conspiracy analyst
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Joined: 27 Sep 2005
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 Posted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 7:05 pm Post subject: Official:CIA Working for Wall Street |
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Waterboarding techniques go inshore after having gone offshore....
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CIA workers trained Wall Street firms to detect lies
Wall Street firms are apparently paying CIA operatives to train staff to root out lying colleagues. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
It is hard to imagine two more distrusted and reviled professions. One has been accused of torturing detainees and failing to track down Islamist terror suspects; the other is widely perceived to be responsible for the worldwide recession.
Now, in a move likely to provoke a perfect storm of opprobrium, the two have joined forces: enterprising CIA officers who want to earn a little extra have been given the green light to moonlight for Wall Street firms.
According to a forthcoming book by US reporter Eamon Javers and confirmed by the CIA, financial firms have recruited spooks on active service to help determine if colleagues are telling the truth.
According to Javers, Business Intelligence Advisors (BIA), a Boston-based investment research firm that boasts links to the US intelligence apparatus, employed workers with backgrounds in interrogation and interviewing to train hedge fund managers in a technique called tactical behaviour assessment. This purports to allow practitioners to tell if someone is being dishonest by reading verbal and behavioural clues, such as fidgeting or qualifying statements with words like "honestly" and "frankly".
One case described by Javers shows how veteran CIA workers helped hedge fund clients to make enormous investment decisions by assessing the veracity of a company's financial presentation.
In an episode described by Javers, BIA specialists listened in on a financial presentation by executives at a company called UTStarcom, a purveyor of internet and networking equipment. The BIA specialists had problems with an answer about the company's revenue recognition, finding in the response a "detour statement" intended to avoid commenting on the matter. The specialists said the statement indicated the executive was minimising the accounting problems. The next quarter, UTStarcom's results shocked the market with revenues significantly below expectations. The reason? Problems with revenue recognition accounting. Shares declined and anyone who had sold the shares short would have reaped huge profits.
In a statement, BIA said it had not co-operated with Javers on the book, and described the depiction of its work in Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage as "inaccurate and misleading".
The company said: "There are no active-duty CIA personnel providing services to BIA's clients" – although it acknowledged that it had employed active-duty CIA officers in the past.
It is common for retired CIA officers to take lucrative jobs in security, defence and intelligence contracting, working for private clients as well as the federal government. But others take on extra work while still employed by the agency, doing everything from teaching at local colleges to training clients in lie-detection techniques.
Like other federal government workers, agents must get permission from their bosses for outside work.
"If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety," CIA spokesman George Little said. |
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