The Washington Post reports that several documents leaked earlier this year by Edward Snowden establish a collaborative relationship between the National Security Agency (NSA) and its surveillance activities and the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) drone program.
Specifically, The Post and Mashable explain that the NSA’s Internet traffic and email interception practices coupled with elite hacking capabilities were used to collect the intelligence necessary to authorize drone strikes against terrorist suspects.
In one operation, the NSA obtained files that could be used to help the NSA map the movement of terrorists and aspiring extremists in Yemen, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, and Iran. Another single penetration yielded 90 encrypted al-Qaeda documents, 16 encryption keys, 30 unencrypted messages and ‘thousands’ of chat logs . . . .
The Post, moreover, illustrates that Hassan Ghul—an al Qaeda associate who assisted the CIA in its search for bin Laden—may have been a victim of this partnership. Ghul was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan’s tribal belt in October of last year.
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