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In their time, America's secret agencies have tried some outlandish schemes to attack their country's enemies, including, most famously, an attempt to do away with Cuba's Fidel Castro by using an exploding cigar.

But in a scenario more the preserve of careless Hollywood starlets such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, the CIA appears to have plotted to undermine Saddam Hussein with a gay sex tape.

According to the Washington Post's security blog, some of America's spooks believed that shooting a fake video of Saddam cavorting with a teenage boy might destabilise his regime in the runup to the US-led invasion in 2003. "It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera. Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session," the Washington Post quoted one former CIA official as saying.

Nor was the Saddam sex tape the only idea floating around the more bizarre corners of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group. Other ploys involved interrupting Iraqi television with a false newsflash that would announce Saddam was handing over power to his hated and feared son Uday. The presumed idea was to shock the Iraqi people into rising up against their leaders and thus make the invasion a lot easier.

Perhaps thankfully, the tape and fake news broadcast were never made and the Post reported that top CIA brass repeatedly rejected the ideas.

But that did not stop a CIA video being shot of a fake Osama bin Laden sitting around a camp fire, drinking booze and boasting of his own gay conquests.

The video apparently used some of the CIA's "darker skinned" employees as extras playing the terror chief's henchmen. It does not seem to have been released.

The Post said an anonymous US official had declined to confirm or deny the accounts. "If these ideas were ever floated by anyone at any time, they clearly didn't go anywhere," the official said.

Such tactics are hardly the first time the US agencies have stretched their imaginations. A book entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro detailed the many ways the Cuban leader had been targeted over the decades.

One of the lesser known was a plan to dispatch Castro by exploiting his fascination for scuba-diving. A batch of colourful molluscs would be rigged with explosives in the hope that he would be attracted to them while swimming underwater.

That plan, too, never got off the drawing board.

The leader of Turkey’s main opposition party has resigned after the release of grainy video footage purporting to show him having an affair with one of his MPs.

The recording appeared on the website of the pro-government Habervaktim newspaper last week ahead of a crucial parliamentary vote on changing the constitution, provoking accusations that its release was the work of the ruling AK Party.

The nine minutes and 23 seconds of silent footage, seemingly shot with a hidden camera, allegedly shows Deniz Baykal, 71, veteran leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nesrin Baytok, 50, his former private secretary and now a CHP deputy, speaking in the presence of another man in one clip, and getting dressed alone in a bedroom in another.

The website claimed that the man accompanying the two in the first clip is Mrs Baytok’s husband.

The newspaper said senior US military officials stressed a possible strike would only be considered under extreme circumstances such as a catastrophic attack that convinced President Barack Obama that the campaign using CIA drone strikes is not working.

The officials said airstrikes would be the most effective option in reducing the threat posed by al-Qaeda and other groups, but the United States must be careful not to damage its military relationship with Pakistan to a point where it cannot be repaired.

CIA-operated drones have targeted Taliban figures in Pakistan's tribal areas and the group has vowed to avenge missile strikes that have killed some of its leaders.
American and Pakistani authorities are likely scrambling for clues on whether those detained have ties to militants in Pakistan, who are bent on toppling the state and are violently opposed to the US presence.

desertdudeshj wrote:Ham grenades !

RobbyG wrote:They say pigs have huge intellect. Would that be a fair battle?

I guess the CIA decided it was not...