Nigel Inkster's comments contrast with claims made by officials that disclosures have seriously damaged UK security

A former senior British secret intelligence officer on Thursday played down any potential damage done by the leaks to the Guardian of the spying activities of GCHQ and America's National Security Agency, apparently contradicting claims made by UK security chiefs.

The leaks, by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were "very embarrassing, uncomfortable, and unfortunate", Nigel Inkster, former deputy chief of MI6, said.

While Inkster said it was too early to draw any definite conclusions about the impact of the leaks, he added:

"I sense that those most interested in the activities of the NSA and GCHQ have not been told very much they didn't know already or could have inferred."

Al-Qaida leaders in the tribal areas of Pakistan had been "in the dark" for some time - in the sense that they had not used any form of electronic media that would "illuminate" their whereabouts, Inkster said. He was referring to counter measures they had taken to avoid detection by western intelligence agencies.

Pro-Israel lobby says 250 activists will meet with their senators and representatives in Washington in a bid to win support Congressional support for military action in Syria.

The influential pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee will deploy hundreds of activists next week to win support in Congress for military action in Syria, amid an intense White House effort to convince wavering U.S. lawmakers to vote for limited strikes.

"We plan a major lobbying effort with about 250 activists in Washington to meet with their senators and representatives," an AIPAC source said on Saturday.

Congressional aides said they expected the meetings and calls on Tuesday, as President Barack Obama and officials from his administration make their case for missile strikes over the apparent use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.

The vote on action in Syria is a significant political test for Obama and a major push by AIPAC, considered one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, could provide a boost.

Over the years, the American Central Intelligence Agency has gained a reputation for being the most far-reaching, sophisticated, and effective government intelligence agency on the planet. At the same time, the CIA has also become known for its incredible paranoia and propensity to undertake costly, sometimes illegal, and often downright absurd projects in the name of gaining an edge on the competition. From spy cats to psychic hippies, the following are ten of the weirdest spy programs the government has proposed and funded over the years.

As President Barack Obama's attack on Syria appears to have been delayed for the moment, it is remarkable that Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting, on Sept. 11, with one of his predecessors, Henry Kissinger, reportedly to discuss strategy on forthcoming negotiations on Syria with Russian officials. The Kerry-Kissinger meeting, and the public outcry against the proposed attack on Syria to which both men are publicly committed, should be viewed through the lens of another Sept. 11 ... 1973.

On that day, 40 years ago, the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, was violently overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. Gen. Augusto Pinochet took control and began a 17-year dictatorial reign of terror, during which more than 3,000 Chileans were murdered and disappeared - about the same number killed on that later, fateful 9/11, 2001.

Allende, a socialist, was immensely popular with his people. But his policies were anathema to the elites of Chile and the U.S., so President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state and national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, supported efforts to overthrow him.

Kissinger's role in plotting and supporting the 1973 coup in Chile becomes clearer as the years pass and the documents emerge, documents that Kissinger has personally fought hard to keep secret. Peter Kornbluh of the nonprofit National Security Archive has been uncovering the evidence for years, and has recently updated his book, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Kornbluh told me that Kissinger was "the singular most important figure in engineering a policy to overthrow Allende and then, even more, to embrace Pinochet and the human-rights violations that followed." He said that Kissinger "pushed Nixon forward to as aggressive but covert a policy as possible to make Allende fail, to destabilize Allende's ability to govern, to create what Kissinger called a coup climate."

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday that his government would put its chemical weapons under international supervision within a month after it signs the UN Chemical Weapons Convention, but only if the United States stops its "policy of threats."

"Syria will send an appeal to the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in a few days. [The appeal] will have the technical documents necessary to sign the agreement," Assad said in an interview with Rossiya-24 television.

"These are standard procedures, and we will follow them," he added, speaking in Arabic with a Russian translation.

Assad emphasized, however, that Syria would not follow such procedures unilaterally while facing US threats and international support of rebel forces.

The NSA regularly shares raw US intelligence data with Israel without even removing information about American citizens, according to the latest revelation published by the Guardian. The report is based on a document leaked by Edward Snowden.

On Tuesday, September 11, the Guardian published a previously undisclosed document which revealed top-secret policies in place since 2009 that are used to share personal phone and Internet data pertaining to United States citizens with American ally Israel.

The document, a five-page memorandum authorized by the National Security Agency near the beginning of US President Barack Obama's first administration, outlines a deal between the NSA and Israel's SIGINT National Unit, or ISNU.

The Syria researcher and commentator who was cited by US leaders who have called for military action against the Middle Eastern country has been fired from her Washington-based think tank for lying about her qualifications.

"The Institute for the Study of War has learned and confirmed that, contrary to her representations, Ms. Elizabeth O'Bagy does not in fact have a Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University," the research group announced in an online statement Wednesday. "ISW has accordingly terminated Ms. O'Bagy's employment, effective immediately."

Both US Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator John McCain referenced an editorial she had written in the Wall Street Journal during congressional hearings during which they argued in favor of US military strikes against Syria. The 26-year-old wrote that "contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and Al-Qaeda die-hards."

During a short interview with Germany's DW News last Monday, former US National Security Adviser and Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski commented on the growing inefficiency of war due to the increased political knowledge of the public.

"Given the contemporary reality of what I have called in my writings 'Global Political Awakening,' a policy of force based primarily on Western and in some cases former colonial powers does not seem to me a very promising avenue to an eventual solution to the regional problem," said Brzezinski, referring to the situation in Syria.

Despite Brzezinski's noted long-term relationship with Obama which included a top foreign policy adviser position, Brzezinski denied any specific knowledge of his plans regarding Syria, saying that if the administration has a strategy, it's a "very well-kept secret."

My thanks to Michele Casati for the Heads-up on this blistering three minute speech by UKIP leader Nigel Farage in the European Parliament. He lambasts EU supremo Jose Manuel Baroso for the stupidity of the Green Agenda pursued by the E.U.'s leadership over the last decade, and the fuel poverty and industrial flight it has caused. Baroso's following two minute hate is well worth a watch too. In it he claims the scientific consensus on global warming is now up to 99%. It'll be 104% next year and all targets for the five year plan will have been met...


Keep fighting everyone. We are winning.

A comparison between what we are told and what we can see, with our own eyes. World Trade Center 7 collapsed after having been damaged by fire and falling debris, but the collapse looks very much like a controlled demolition.