July | 2010 | intelNews.org

Israel government extends document secrecy rule to 70 years

July 31, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Mossad seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Researchers, academics and transparency advocates have criticized new Israeli government regulations that extend the classification period of state archives from 50 to 70 years. The measure was approved on July 11 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following strong pressure by the Israeli intelligence community, led by the country’s General Security Service, also known as Shin Bet. Speaking to leading Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Israel National Archives Director Yehoshua Freundlich admitted that the move was designed to shield Israel “over [issues relating to its] adherence to international law”. He added that the new legislation was also a response to the rising freedom-of-information movement in Israel, led by such organizations as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Movement for Freedom of Information. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, declassification, government secrecy, Israel, Mossad, Movement for Freedom of Information (Israel), News, Shin Bet, Yehoshua Freundlich

Lebanon releases German suspected of spying for Israel

July 30, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Bekaa Valley

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
German officials have confirmed reports from Lebanon that a German citizen has been released after being questioned in connection with Israeli espionage activity in eastern Lebanon. Manfred Peter Mog, 58, who has lived in Lebanon since 1999, was detained on Monday by Lebanese counterintelligence officers, who suspected him of sharing “sensitive information” with Israeli intelligence operatives. It is believed that Mr. Mog, an engineer who has worked since 2009 at the Liban Lait dairy factory in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, was questioned in connection to “sophisticated transmitters” found in his possession. But the German Foreign Ministry on Wednesday firmly denied that the German citizen had had any charges brought against him by the Lebanese government. Soon afterwards, unnamed Lebanese officials confirmed that Mr. Mog had indeed been released without charges, following intense questioning by counterintelligence officers. It is worth noting that there have recently been several intelligence stories linking Israel and Germany. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Al-Alam spy ring, Bekaa Valley, counterintelligence, espionage, German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Germany, Israel, Lebanon, Liban Lait (Lebanon), Manfred Peter Mog, News

News you may have missed #403

July 29, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Hundreds of FBI agents accused of cheating on spy rules test. The US Justice Department is investigating claims that hundreds of FBI agents cheated on an exam designed to test their knowledge of new rules about spying on suspects. Depending on the outcome of the investigation, agents could be disciplined or even fired.
Lebanon charges second telecoms worker with espionage . Lebanese authorities have widened an investigation into Alfa, Lebanon’s state-owned cellular telecommunications provider, charging a second Alfa worker, Tareq Raba, with spying for Israel.
Google, CIA invest in ‘future’ of web monitoring. The investment arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel, is backing a new company called Recorded Future, which monitors the web in real time and says it uses that information to predict the future. Google is also backing the same startup.

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South Korean spy reportedly expelled from Libya

July 29, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Seal of the National Intelligence Service of the Republic of Korea

NIS seal

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Libya has expelled a South Korean intelligence officer and has shut down its mission in Seoul, according to South Korean diplomatic sources. The unnamed officer, who was expelled by the Libyans on June 18, is reportedly a member of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service who was stationed in the Libyan capital Tripoli. He was arrested in early June, after having been kept under surveillance for three months by Libyan counterintelligence officers. During that period, he was reportedly photographed in the act of bribing a Libyan intelligence officer. Some reports suggest that the expelled spy attempted to collect intelligence on Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, his family and senior Libyan government members. Other sources allege that he was gathering information on defense industry contacts between Libya and North Korea. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with diplomatic expulsions, Economic Cooperation Bureau of Libya, Lee Myung-bak, Lee Sang-deuk, Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi, National Intelligence Service (South Korea), News, North Korea, South Korea

News you may have missed #402

July 28, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Lebanon arrests German suspected of spying for Israel. German citizen Manfred Peter Mog, 58, was arrested on Monday in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley by Lebanese army investigators on suspicion of spying for Israel, according to Lebanese media reports.
Woman suspected as Russian spy under house arrest in Texas. A young Russian beautician, Anna Fermanova, has been arrested in Texas after attempting to take state-of-the-art night-vision scopes and other restricted items to Russia.
Czech spy scandal forces out generals. Three top Czech generals have been forced to leave the military after it became known that a female major who had worked in each of their offices was compromised by contact with a Russian spy.

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Did fugitive spy Metsos lead to Russian spy arrests?

July 28, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

C.R. Metsos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Soon after the June 27 arrests of 10 Russian non-official-cover (NOC) spies in several US cities, one name came to the attention of intelligence observers: Sergei Tretyakov. Tretyakov was a senior Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) officer who defected to the US in 2000, while second-in-command at the SVR station in Russia’s United Nations mission in New York –the same outfit that run the deep-cover operatives arrested in June by the FBI. The Bureau’s own admission that it began monitoring the operatives around 2001, has caused many to believe that Tretyakov, who died suddenly on June 13, at age 53, may have tipped off the FBI about the NOCs. But Russian investigative journalist Yulia Latynina has raised a second possibility, no less intriguing than the first. Namely that it was not Tretyakov who betrayed the deep-cover operatives to the FBI, but rather the mysterious so-called 11^th spy, Christopher R. Metsos, a seasoned SVR operative who is said to have acted as a go-between and financier for all 10 Russian spies. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Budapest, Canada, Christopher Metsos, Christopher R. Metsos, counterintelligence, Cyprus, defectors, espionage, FBI, Hungary, Larnaca Airport (Cyprus), News, non-official-cover, Russia, Russian illegals program spy ring, Sergei Tretyakov, SVR (Russia), United States, Yulia Latynina

News you may have missed #401

July 27, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ex-CIA chief Hayden predicts war with Iran. General Michael Hayden, a CIA Director under President George W. Bush, says US-led military action against Iran now “seems inexorable”.
Venezuela warns of US oil cut in Colombia dispute. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that his government would cut oil supplies to the United States in case of a military attack from Colombia, as a dispute escalated over charges his country harbors Colombian rebels. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Colombia last week.
Canada revokes passport of Russian spy who fled to Cyprus. Canada has canceled the passport of Christopher Metsos, a suspected Russian spy who is wanted by Interpol after fleeing following his release on bail in Cyprus last month.

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Pakistanis question validity, timing, of Wikileaks files

July 27, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Hamid Gul

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Senior Pakistani government and intelligence officials have reacted angrily to leaked reports, which suggest that Pakistani spy agencies are secretly working with the Taliban to oppose US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. The accusations have emerged as part of the largest document leak in US military history, which was made public on Sunday by anti-secrecy activist website Wikileaks. Among the nearly 92,000 intelligence and military files disclosed by Wikileaks are several reports suggesting that General Hamid Gul, who headed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate in the late 1980s, is among a number of high-profile Pakistanis who regularly help the Taliban organize strikes against US-led coalition troops and their supporters in Afghanistan. But on Monday General Gul, who is a well-known critic of the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, vehemently rejected the leaked reports, calling them “a pack of lies” and “utterly wrong”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Hamid Gul, intelligence cooperation, ISI, Mohammad Sadiq, News, Pakistan, Taliban, United States, whistleblowing, Wikileaks

News you may have missed #400 (Wikileaks Afghan War Diary edition)

July 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Roundtable discussion on Wikileaks Afghan war files. Democracy Now hosts a freely-available hour-long discussion on the recent Wikileaks exposure of nearly 92,000 classified military reports on the Afghan war, with independent British journalist Stephen Grey; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; former State Department official in Afghanistan Matthew Hoh; independent journalist Rick Rowley; and investigative historian Gareth Porter.
Are the Wikileaks war docs overhyped old news? This appears to be the view of Danger Room‘s Spencer Ackerman, who suggests that “so far, there’s no My Lai, no No Gun Ri, no smoking gun linking al-Qaeda to the Boston Red Sox. And some of the heavy-breathing accounts surrounding the documents don’t really match what the logs say”.
Pentagon investigating source of leak. The investigation into the biggest leak in US military history centers on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst, who allegedly boasted online that he was going to reveal “the truth” about the war in Afghanistan.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, Bradley Manning, government secrecy, News, news you may have missed, United States, US DoD, whistleblowing, Wikileaks

Largest leak in US military history reveals Afghan war details

July 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
American, British and German military planners are scrambling to contain the political impact of a massive cache of classified reports from Afghanistan, which has been leaked by an anti-secrecy activist group. It has now become known that, several weeks ago, the group Wikileaks.org handed over a total of 91,731 classified incident and intelligence reports from the US-led occupation force in Afghanistan to American newspaper The New York Times, British broadsheet The Guardian, and German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. All three outlets agreed to examine the material, abiding by Wikileaks’ condition that they would wait until Sunday, July 25, to release it. All three news media published news of the leak almost simultaneously on Sunday night, (see here, here and here), and posted several of the files, which provide an unprecedented six-year archive (from 2004 to 2009) of day-to-day US-led military operations in Afghanistan. This unprecedented disclosure is believed to represent the largest public leak of classified material in US military history. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Afghanistan War, assassinations, black operations, CIA, Germany, government secrecy, ISI, KHAD (Afghanistan), News, Pakistan, Poland, State Information Agency (Afghanistan), Task Force 373, UK, United States, US Army, US Navy, Wikileaks

News you may have missed #399

July 23, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Alleged Lebanese spy for Israel flees to Germany, says Lebanon. Lebanese media claim that Rasan al-Jud, who Lebanese authorities accuse of having aided Israel with the help of employees at Alfa, Lebanon’s state-owned cellular telecommunications provider, has fled Lebanon and is currently in Frankfurt, Germany. But a German Foreign Ministry spokesman has said that “the Foreign Ministry does not have any particular knowledge about the news item”.
Japan defends costly visit by Korean spy. Japan’s government has defended a costly four-day visit by Kim Hyun-Hee, a former North Korean spy, who blew up a South Korean jet in 1987, killing 115 people. Despite the high expectations, the former spy produced little news about Japanese nationals kidnapped decades ago by Pyongyang.
Analysis: Slaying the US intelligence behemoth. Commenting on the recent Washington Post investigative series on the US intelligence complex, author Philip Smucker comments that there is an essential disconnect at work. Namely, Islamic perceptions are not understood to be ‘hard intelligence’. The US is still trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, or to apply conventional intelligence to an asymmetrical world.

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Russian ‘spy’ breaks silence, wants to leave UK for Russia

July 23, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
One of the four Russian alleged spies that were handed over to the West in return for 11 Russian intelligence officers arrested in the US last month, has issued a public statement for the first time since his July 9 release from prison. At the time of his release, Dr. Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear expert who headed the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, had served 11 years of a 15-year sentence, for allegedly passing state secrets to Alternative Futures, a British company alleged to be a CIA front by the Russian government. Once Washington included his name on the top-secret exchange list, Sutyagin was transferred from his prison cell in Kholmogory prison, near Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, to the Lefortovo high-security jail in Moscow. It was there that, following a meeting with this family, he was told that he would receive a Presidential pardon in exchange for his unconditional admission of guilt. Minutes after he agreed to the deal, the Russian scientist was flown to London, still in his prison uniform. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #398

July 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Britain’s first spy chief ordered Rasputin’s murder. Mansfield Cumming, or ‘C’ as he became known, was the first chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). In December 1916, he sent three agents in Russia to eliminate Grigori Rasputin, an influential Orthodox Russian priest who had a positive view of Germany.
Russian spy network moved money to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean company called Southern Union is alleged to have been used by exposed Russian spy Anna Chapman in a money smuggling operation involving a syndicate linked to the Robert Mugabe regime.
Iran says nuclear scientist gave valuable info on CIA. Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency says that Iranian nuclear scientist Dr. Shahram Amiri, who resurfaced and returned home last week from the United States, after having disappeared during a 2009 religious pilgrimage to Mecca, has provided Iran with “valuable information” on the CIA.

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Comment: Washington Post’s ‘Top Secret America’

July 22, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Dana Priest

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Like most intelligence observers, we at intelNews have monitored with interest The Washington Post’s recent investigation into the current state of the US intelligence complex. Authored by longtime investigative reporter Dana Priest and national security correspondent William Arkin, the three-part series offers a long-overdue examination of some of the most pressing issues in American intelligence. The articles are well written, detailed and informative, and intelNews recommends that they be read by all those interested in understanding broad trends in contemporary American intelligence. However, those readers interested in a sneak peak of some of the most important findings of the Post’s investigation, may wish to browse the helpful summary provided by Liz Goodwin, of Yahoo! News’ Upshot blog. In it, she delineates the main conclusions of the report, which –broadly speaking– focuses on three critical issues.

News you may have missed #397

July 21, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Canadian spies heading overseas to learn Arabic, director says. Canadian spies are heading overseas to take Arabic lessons, according to Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden, who says the spy agency will send officers to “a country which will remain nameless” to learn the language.
NSA denies monitoring US civilian networks. In a rare public statement, the ultra-secret US National Security Agency has denied a Wall Street Journal report of a secret program, code-named “Perfect Citizen”, which will allegedly be monitoring civilian networks in the US.