Bob Woodward on 60 Minutes: Top Secret Weapon in Iraq

[cottonzway]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/04/60 minutes/main4415771.shtml

Here is the part of the interview that I am talking about:

But beyond all of that, Woodward reports, for the first time, that there is a secret behind the success of the surge: a sophisticated and lethal special operations program.

"This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders. That is one of the true breakthroughs," Woodward told Pelley.

"But what are we talking about here? It's some kind of surveillance? Some kind of targeted way of taking out just the people that you're looking for? The leadership of the enemy?" Pelley asked.

"I'd love to go through the details, but I'm not going to," Woodward replied.

The video:

 

[Astroboy]

I wonder if it has anything to do with this technology developed by the Isaelies. Radar that see through walls:


Imagine this but mounted on a Stryker or Comanche recon helicopter or C130 or a giant triangular shaped stealth blimp.

For years now we've had the ability to use lasers to bounce off window glass to listen to the audio inside buildings. The glass acts like a sound diaphragm. Could be that more sophisticated systems now can simply bounce a laser off any surface not just glass to pick out the audio vibrations.

I can also imagine that to locate an insurgent leader you can arrest one of his closest associates, secretly implant him with a micro RFID chip smaller than a grain of rice and let him loose again so he can lead you to the big boss. Then you can drop a smart bomb that tracks the RFID signal.

It is simple enough now to track cell signals and they've probably advanced beyond the ability to simple triangulate a general area of a cell signal. Bin Laden has been smart enough to know this an never uses cell phones. Maybe his low tech methods are precisely what keeps us from finding him just like how the Unibomber went completely off the grid and lived in a shack. This is how we got Pablo Escobar the notorious drug kingpin (a signal tracking plane piloted by US gov guys helped to locate him and Colombian police pinpointed the spot with a detector in a search car). I am guessing that militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr fled to Iran because he knew they could get him at any time.

 

[Astroboy]

Or something more like this wall penetrating audio tech:

Invention: Wall-beating bugging - mech-tech - 25 October 2005 - New Scientist Tech

"...the new "through-the-wall audio surveillance system" uses a powerful beam of very high frequency radio waves instead of light. Radio can penetrate walls – if they didn't, portable radios wouldn't work inside a house. The system uses a horn antenna to radiate a beam of microwave energy –between 30 and 100 gigahertz – through a building wall. If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface.
Although the radio reflection that passes back through the wall is extremely faint, the kind of electronic extraction and signal cleaning tricks used by NASA to decode signals in space can be used to extract speech."


I think the NSA is onto me cause I've had a hellofa time posting this link.

 

[fitzbew88]

I'm enjoying this thread, but these theories all assume that we know which building to listen to or monitor, or that we've lucked out and grabbed a terrorist cohort.

I think it must be something that helps us figure out which building they're in. Once we know that, the game is pretty much over.

Imagine driving through Baghdad with a super-sensitive DNA detector or something that can isolate (locate) a certain voice pattern in the midst of a large neighborhood or area.

Possibly mounted on a drone.

 

[0uterj0in]

My money's on: a new way to crunch sociological data that makes relationship networks emerge from the noise. A lot of gumshoe cop work feeding into massive computing resources.

 

[Astroboy]

My money's on: a new way to crunch sociological data that makes relationship networks emerge from the noise. A lot of gumshoe cop work feeding into massive computing resources.

They've already done this. This method was used to figure out the structure of Saddam's support network and the info was used to capture the one guy who knew where he was.

There are also several other ways we have of gathering intel without putting a man on the ground. During the first Gulf War the Iraq governemnts equipment such as copy machines, faxes, and computers, most of which are purchased overseas from foreign countries friendly to the US or directly from us were rigged to automatically give us intel when ever a copy, fax, or email was sent. We essentially had all their office equipment bugged with a little help from the manufacturers.

Now imagine that all the new telecom equipment - cell phone, cell towers, etc that make up the infrastructure of Iraq is also purchased from foreign countries after we took down Saddam it should be expected that all the current equipment is still rigged to give us intel.

What can we do now? It would be to hard to make a cell phone or computer camera or mike be remotely activated without the users knowledge. Then you can use some of the thousands of supercomputers over at the NSA to scan for a voice print match to locate a person of interest.

You can also rig data to be transmitted over power lines. We can use your telephone's mike to listen in on you passively even if you aren't using it and have the audio transmitted over your powerlines to a remote location that is tapped into the grid. I use a powerline system at home for my network. It works great. In fact, it is more reliable than a wireless system as long as your wires are not too old and thin.

During the first Gulf War we also used two prototype aircraft called the Joint Star which is a flying supercomputer radar platform built into a Boeing 707 which could track the movement of thousands of not only vehicles but troops as well cover an area of several hundred square miles. Now imagine this system with eavesdropping radar and real time tracking and voice analysis.

Remember some of this shit existed in 1991. Be afraid.

 

[Astroboy]

More info on the secret technology used by US to track terrorists from LA Times:

An Afghan 'October surprise'? - Los Angeles Times

Excerpt:

"U.S. officials also told The Times that the new surveillance systems allow the operators of the unmanned Predators to locate and identify individual human targets "even when they are inside buildings. ... The technology gives remote pilots a means beyond images from the Predator's lens of confirming a target's identity and precise location."

 

[Astroboy]

Here is a way to tag people using miniature RFIDs the size of dust particles. These signals can be easily picked up by Predators and have Hellfire missiles lock in on the signal.

Military Technology | The new secret technology winning in Iraq is Smart dust |

 

[Kieran]

Here is a way to tag people using miniature RFIDs the size of dust particles. These signals can be easily picked up by Predators and have Hellfire missiles lock in on the signal.

Military Technology | The new secret technology winning in Iraq is Smart dust |

There is always a new weapon or plane in the works in America. It just takes ten or fifteen years before the public has any idea about it, or if any at all.

 

[IgnoreTheFacts]

The top secret weapon they are getting ready to deploy is a biological agent that fixes people's dependence on religion and/or the invisible man.

After that comes the "make everyone the same color" weapon (my personal favorite) followed by the weapon to eliminate anyone that is left handed.

 

[Kieran]

The top secret weapon they are getting ready to deploy is a biological agent that fixes people's dependence on religion and/or the invisible man.

After that comes the "make everyone the same color" weapon (my personal favorite) followed by the weapon to eliminate anyone that is left handed.

I Like your analyse on stuff interesting.

 

[Flatwoods]

Here is a way to tag people using miniature RFIDs the size of dust particles. These signals can be easily picked up by Predators and have Hellfire missiles lock in on the signal.

Military Technology | The new secret technology winning in Iraq is Smart dust |

Microscopic RFID tags, or "smart dust" is what I believe we are using, and in a much bigger way than anyone suspects. My guess is that they're small enough to be inhaled, so if you can imagine a fleet of planes dispersing these over various countries(i.e. Syria, Saudia Arabia, Iran, etc.), then you can guess how they're being used on the battlefield. With an array of sensors placed throughout a city, one would have the ability to identify and track every single individual that resides there, and know when a foreign fighter or terrorist has arrived.