‘The policy was devised in secret … within the confines of the Africa Unit. At its heart was François Mitterrand.’ Photograph: Brian Harris/The Independent/REX The trial this week of a Rwandan genocide suspect in a Paris courtroom is a well-earned victory for the French human rights groups who lobbied so hard and so long for […]

President acknowledges that ‘errors’ were made but stops short of formal apology President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted yesterday that French “errors” had contributed to the Rwandan genocide which killed an estimated 800,000 people in 1994. On the first visit by a French leader to Rwanda for 25 years, Mr Sarkozy did not formally apologise. Nor did […]

Is the defendant’s dock at the International Criminal Court reserved for leaders of small and poor countries that defy the West? Not if Rwanda has its way. It wants to charge some of France’s most celebrated leaders of the 1990s as collaborators in genocide. Last week the government of Rwanda issued a damning 500-page report […]

Rwanda has accused France of playing an active role in the genocide of 1994, in which about 800,000 people were killed. An independent Rwandan commission said France was aware of preparations for the genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia perpetrators. The report also accused French troops of direct involvement in the killings. It […]

On issues from domestic inequality to foreign policy, President Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union with a vow to take action on his own should Congress stonewall progress on his agenda. But will Obama’s policies go far enough? We host a roundtable with three guests: Jeremy Scahill, producer and writer of the Oscar-nominated […]

Bit by bit, with deep and understandable reluctance, the CIA has been opening its archives. Only fragments of its view of the Falklands War are currently available, but they are still worth close study. Intelligence material often plays a large part in the formulation of foreign policy, sometimes a decisive one, but it is almost […]

Paddy Ashdown raised fears in 1984 about clandestine approaches made by US agents but allegations were dismissed Margaret Thatcher told Paddy Ashdown there was no need for an inquiry and no evidence of improper activity. Photograph: Barbra Walton/Associated Press Margaret Thatcher was warned that the CIA did not always give sufficient advance notice when it […]

On 2 Apr 1982 Argentina invaded the Falklands. This wholly unexpected event, the seizure by force of British people and territory, generated a crisis of great intensity in the UK, one almost existential in character. margaretthatcher.org has already published many documents relating to the war from a range of sources, particularly the US, and we […]

Watch Part 2 of our extended discussion with three of the antiwar activists who broke into an FBI office in 1971 in Media, Pennsylvania. The burglars, John Raines, Bonnie Raines and Keith Forsyth, are speaking out this week for the first time following the publication of Betty Medsger’s book, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. […]

Like Snowden, we broke laws to reveal something that was more dangerous. We wanted to hold J Edgar Hoover accountable I vividly remember the eureka moment. It was the night we broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971 and removed about 1,000 documents from the filing cabinets. We had a hunch […]

(Henry Burroughs/ AP ) – In his office in the Executive Office Building, President Richard Nixon meets with Attorney General John N. Mitchell, left, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, in Washington on May 26, 1971. On March 24, 1971, I became the first reporter to inform readers that the FBI wanted the American people […]

On the Dec. 6, 1973 “Nightly News,” Carl Stern becomes the first reporter to expose COINTELPRO, a now-notorious FBI program that infiltrated and disrupted civil rights, anti-war and other political dissident groups. The files stolen from an FBI office outside Philadelphia in 1971 were stunning, describing secret efforts to spy on student protestors and infiltrate […]

For most of US history, spies didn’t have rules – even when they were targeting US citizens. The spymasters and their agents did whatever was necessary: blackbag break-ins, illegal phone taps, telegram and mail intercepts, plus the usual lying, stealing and killing. But in late 1970, a collection of ordinary citizens became so outraged by […]

One night in 1971, files were stolen from an F.B.I. office near Philadelphia. They proved that the bureau was spying on thousands of Americans. The case was unsolved, until now. PHILADELPHIA — The perfect crime is far easier to pull off when nobody is watching. So on a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad […]

One of the great mysteries of the Vietnam War era has been solved. On March 8, 1971, a group of activists — including a cabdriver, a day care director and two professors — broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They stole every document they found and then leaked many to the press, including […]

U.S. intelligence officials believe that Iranian commandos took part in a deadly attack on a compound of dissidents inside Iraq and then spirited seven members of the group back to Iran, highlighting Tehran’s increasingly free hand inside Iraq in the wake of the U.S withdrawal from the country. The Sept. 1 attack on a base […]

The MEK can use some of that cash to pay legal settlements with former members that they tortured, as well as the families of Iranians they killed when they fought on the side of Saddam against Iran. The controversial Iranian exile organization MEK, which the United States calls a terrorist group, could soon see a […]

(Reuters) – At least 47 people were reported killed at an Iranian dissident camp in Iraq on Sunday, the United Nations said, urging Baghdad to investigate the “tragic events” at a site north of the capital. The violence took place hours after a mortar bomb attack on the camp which the dissent group Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) […]

Iraq has threatened to send MKO members at Camp Ashraf back to Iran, where many fear imprisonment or death. At its monthly meeting of foreign ministers, the European Union has decided to remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from its list of terrorist organizations. The decision marks the first time the EU has “de-listed” an […]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — An Iranian opposition group based in Iraq, labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, gets protection from the U.S. military despite Iraqi pressure to leave the country. The U.S. considers the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, a source of valuable intelligence on Iran. The group also is credited with helping expose Iran’s […]

Camp Ashraf once housed more than 3,000 exiles, but most have moved to another camp (file photo) Violence has erupted at a camp in Iraq for dissident Iranians, who say dozens of residents have lost their lives. The Mujahideen-e Khalq group accused Iraqi forces of attacking Camp Ashraf north-east of Baghdad, killing at least 52 […]

Johannesburg – At the time of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda a horrified missionary was famously reported as exclaiming there were devils left in hell and they had all gone to Rwanda. The political legacy of that horror now appears to have moved to greater Johannesburg, as came into focus this week with the apparent […]

Patrick Karegeya formed an opposition party in 2010 Exiled former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya has been apparently murdered in a Johannesburg hotel room, South African police say. They say the dissident might have been strangled, with a rope and bloodied towel found in the hotel room safe. Mr Karegeya was stripped of the rank […]

Patrick Karegeya,Rwanda’s former spy chief, who was found dead, possibly strangled, in a hotel in Joburg. Johannesburg – Rwanda’s murdered ex-intelligence chief agreed to scrap his South African security detail before he was strangled to death in a Johannesburg hotel room, according to a political ally. Patrick Karegeya, 53, was discovered slumped on a bed […]

The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former […]

FILE – In this July 23, 2013 file photo, United Nations peacekeepers stop to greet Malian soldiers at a checkpoint, during a patrol on the outskirts of Timbuktu, Mali. For 10 months until January 2013, the city of Timbuktu was occupied by al-Qaida’s branch in North Africa. When they fled, they left behind thousands of […]

A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks. “It was, ‘Huh, hello? What are we doing here?’” said Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, […]

Obama administration says NSA data helped make arrests in two important cases – but critics say that simply isn’t true A new NSA data farm is set to open in the fall in Bluffdale, Utah. A former CIA agent said: ‘[Data-mining] played no role in the Headley case.’ Photograph: George Frey/Getty Images Lawyers and intelligence […]

During Keith Alexander’s presentation in Las Vegas, two slides read simply “54 ATTACKS THWARTED.” The NSA, President Obama, and members of Congress have all said NSA spying programs have thwarted more than 50 terrorist plots. But there’s no evidence the claim is true. UPDATE Dec. 17, 2013: In a new ruling that calls the NSA’s […]

Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”President Harry […]

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the C.I.A. for an internal study done by the agency that lawmakers believe is broadly critical of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program but was withheld from congressional oversight committees. The committee’s request comes in the midst of a yearlong battle with the C.I.A. over the release […]

Aborted inquiry found that British spies knew detainees were abused, deprived of sleep and made to wear hoods. The Obama Administration has repeatedly said it wishes to close the Guantanamo detention facility [AP] British spies knew about detainee abuse but were told they did not have to intervene because they might damage relations with the […]

Today the Government has published a report submitted to the Prime Minister by Sir Peter Gibson and Dame Janet Paraskeva, the Panel of the Detainee Inquiry, on the Inquiry’s work. The Inquiry’s Report speaks for itself. It is a rigorous, thorough and independent piece of work. It reveals more information than ever before about the […]

British intelligence officers were told to ignore evidence of breaches of the Geneva convention when detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan were being interrogated in 2002, a report by the aborted inquiry into alleged British complicity in torture has found. The inquiry was axed earlier this year after fresh criminal investigations were launched into allegations involving […]

Sir Christopher Curwen , who has died aged 84, was head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6) from 1985 to 1988, and it was under his aegis that the Service brought off one of its most spectacular coups, the exfiltration from Moscow of the agent Oleg Gordievsky. Successively code-named FELIKS and OVATION after […]

MI6 agents in Afghanistan were told they were not obliged to intervene if they witnessed suspected terrorists being harmed by their American captors, an official inquiry into allegations Britain was complicit in torture has disclosed. It also concluded that UK operatives “may have become inappropriately” involved in some cases of rendition of captives who were […]

Al Jazeera investigates how information gathered through torture of Gaddafi dissidents was used to track Libyans in UK. Last updated: 18 Dec 2013 18:04 Intelligence extracted by torture in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison has been linked to arrests of Libyan dissidents in the United Kingdom, an investigation by Al Jazeera’s People and Power has […]

CIA Central In Mandela’s Arrest … Kept Him On Terrorist List Until 2008 Everyone from President Obama to the mainstream news is lionizing Nelson Mandela. But the New York Times reported in 1990: The Central Intelligence Agency played an important role in the arrest in 1962 of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress leader who […]

As the United States mourns the loss of one of the world’s greatest leaders, it’s important to remember the long and tenuous relationship between the U.S. and Nelson Mandela. Long before Mandela was South Africa’s first black president, he was considered a radical and a terrorist by both the white South African regime and the […]

As South Africa prepares to hold a state funeral for Nelson Mandela, we look at how the CIA helped the South African government track down and capture Mandela in 1962. In 1990, the Cox News Service quoted a former U.S. official saying that within hours after Mandela’s arrest a senior CIA operative named Paul Eckel […]