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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Japanese army to boost intelligence gathering |
| 2006-12-31 |
| TOKYO - Japan’s army is to set up a new intelligence unit likely to include a human intelligence gathering service, the first for any branch of the modern nation’s military, a leading daily said on Sunday. The service is needed because increasing Japanese military activities abroad have left its troops more vulnerable, requiring more detailed local intelligence, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. According to sources quoted by the daily, the Ground Self-Defence Force — Japan’s army in all but name — would form a central intelligence unit of about 600 members. Yomiuri said the human intelligence group, expected to have around 70 members, would gather information through methods that would include tapping cooperative local sources. Officials at Japan’s Defence Agency were unavailable for comment. The Self-Defence Forces have a centralised intelligence unit created from all branches of the military, but Yomiuri said that until now the unit has been unable to use people to gather information, relying instead on satellite images, radio signals and analysis of foreign countries’ military affairs. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 JapanÂ’s army is to set up a new intelligence unit likely to include a human intelligence gathering service The Ninjas are coming! |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-12-31 20:59 |
| #5 Japan already has a very highly effective space imaging system with greater than one-meter resolution. I'm sure they're mapping China and Korea down to the smallest detail. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-12-31 15:08 |
| #4 Dusko Popov was also the inspiration for the character of James Bond. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-12-31 13:28 |
| #3 Japan getting back in the game. India linking arms with both us and Japan. Takes the sting out of losing the affection of Germans, Belgians, and the Arab street. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2006-12-31 12:28 |
| #2 I'll bet their Q San has a stash of serious stuff. Hell, come to think of it your average mid-level Japanese businessman has enough "stuff" and plenty of practice at riffling thru secrets various and sundry. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-12-31 07:26 |
| #1 The Japanese have the know how. Now if we can just keep the FBI out of it... Japanese Intelligence Japanese intelligence (that is, espionage) efforts against Pearl Harbor included at least two German Abwehr agents. One of them, Otto Kuhn, was a sleeper agent living in Hawaii with his family; he and they were essentially incompetent. The other, Dusko Popov, a Yugoslavian businessman, was thought quite effective by the Abwehr, but was actually a double agent whose loyalty was to the British. He worked for the XX Committee of MI5. In August 1941 he was tasked by the Abwehr with specific questions about Pearl (John Cecil Masterman's book on the Double Cross operation and Prange's Verdict both reproduce it), but the FBI seems to have evaluated the effort as of negligible importance. There has been no report that its existence, or even Popov's availability as a double agent, was passed on to US military intelligence or to civilian policy officials. J. Edgar Hoover dismissed Popov's importance noting that his British codename, Tricycle, was connected with his sexual tastes. In any case, he was not allowed to continue on to Hawaii and to develop more intelligence for the UK and US. Regardless, Prange demonstrates Popov's claim to have provided warning is overblown, and a case that his notorious questionnaire was a product of Abwehr thoroughness. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-12-31 05:16 |