Pakistani spies “visibly angry” at US charge of Taliban links

September 30, 2009 by 2 Comments

A.S. Pasha

A.S. Pasha

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Recently, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s secretive spy service, gave Washington Post’s associate editor, David Ignatius, a rare look inside its Islamabad headquarters. However, the first known visit to the ISI by a Western journalist in recent years failed to impress the Pakistanis. The latter became “visibly angry” when Ignatius asked them whether they are withholding information about al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as the CIA and other US intelligence agencies claim. The charges, which are disputed by Pakistani officials, led to “a long and animated conversation” with ISI Director, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who forbade the US journalist from quoting him directly. Read more of this post

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US State Dept. third highest official was espionage suspect, says ex-FBI agent

September 30, 2009 by 3 Comments

Marc Grossman

Marc Grossman

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Marc Grossman, Under Secretary of State during the Bush Administration, was suspect in a lengthy counterespionage probe by the FBI, according to a former senior Bureau agent. John M. Cole, an 18-year FBI veteran who worked for the Counterintelligence Division of the Bureau’s National Security Branch, said the investigation into Grossman centered on activities by Turkish and Israeli intelligence in the United States. Cole was speaking to former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, currently of The American Conservative magazine, a paleoconservative publication, which was one of a handful of US media outlets that gave column space to recent revelations of Turkish intelligence activities by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds, a translator for the FBI, spent seven years trying to get a US court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0122

September 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Canada authorities push for Internet spy bill. The push for new Internet surveillance capabilities in Canada –dubbed the “lawful access” initiative– dates back to 1999, when government officials began crafting proposals to institute new surveillance technologies in Canadian fifth-generation networks. Internet Service Providers are skeptical of the initiative, while law enforcement and security agencies argue that the changes are long overdue.
  • Peru’s former leader guilty of spying, bribery. Peru’s former strongman Alberto Fujimori pleaded guilty today to charges of wiretapping opponents and paying bribes to lawmakers and publishers during his rule from 1990 to 2000. Unfortunately, the CIA supported Fujimori and his right-hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos and even suppressed a CIA officer who tried to argue that supporting such lowlifes was politically wrong and ethically immoral.
  • CIA honors two spies. CIA director Leon Panetta awarded the Trailblazer Medal (the supreme decoration in the US intelligence community) to two agents, one of whom is the late John Guilsher, who recruited Soviet scientist Adolf Tolkachev at the height of the Cold War. Are we to presume that Panetta has not read the recent paper by Benjamin Fischer, former CIA clandestine operative and retired CIA historian, who claims that Tolkachev was actually a KGB double agent tasked by Soviet intelligence with providing US military strategists with false information?

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News you may have missed #0121

September 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • DHS intelligence official speaks on cross-department collaboration. Since its establishment, the US Department of Homeland Security has been involved in almost every major turf battle within the US security and intelligence community. Bart Johnson, the department’s Acting Undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis, speaks about collaborating with non-DHS actors.
  • Somali group executes two for spying for CIA. Somalia’s al-Shabaab on Monday publicly executed two people accused of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency and the country’s embattled government. Before the US-assisted Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, al-Shabaab (The Party of Youth) used to be the youth organization of the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Al-Shabaab shares the ICU’s mission of turning Somalia into an Islamic khalifat.
  • US intelligence veterans group backs CIA torture probe. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have authored a memorandum addressed to US President Barack Obama, in which they “voice strong support for Attorney General Eric Holder’s authorization of a wider investigation into CIA interrogation”.

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New documents point to innocence of convicted Swedish “spy”

September 29, 2009 by 1 Comment

Bertil Ströberg

Bertil Ströberg

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A man who was jailed in Sweden in 1983 for spying on behalf of the Eastern Bloc may be innocent, according to an investigation by Sweden’s TV4 channel. On May 20, 1983, Bertil Ströberg was arrested in Stockholm’s main post office, while picking up correspondence for a ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’. What he didn’t know is that Sweden’s Security Service (SAPO) was looking for Larsson after it had surreptitiously opened a letter addressed to the Polish embassy in Stockholm. The letter, which was signed by Larsson, contained a number of classified Swedish security documents and requested $25,000 Swedish kronor ($3,500) in return for further secret information. During his closed-door trial, Ströberg claimed he had made the acquaintance of someone calling himself ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’ in Stockholm, who later sent him a letter asking him to pick up a delivery in his name from the city’s main post office. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0120

September 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Film on America’s most famous whistleblower. A new documentary film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, examines the life of Daniel Ellsberg, a US Pentagon employee who leaked documents to the American public in order to stop the Vietnam War. Ellsberg, 78, is still a pariah in the US defense community. He told the Associated Press that at a RAND (research arm of the Pentagon, where he used to work) reunion several years back, no one would shake his hand.
  • Retired US Air Force officer convicted in China spying case. Retired US Air Force officer James W. Fondren Jr. faces a maximum of 20 years behind bars, after being convicted of selling classified information on US-China military relations to a Chinese agent and lying to the FBI about it. The US Department of Justice accused Fondren, 62, of being part of a spy ring that operated on US soil under the supervision of Chinese government officials, whom Fondren supplied with classified documents for over three years, beginning in 2004.
  • Request to halt CIA probe “nonsense” says former agent. A controversial request by seven former heads of the CIA to end the inquiry into abuse of terrorism suspects held by the Agency is “nonsense”, says Bob Baer, a 20-year CIA caseworker in the Mid-East and former CIA station chief in Iraq. “To say let’s not look further into this because it could upset the agency is like saying let’s not look into Bernie Madoff because it could upset the financial sector”, said Baer.

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News you may have missed #0119

September 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • CIA opens center on climate change. The CIA Center on Climate Change and National Security is a small unit led by senior specialists from the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology. It focuses on “the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources”. Methinks the emphasis will probably be on the latter.
  • Brazilian political figures spied on after dictatorship. Senior Brazilian politicians, religious leaders and activists were spied on illegally for 16 years after the 1964-1985 military regime, according to recent allegations in the country’s press. Major surveillance targets included Brazil’s current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, opposition leader and Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, and others.
  • New book examines life of Franco-sympathizer British spy. Jimmy Burns has written a biography of his father, Tom Burns, an anti-communist sympathizer of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who organized the British intelligence network in Spain during and after World War II.

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Comment: How did Iran know US planned to reveal nuclear facility?

September 28, 2009 by 1 Comment

Barack Obama

Barack Obama

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The question may be confusing at first, but it makes perfect sense, considering the series of events. Late last week the US put together a secret plan to reveal to the world that Iran has built a previously undeclared nuclear facility to enrich uranium. However, on the morning of September 25, that is, just hours before US President Barack Obama made the revelation, Iran pre-emptied him with a formal letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in which it volunteered the information that it has built a facility inside a mountain near the city of Qum. Now, we know that US and other Western intelligence agencies have known about the existence of that nuclear facility for many years. However, from an intelligence point of view, the revelation of the site is secondary to the issue of how Iran came to know about the US President’s plan to reveal its existence. Read more of this post

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IBM bungles expensive IT project for UK intelligence

September 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

IBM logo

IBM logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The British government has scrapped a major intelligence-related network development project due to substandard security standards and several missed deadlines by International Business Machines (IBM). The company, which is the leading contractor in the project, has been blamed for its failure and will probably be taken to court by the government, which is eager to recover £24.4 million ($38,8 million) in research costs. Relatively little is known about the project itself, codenamed SCOPE, which the British government initiated in 2003 with the aim of facilitating increased cross-department collaboration between as many as ten government departments with security or intelligence components. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0118

September 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US government drops felony charges against GIA analyst. Felony charges have been dropped against Brian Keith Montgomery, a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency employee who allegedly poked around in a top-secret database. He will now face a far lesser charge of exceeding his authorized access privileges.
  • Second spy operation against media revealed in Bulgaria. A few months ago, Bulgarian public opinion was shocked by revelations about Operation GALLERY (a.k.a. Operation GALERIA), a project by Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS) aimed to intimidate the country’s press. Now a second domestic spying program has been discovered by the appropriately named Bulgarian Parliamentary Committee for Controlling DANS.
  • US military cannot analyze surveillance footage influx. The heaps of intelligence footage gathered by US military spy drones and surveillance cameras are already more than analysts can handle. So DARPA, the US military’s research arm, is looking for a software program that will automate the analysis process.

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Portrait of ex-spy said to be “close with militant Islamists”

September 27, 2009 by 2 Comments

Alastair Crooke

Alastair Crooke

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Writing for Mother Jones magazine, David Samuels presents an interesting portrait of Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence agent who brokered deals with the Irish Republican Army, funneled arms to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, spent time with rebel groups in the jungles of Colombia, and later served as British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s eyes and ears in the Middle East. In late 2003, after three decades as an MI6 field officer, he was called home and, in classic British bureaucratic fashion, given a royal honor for his service and then fired from his job. It was rumored in London and in Jerusalem that Crooke had alienated the British prime minister by becoming too closely affiliated with militant Islamists. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0117

September 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Chechnya President says US, UK spies active in region

September 26, 2009 by 1 Comment

Ramzan Kadyrov

Ramzan Kadyrov

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The pro-Moscow President of Russia’s Chechen Republic has accused American and British intelligence services of collaborating with Muslim separatists in the region, in order to “split [Russia] apart”. Speaking to conservative newspaper Zavtra, President Ramzan Kadyrov said Russian government forces are “fighting in the mountains [against] the American and English intelligence agencies”. Asked to elaborate, Kadyrov alleged he had personally seen the US driver license of a CIA operative who was shot dead during a security operation he led. Kadyrov’s comments mark the first public allegation by a Russian government official of Western intelligence activity in the Russian Caucasus. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0116

September 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Australia blocks Chinese mining investment on security grounds. The Australian government has for the second time this year vetoed a multi-billion dollar mining project involving a Chinese company, on national security grounds (did someone say Rio Tinto?). The veto follows news earlier this month that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) investigated the Australian subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies because of its rumored links with China’s intelligence establishment.
  • Declassified files reveal massive FBI data-mining project. An immense FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, according to declassified documents.
  • Book by Danish special forces soldier reveals dirty tricks. A Danish court has turned down an appeal by the country’s military to ban the publication of a book by Thomas Rathsack, former member of Jaegerkorps, an elite army unit. Among other things, the book reveals systematic breach of Geneva Convention directives by members of the unit deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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CIA using US consulate in Dubai to recruit Iranian spies: book

September 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dubai

Dubai

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The CIA routinely uses the US consulate in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to recruit Iranian spies, according to a new book. In Dubai: The World’s Fastest City, author Jim Krane quotes two unnamed American diplomats who say that US consular employees in Dubai issue travel visas to the thousands of Iranians who request them “only in exchange for inside information on the country”. Washington has no formal diplomatic relations with Tehran, and so Iranians use instead the US consular office in Dubai, which is situated right across from Iran in the Persian Gulf. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0115

September 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • China says US intelligence report shows Cold War prejudice. The 2009 US National Intelligence Strategy (.pdf) report singles out Iran, North Korea, China and Russia as nations with the ability to challenge US interests. But government-owned China Daily newspaper says the report is “stuffed with outdated pride and prejudice” and “reflects typical Cold War and power politics mentality”.
  • Somali suicide bomber lived in the US. After Shirwa Ahmed, a US citizen of Somali descent who last October became history’s first known US-born suicide bomber, another Somali-American, who lived in Seattle, has been identified as one of the participants of a suicide bombing that killed 21 peacekeepers in Mogadishu last week. US officials have been warning for almost a year about the strange phenomenon of the “disappearing Somali youths” from their US homes.
  • UK spies used Monopoly sets to help WWII prisoners escape. British secret services embedded escape tools and maps in Monopoly game sets distributed by humanitarian groups in care packages to imprisoned British soldiers during World War II. The article contains some interesting photographs.

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US moves to shield operatives in CIA abduction case

September 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Hassan Nasr

Hassan Nasr

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The US government has moved to officially prevent Italian authorities from prosecuting an American Colonel who in 2003 was involved in the illegal kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan. If the Reuters report is accurate, it will be the first time that Washington moves officially to shield its covert operatives from prosecution in the Italian court system. Colonel Joseph Romano is one of 26 Americans, many of them CIA agents, believed to have been involved in the daylight abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from a Milan street. Nasr, who is also known as Abu Omar, says he was brutally tortured and held illegally for years without charge in Egypt, where he was renditioned by his American abductors. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0114

September 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Spy chief’s records feature prominently in France’s “trial of the century”

September 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

Yves Bertrand

Yves Bertrand

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A five-year court case described in France as “the trial of the century” or “France’s Watergate” resumed on Monday with the appearance in court of one of five defendants, who is no other than France’s former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. He is accused of forging a series of documents showing that France’s current President, Nicolas Sarkozy, had laundered millions of dollars in defense contract bribes through secret accounts in Luxembourg’s Clearstream bank. At the center of the trial is the adversary relationship between Mr. de Villepin, who was former French President Jacques Chirac’s preferred successor, and Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy accuses Mr. de Villepin of ordering an intelligence investigation into his financial dealings in order to ruin his reputation and score a political victory. Read more of this post

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Busted spy ring in Lebanon was Israel’s top network in the Arab world

September 23, 2009 by 4 Comments

Hezbollah parade

Hezbollah parade

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
French newspaper Le Figaro has published a well-researched account of an ongoing counterintelligence operation in Lebanon, which has resulted in the dismantling of an enormous network of Israeli spy cells in the country. The paper describes the discovery of the Israeli spy network as “one of the most resounding defeats in [Israel’s] history”. IntelNews has been following the counterintelligence operation from its very beginning last February. Since then, over 70 Lebanese nationals have been charged with conducting espionage operations on behalf of Israel, of whom nearly 40 have been apprehended. According to Lebanese officials, the dismantled spy ring was probably Israel’s most important intelligence network in the Arab world. Read more of this post

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