Spy Glossary — On the Origin of “GLOMAR Response” (March 18 1975) [UPDATE — Documentary film : Neither Confirm Nor Deny]

“We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the information requested but, hypothetically, if such data were to exist, the subject matter would be classified, and could not be disclosed.”

CIA
March 18 1975

March 18 2022 — American spies don’t just talk American English. They have their own spy lingo. Did you ever wonder what a “GLOMAR” answer is? On March 18, 1975, one of CIA’s greatest intelligence coups, Project AZORIAN, was fully exposed through a nationally broadcast syndicated report. Jack Anderson’s syndicated television report revealed the truth about the Glomar Explorer and its connection to a secret intelligence operation. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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On This Day — Reagan jokes about bombing Russia (August 11 1984) [MEDINT — Did Ronald Reagan Have Alzheimer’s Disease While in Office?]

“My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

President Ronald Reagan
(August 11, 1984)

August 11 2023 — President Ronald Reagan made the comment during a sound check for his Saturday radio address. It has long been rumored that President Reagan suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease years before it was diagnosed in 1994. During the eight hours of testimony related to the trial of John Poindexter, his onetime national security adviser, Reagan said “I don’t recall” or “I can’t remember” 88 times. Reagan could not identify Gen. John Vessey, who served for more than three years as his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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International Cat Day (August 8 2023) — Remembering CIA Operation Acoustic Kitty

“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him, and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they are ready. They took it out to a park bench and said: ‘Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything else – not the birds, no cat or dog – just those two guys!’ (…) They put him out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead.”

Victor Marchetti
Special assistant to the CIA Deputy Director

August 8 2023 — Next to the wolf, the cat is one of humanity’s oldest pets. On International Cat Day, the world celebrates the most popular pet on the planet. Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s blue-eyed Persian is probably the most famous kitty in spy history. Less known is the true story of the CIA US$ 20 million cyborg acoustic kitty. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_TODAY

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Homage to Claude Shannon — The Bit Player [Update : The Cost of Ignorance]

“In fact, the science of thermodynamics began with an analysis, by the great engineer Sadi Carnot, of the problem of how to build the best and most efficient engine, and this constitutes one of the few famous cases in which engineering has contributed to fundamental physical theory. Another example that comes to mind is the more recent analysis of information theory by Claude Shannon. These two analyses, incidentally, turn out to be closely related. “

Richard Feynman — Nobel Prize (1965)

“During an early foray into telegraphy, I realized that a little communication error could turn ‘Do you like me?’ into ‘Do you hear me?’ Which she was answering was very important to me.” — Claude Shannon

July 28 2019 — The documentary tells the story of Claude Shannon, the scientist who foresaw the information age and artificial intelligence. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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Remembering CIA Molly C. H. Hardy (Dec. 15 1946 – Aug. 7 1998)

“For a small cadre of CIA veterans, the death of Osama bin Laden was more than just a national moment of relief and closure. It was also a measure of payback, a settling of a score for a pair of deaths, the details of which have remained a secret for 13 years. Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy were among the 44 U.S. Embassy employees killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the embassy compound in Kenya in 1998.”

AP (5/29/2011)

The Memorial Wall is a memorial at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors CIA employees who died in the line of service. There are 140 stars carved into the white Alabama marble wall. 

August 7 2023 — The Memorial Wall is a memorial at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The wall honors CIA employees who died in the line of service. Today, there are 140 stars carved into the white Alabama marble wall. Eleven are known represent women. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

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On This Day — Remembering Hiroshima (August 6 1945)

 “I voiced to him [U.S. Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a nuclear weapon.”

General Dwight Eisenhower

August 6 2023 — Seven  decades after the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the real reasons behind the decision still divide historians. Recently declassified documents from the time suggest the nuclear strikes may have been performed not out of military necessity but to intimidate the USSR.  Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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Conspiracy Theories — A Night in August (August 5 1962) [Marilyn Monroe & Nelson Mandela]

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
(July 18, 1918 – Dec. 5, 2013)

August 5 2023 — Marilyn Monroe died of a barbiturate overdose late in the evening of Saturday, August 4, 1962, at her 12305 Fifth Helena Drive home in Los Angeles, California. Her body was discovered before dawn on Sunday, August 5. On the same day, Nelson Mandela was arrested in Durban, South Africa. Almost everyone has heard the conspiracy theory about Monroe being murdered by the CIA. Sadly, almost no one knows that the arrest of Nelson Mandela was made possible by a tip-off from the CIA. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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Three Years Ago –The August 4 2020 Beirut Explosion : Debunking the FBI Conspiracy Theory [UPDATE : FBI Junk-Science Report disappears mysteriously from Wikipedia]

“The amount of ammonium nitrate that blew up at Beirut port last year was one fifth of the shipment unloaded there in 2013, the FBI concluded after the blast, adding to suspicions that much of the cargo had gone missing.”

Reuters
(July 30 2021)

August 10 2021 — FBI forensic scientists have estimated that around 552 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded on August 4 2020 in the Port of Beirut, much less than the 2,754 tonnes that arrived on a Russian-leased cargo ship in 2013. Reuters, The Guardian, and other MSM are reporting this nonsensical junk-science report without even consulting scientific experts. Let me be very clear. This is total nonsense. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today

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On This Day — Remembering Sir Roger Casement (September 1 1864 – August 3 1916) — “Hanged on a Comma”

“If there be no right of rebellion against a state of things that no savage tribe would endure without resistance, then I am sure that it is better for men to fight and die without right than to live in such a state of right as this.”

Sir Roger Casement

 

Roger Casement attempted to smuggle weapons from Germany for the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week of April 1916.

August 3 2020 — Sir Roger David Casement (1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916) was an Irish nationalist who worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat and later became a humanitarian activist, poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations”, he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in Peru.

In April 1916, Roger Casement attempted to smuggle weapons from Germany for the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week. He was arrested, convicted and executed for high treason. But sometimes, even a death sentence can be ridiculously hilarious. Roger Casement himself wrote that he was to be “hanged on a comma”, leading to the well-used epigram. Follow us on twitter: @Intel_Today

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FBI — False Spying Accusations Damage American Science [UPDATE — Foreign Policy : “Chinese Scientists Are Leaving the United States”] — Postscript : “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

“The FBI interrogators knew nothing about how science is done, and they saw routine academic activities as criminal. (…) The charges against me were not only false, they were laughable.” 

Physicist Xiaoxing Xi —  Temple University
2020 Andrei Sakharov Prize

Figure caption
Professor Xiaoxing Xi, of Temple University, is a 2020 recipient of the APS Andrei Sakharov Prize.

April 27 2021 — The FBI is harassing innocent Chinese-American scientists and this ongoing witch-hunt could have disastrous consequences for U.S. fundamental research. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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