Condi Rice and pre-war intel hype
The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.

Are these women right to be angry with the Bush administration?
posted by specialk420 on Oct 3, 2004 - 23 comments

Everyone's favorite unidentified 22-year CIA veteran who used to hunt Osama bin Laden, Anonymous, is back with a new book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," and suggests that al-Qaida may try to reward Bush before the election. Last year, Anonymous created a stir with another book and was interviewed on Nightline. If only he had a scramble suit, he could do a book tour.
posted by homunculus on Jun 23, 2004 - 19 comments

"XD38" - Nexus Personality A site for multifaceted people who are technical and artistic, verbal and mechanical, rational and intuitive; who are interested in everything; who find themselves to be a kind of natural link between far-ranging, diverse areas of human endeavor.
posted by konolia on Feb 28, 2004 - 50 comments

Tenet tells all! "Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present for a 4 1/2-hour appearance by Tenet behind closed doors with Intelligence Committee members Wednesday, said Tenet named the official. But the Illinois Democrat said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings." Alright, politically savvy mefites, who is it? Register your guesses now, and get the grand prize (umm, a sense of accomplishment?) when the info gets leaked!
posted by hank_14 on Jul 17, 2003 - 54 comments

The First Casualty. The New Republic is one of the few left-leaning political journals who supported the war on Iraq. Now it seems like they've come to their senses and have written a very exhaustive story on how exactly Team Bush manipulated evidence to support the war on Iraq: "Rather, interviews with current and former intelligence officials and other experts reveal that the Bush administration culled from U.S. intelligence those assessments that supported its position and omitted those that did not. The administration ignored, and even suppressed, disagreement within the intelligence agencies and pressured the CIA to reaffirm its preferred version of the Iraqi threat. Similarly, it stonewalled, and sought to discredit, international weapons inspectors when their findings threatened to undermine the case for war."
posted by owillis on Jun 19, 2003 - 11 comments

the administration is "underestimating the enemy." It has failed to address the root causes of terror, he said. "The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged and generally underfunded." Would we prefer to have this man providing intelligence information to our president more than a woman who has an oil tanker named after her?
posted by specialk420 on Jun 16, 2003 - 33 comments

The more you earn, the lower your IQ. That's the clear but unexpected result from the second National IQ test broadcast by the BBC. The test is still online if you are curious. The first test was discussed here. For a higher IQ, be an unemployed Irish man and drink too much.
posted by grahamwell on May 5, 2003 - 44 comments

Osama Bin Laden Link To Iraq found by a Toronto Star reporter, Mitch Potter. "The documents, discovered yesterday in the bombed-out headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's most feared intelligence service, amount to the first hard evidence of a link long suspected by the United States but dismissed as fiction by many Western leaders." [more]
posted by alicesshoe on Apr 27, 2003 - 72 comments

Brains vs. bathing suits. University of Michigan researchers gathered men and women together and had them try on either a bathing suit or a sweater to see which they preferred for 20 minutes. Then they were asked to take a math test to "pass the time." The results? No appreciable difference for men while women scored considerably lower while in bathing suits. Could obsession with appearance be holding our girls back?
posted by hipnerd on Dec 20, 2002 - 37 comments

Bush anything but moronic, according to author According to the author Bush may be sociopathic. I find this scary, but I am also very skeptical about it. What do you guys think? Any psychologist out there that know anything about this?
posted by tljenson on Nov 29, 2002 - 51 comments

Is bin Laden dead? Some people in the intelligence community are apparently beginning to think so and are even quietly speaking to reporters about it.
posted by TBoneMcCool on Jul 27, 2002 - 77 comments

Musicians are really smart. They have larger and more sensitive brains than non-musicians, and their collective IQ is much higher. They have 130% more grey matter in one area of their auditory cortexes. The question of how this explains Ozzy Osbourne nonwithstanding, I'll bet if you're really, really smart, you could be one of the new members of Men Without Hats. Must be very knowledgeable in midi, sequences, and sampling.
posted by iconomy on Jun 25, 2002 - 18 comments

MI6 warned US of Al-Qaeda attacks MI6 warned the American intelligence services about a plot to hijack aircraft and crash them into buildings two years before the September 11 attacks.... I do not subsribe but this is summary of article and may prove very "annoying" to the agencies and people involved. The Sunday Times is too reputable to be readily dismissed as off the wall.
posted by Postroad on Jun 9, 2002 - 38 comments

Go for the gold! Concord 2002: Site of the upcoming Loebner Prize. Can reigning champion A.L.I.C.E. repeat her triumph? Chat bots from around the globe are scouting out their rivals on the AI competitive circuit and studying their crib notes.
posted by otherchaz on Feb 9, 2002 - 0 comments

Marijuana's effects on the brain are reversible "It appears that cognitive impairment from marijuana use is temporary and related to the amount of marijuana that has been recently smoked rather than permanent and related to an entire lifetime consumption." Hmm, I suppose it's good to know I can go back to being smart after being stupid for a little while.
posted by iceblink on Oct 18, 2001 - 12 comments

What did we know? And what are we doing now? The best background summary I've yet seen, and the concrete info on the difficulties the intelligence agencies are facing is sobering.
posted by rushmc on Sep 23, 2001 - 3 comments

Realism Urgently Needed - Or Not? David Ignatius's column today in The Washington Post addresses the question of effectiveness in the war against terrorism. He tells the sobering story of the CIA's collaboration with the terrorist Ali Hassan Salameh. The downside: "The most obvious (lesson) is that collecting intelligence about terrorists is a truly dirty business. This world cannot be penetrated without help from members or friends of the terrorist network". The upside: "Paradoxically, these tragic days have probably been an ideal time for the CIA to be recruiting new sources of intelligence about terrorism. The barbaric attacks Tuesday aroused disgust around the world --- not least among civilized Muslims. Some of these disgusted Muslims will surely want to help the United States and its allies put the terrorists out of business." The crucial moral question: It's really a classic means/ends debate. Is it right - or just acceptably expedient - to collaborate with known terrorists in order to strike out at those we don't yet(or otherwise will never) know about?
posted by MiguelCardoso on Sep 16, 2001 - 12 comments

Good to know. (Sincere apologies if this is a double, triple, quadruple post. The MeFi search keeps timing out.)
posted by donkeyschlong on Sep 13, 2001 - 4 comments

Playing computer games makes kids smarter? Although it reads like a headline from The Onion, a British study funded by the ESRC has come to that conclusion. "They seemed able to focus on what they were doing much better than other people and also had better general co-ordination. Overall there was a huge similarity with top-level athletes."

Gotta go and show this to my boss...
posted by jedrek on Jul 22, 2001 - 11 comments

Law enforcement and intelligence agencies now have access to software that can remotely record every keystroke and see every file on a target PC. Data Interception by Remote Transmission (D.I.R.T.), developed by Codex Data Systems (you need a username and password to get past the opening screen) can supposedly see through PGP, firewalls, whatever you throw at it apparently. Only works against Win95 so far, but that won't last. Is this hogwash or something crucial?
posted by aflakete on Jun 4, 2001 - 15 comments

Kids are smarter than ever before, AOL chat transcripts notwithstanding. It seems to me that the fact that IQ tests measure culture acquisition as much as anything else may explain a lot of this, but I wonder if there may not be something to the "visual literacy" idea: are we (as a species) building a new type of perception, or honing old cognitive tools into something which might as well be new? And, if so, where might it lead us?
posted by rushmc on Jan 16, 2001 - 11 comments

An article on espionage and security lapses? FBI says No Thanks The FBI has seized a computer hard drive used by former Energy Department intelligence chief Notra Trulock, concerned that he may have included classified data in a proposed article. Or maybe they just wanted to spell check it for him.
posted by Outlawyr on Jul 20, 2000 - 1 comment

We're all a bunch of ignorami. Hooray! Hurrah! It's bliss!
posted by Mr. skullhead on Jul 17, 2000 - 13 comments