Spying

NEW YORK — When Iran’s president accused the U.S. at the United Nations General Assembly last year of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, American diplomats were not caught flat-footed by the tirade.

OAKLAND, Calif. — For American hikers and University of California, Berkeley, graduates Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, the realization of their recently gained freedom may take a while to sink in. The process of readjustment could be tough and painful.

TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian court Tuesday set bail of $500,000 each for two American men arrested more than two years ago and convicted on spy-related charges, clearing the way for their release a year after a similar bail-for-freedom arrangement for the third member of the group, their defense attorney said.

An industrial spy tries to steal $20 million in trade secrets from Minnesota-based Valspar paints. The kingpin of a Houston-based drug counterfeiting ring makes millions plugging his fake pharmaceuticals into the pipeline of Britain's socialized medical system. In Washington, the Defense Department unwittingly buys and installs knockoff Cisco computer software to track troop movements.

The theft of intellectual property has grown into an organized crime wave that costs U.S. businesses up to $250 billion a year in lost revenue and pilfered ideas, officials estimate. The problem extends from charade Chanel perfume to pirated movies to bogus cancer drugs. It includes the theft and marketing of chemical formulas and designs for medical devices.

BALTIMORE -- One day last year, a trusted courier for Osama bin Laden answered a phone call that might have been wholly unremarkable except for one thing -- the National Security Agency was apparently listening in.

That intercepted call helped American intelligence officials track the courier all the way to the walled compound in Pakistan where bin Laden was hiding. The discovery eventually led to last week's midnight assault by Navy SEALs who killed the al-Qaida leader, ending a pursuit that began in the mid-1990s.

A spokeswoman for the NSA said the agency would not offer more detail, and intelligence officials won't even confirm the account, which was reported by several news outlets quoting anonymous sources. And yet for the super-secret NSA, one of Maryland's largest employers with a work force of some 30,000 and a budget in the billions, this singular act of eavesdropping now stands as one of its most notable and conspicuous achievements.

While news coverage has largely focused on the raid itself and the Central Intelligence Agency interrogations that yielded the courier's identity, observers of the U.S. intelligence community say credit also belongs to two intelligence agencies: the NSA in Fort Meade, Md., which scours global communications for clues, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Bethesda, Md., which provides mapping and other information.

A pocket-size drone dubbed the Nano Hummingbird for the way it flaps its tiny robotic wings has been developed for the Pentagon by a Monrovia company as a mini-spy plane capable of maneuvering on the battlefield and in urban areas.

The battery-powered drone was built by AeroVironment Inc. for the Pentagon's research arm as part of a series of experiments in nanotechnology. The little flying machine is built to look like a bird for potential use in spy missions.

The results of a five-year effort to develop the drone were announced Thursday by the company and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.