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Interesting piece on the CIA Milan rendition here. (via Daniel Drezner) Interesting in a "beat your head against a wall" sort of way.

The trick is known to just about every two-bit crook in the cellular age: If you don't want the cops to know where you are, take the battery out of your cell phone when it's not in use.

Had that trick been taught at the CIA's rural Virginia training school for covert operatives, the Bush administration might have avoided much of the current crisis in Europe over the practice the CIA calls "rendition," and CIA Director Porter Goss might not have ordered a sweeping review of the agency's field operations.
...
Even when not in use, a cell phone sends a periodic signal indicating its location, enabling the worldwide cellular network to know where to look for it in case of an incoming call.

Those signals allowed police investigating Abu Omar's mysterious disappearance to ultimately construct an almost minute-by-minute record of his abduction, and to identify nearly two dozen people as his abductors.

Aides use words such as "horrified" to describe Goss' reaction to the sloppiness of the Milan rendition, and the relative ease with which its details have been unearthed by the Italian police and the news media.

In response, Goss has ordered a "top-down" review of the agency's "tradecraft," as the nuts and bolts of the spy business is known.

So amateurish was the Milan rendition that the Italian lawyer for Robert Seldon Lady, whom prosecutors identify as the former CIA chief in Milan, says Lady's primary defense will be that he was too good a spy to have been involved with something so badly planned and carried out.

Much much more in the story, including many instances of the highly trained CIA secret agents constantly using their real names.

One operative made sure when checking into hotels to hand over her frequent flyer number, so as to receive extra credit for her hotel stay.

"You're licensed to kill, not get frequent flier miles" or... "The Man Who Flew Too Much." Happy New Year, everybody!

Posted by Dorkafork at January 1, 2006 03:45 PM | TrackBack (4)

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