A "burn notice" is an official statement issued by an intelligence agency to other agencies. It states that an asset or intelligence source is unreliable for one or several reasons, often fabrication, and must be officially disavowed. [1] This is essentially a directive for the recipient to disregard or "burn" all information derived from that individual or group. [2]
The related term kill notice or kill notification is used by news and photo agencies to declare manipulated or faked documents as "not to be used". [10] [11] In March 2024, the term attracted considerable press commentary after news agencies issued kill notices on the Mother's day photograph of Catherine, Princess of Wales, [12] [13] which was found to have been digitally altered. [14] [15] Phil Chetwynd, AFP's global news director, said that the kill notices issued on the photograph were more typical for photographs from the state news agencies of North Korea and Iran. [10] [11] [16]
William, Prince of Wales, is the heir apparent to the British throne. He is the elder son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales.
William Francis Buckley was a United States Army officer in the United States Army Special Forces, and a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Beirut from 1984 until his kidnapping and execution in 1985.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) is a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 1835 as Havas, it is the world's oldest news agency.
Theodore George "Ted" Shackley, Jr. was an American CIA officer involved in many important and controversial CIA operations during the 1960s and 1970s. He is one of the most decorated CIA officers. Due to his "light hair and mysterious ways", Shackley was known to his colleagues as "the Blond Ghost".
Catherine, Princess of Wales, is a member of the British royal family. She is married to William, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the British throne.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known by the Defense Intelligence Agency cryptonym "Curveball", is a German citizen who defected from Iraq in 1999, claiming that he had worked as a chemical engineer at a plant that manufactured mobile biological weapon laboratories as part of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program. Alwan's allegations were subsequently shown to be false by the Iraq Survey Group's final report published in 2004.
Manucher Ghorbanifar is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer and former SAVAK agent.
During the lead-up to the Iraq War, the United States had alleged that Iraq owned bioreactors, and other processing equipment to manufacture and process biological weapons that can be moved from location to location either by train or vehicle. Subsequent investigations failed to find any evidence of Iraq having access to a mobile weapons lab.
William Joseph Burns is an American diplomat who has served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Biden administration since March 19, 2021. He previously served as U.S. deputy secretary of state from 2011 to 2014; in 2009 he served as acting secretary of state for a day, prior to the confirmation of Hillary Clinton. Burns retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a 32-year career. From 2014 to 2021, he served as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
The Open Source Enterprise (OSE) is a United States Government organization dedicated to open-source intelligence. Initially part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it is now part of the Directorate of Digital Innovation at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Former iterations of the organization were the Open Source Center (OSC) and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).
John Owen Brennan is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from March 2013 to January 2017. He served as chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama, with the title Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President. Previously, he advised Obama on foreign policy and intelligence issues during the 2008 election campaign and presidential transition.
Burn Notice is an American espionage television series created by Matt Nix, which originally aired on the USA Network for a total of seven seasons from June 28, 2007, to September 12, 2013. The show stars Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell, Sharon Gless, and Coby Bell.
After the Central Intelligence Agency lost its role as the coordinator of the entire United States Intelligence Community (IC), special coordinating structures were created by each president to fit his administrative style and the perceived level of threat from terrorists during his term.
The Memorial Wall is a memorial at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors 140 CIA employees who died in service to their nation.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has repeatedly intervened in the internal affairs of Iran, from the Mosaddegh coup of 1953 to the present day. The CIA is said to have collaborated with the last Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Its personnel may have been involved in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. More recently in 2007-8 CIA operatives were claimed to be supporting the Sunni terrorist group Jundallah against Iran, but these claims were refuted by a later investigation.
The London Clinic is a private healthcare organisation and registered charity located at the corner of Devonshire Place and Marylebone Road in central London. According to HealthInvestor, it is one of England's largest private hospitals.
Shakil Afridi, or Shakeel Afridi, is a Pakistani physician who allegedly helped the CIA run a fake hepatitis vaccine program in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in order to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence in the city by obtaining DNA samples. Details of his activities emerged during the Pakistani investigation of the deadly raid on bin Laden's residence. This account is disputed in a recent account of events which implies Afridi was implicated as a cover for the real CIA operative. Afridi was arrested at the Torkham while trying to flee the country days after the raid. On 23 May 2012, he was sentenced to 33 years' imprisonment for treason, initially believed to be in connection with the bin Laden raid, but later revealed to be due to alleged ties with a local Islamist warlord Mangal Bagh. Lawyers appealed against the verdict on 1 June 2012. On 29 August 2013, his sentence was overturned and a retrial ordered.
A fabricator is an intelligence agent or officer that generates disinformation, falsehoods or bogus information, often without access to authentic resources. Fabricators often provide forged documents in order to substantiate their falsehoods. It is normal intelligence practice to place identified fabricators on a black list or to issue a burn notice on them and to recall intelligence sourced from them.