finally became too much, Karla Garza found sanctuary in the unlikeliest of places: the big, bad capital, Mexico City. Garza, a 21-year-old marketing student, switched campuses in December after her parents decided that even with its rampant robberies and kidnappings, Mexico City was safer than their home in Monterrey, a once-quiet northern city that for months has served as a battlefield for warring drug gangs. "Ten years ago, my parents never would have imagined sending me to live in [Mexico City]

Omar Suleiman has always been at the vortex of power. As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's most trusted loyalist, he headed his country's intelligence service and handled its most sensitive dealings with Israel and the Palestinians. His relentless pursuit of Islamic radicals in Egypt made him a natural ally of the Bush and Obama administrations. Now a man most comfortable in the shadows finds himself operating under the lights of state television, a vice president armed with the powers of the presidency casting for some formula of words and actions that might douse the rage in the streets.

A suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up Wednesday next to a minibus carrying members of Afghanistan's main intelligence service, killing at least two other people and injuring more than 30. It was the second bombing in the capital in eight days, a slight but worrying uptick in attacks in Kabul. At almost the same time, a remote-controlled bomb killed the deputy intelligence chief and his driver in the eastern province of Kunar. The dual attacks on intelligence officials coincided with a deadly day for Western troops in Afghanistan.

A team of Southern California aerospace companies is covertly recruiting engineers across the country for a new generation of spy satellites under what analysts believe is the largest intelligence-related contract ever. The supersecret project for the National Reconnaissance Office is estimated to be worth up to $25 billion over two decades, providing a major boost to the Southland's aerospace industry and solidifying the area's dominance of high-tech space research.

Cuba blamed British and U.S. intelligence services for a shooting incident that prompted Britain to expel the Cuban ambassador and an attache. Ambassador Oscar Fernandez-Mell and his commercial attache, Carlos Manuel Medina Perez, left the country after Medina Perez was accused of firing shots at a group of people outside his London home. But the Cuban Embassy claimed that the attache had actually opened fire on a CIA operative who tried to get him to defect.

The stepped-up pace of CIA operations in Pakistan "is taking a serious toll" on Al Qaeda's operational abilities, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said Tuesday. Panetta did not specifically mention missile strikes by unmanned drones in Pakistan because the U.S. government does not officially acknowledge the program. But it is well known that drones are the main tool the CIA uses to target militants in the country. "The basis for that increased pace is intelligence, weather and also just the threat streams we're getting on potential attacks in Europe," Panetta said.

In a tacit admission that the U.S. squandered a chance to gain valuable information after the failed Christmas Day airliner bombing, the nation's intelligence director testified Wednesday that authorities had been too quick to read the suspect his Miranda rights and grant him access to an attorney. Dennis C. Blair said that a newly created team of elite interrogators should have been called in to question Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and that top officials in Washington should have been consulted.