News you may have missed #736

May 24, 2012 by Leave a comment

Abdel Baset al-MegrahiBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Convicted Lockerbie bomber dies. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who was the only person ever convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, died at home in Tripoli Sunday, nearly three years after he was released from a Scottish prison to the outrage of the relatives of the attack’s 270 victims. He was 60. Scotland released Mr. al-Megrahi on Aug. 20, 2009, on compassionate grounds to let him return home to die after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Anger over the release was further stoked by subsequent allegations that London had sought his release to preserve business interests in the oil-rich North African nation, strongly denied by the British and Scottish governments.
►►Federal appeals panel to hear CIA leak case. A federal appeals panel in the United States will hear the case of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who has been charged with leaking classified information about Iran’s nuclear program to New York Times reporter James Risen. Prosecutors say Sterling was a key source in Risen’s 2006 book, State of War. They are also challenging the court’s decision to strike two government witnesses and allow disclosure of the identities of covert CIA operatives to Sterling’s lawyers.
►►New study of British Empire’s spies published. British newspaper The Guardian has published a review of William Beaver’s newly published book, Under Every Leaf: How Britain Played The Greater Game From Afghanistan to Africa. Much of the book concerns the creation in the mid-1850s of the British War Office Intelligence Department. According to the review, the book does much to restore the “missing dimension” to Britain’s military-imperial history between 1855 and the creation of her modern intelligence agencies in the early 1900s.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #731 (Henry Crumpton edition)

May 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

Henry 'Hank' CrumptonBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Ex-CIA officer says more spies in US than ever before. Henry “Hank” Crumpton, who served as Deputy Director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center, and led the US intelligence response to 9/11, spoke to CBS’ 60 Minutes about his life as a spy. He told the program that “I would hazard to guess there are more foreign intelligence officers inside the US working against US interests now than even at the height of the Cold War”. IntelNews regulars may recall the last time Crumpton spoke on 60 Minutes.
►►Introduction to Crumpton’s The Art of Intelligence. The introduction to Hank Crumpton’s The Art of Intelligence, which came out earlier this week, has been republished by MSNBC, by arrangement with the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group. There are at least 20 pages of the book available on the MSNBC website.
►►Can the FBI understand intelligence? Editorial by Hank Crumpton for Politico, in which he says that “the FBI is still measuring success based on arrests and criminal convictions –not on the value of intelligence collected and disseminated to its customers”. He makes a ten-point argument to claim that the FBI, unlike the CIA, does “not understand intelligence”.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ex-CIA officer sheds light on 1977 spy arrests in Moscow

April 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

Martha D. PetersonBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A recently retired CIA officer has spoken publicly for the first time about the 1977 arrest and eventual suicide of a Soviet double agent considered one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most important assets during the Cold War. Aleksandr Dmitryevich Ogorodnik was an official in the Soviet diplomatic service who, while stationed at the Soviet embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, was compromised and later blackmailed by Colombian intelligence into spying on Moscow. Ogorodnik was initially handled by the Colombians, with little success. Later, however, when he was moved to a sensitive post in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow, the Colombians turned him over to the CIA. He was handled by CIA officer Aldrich Ames —himself a double spy for the Soviet KGB— who gave Ogorodnik the codename TRIGON. After establishing contact with him in Moscow, the CIA provided Ogorodnik with a miniature camera and other essentials, which he used regularly to take photographs of classified Soviet documents. As a go-between, the Agency selected Martha D. Peterson, the first female CIA case officer ever to be posted in Moscow. Peterson was a fresh CIA recruit, who had completed her Career Training program in 1974, less than a year before being sent to the Soviet capital. Having retired in 2003, after 31 years with the CIA, Peterson has now published a memoire entitled The Widow Spy. In it, she reveals that she coordinated regular dead-drops with Ogorodnik for nearly two years, picking up his used film while supplying him with fresh film and other espionage accessories. On July 15, 1977, however, her mission was abruptly terminated after she was arrested by a large team of KGB officers underneath a railway bridge in Moscow, a few minutes after conducting a dead-drop for Ogorodnik. She was taken to the KGB’s Lubyanka prison, where she says she was interrogated for three days before being released by way of her diplomatic immunity, and ordered to leave the USSR. Ogorodnik was not so fortunate. A few months prior to his arrest, he had requested that the CIA provide him with a poison pill, which he could take in case he was arrested by the KGB. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #696

March 16, 2012 by Leave a comment

NSA's Utah Data CenterBy IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
►►French spies to stage labor protest. The main union representing French domestic intelligence officers, those charged with counter-espionage and anti-terror investigations, called Wednesday on its members to stage a protest. The head of the SNOP union, which represents senior police officers and is the main labor body for members of the DCRI security agency, said his members planned a “gathering” at their Paris headquarters. A smaller union said it wanted no part in the protest, and it was not clear how many of the agency’s 4,000 intelligence officers planned to take part.
►►James Bamford on the NSA’s new spy center in Utah. Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built in Bluffdale for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.
►►Author of unauthorized CIA book gave proceeds to charity. After former CIA officer Ishmael Jones wrote a book about the CIA without gaining prior approval from the Agency, the government sought and won a judicial ruling that Jones had acted in violation of his CIA secrecy agreement, and that he could be held liable for the breach. But the government’s current efforts to seize the financial proceeds from Jones’ 2010 book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, have been frustrated by the fact that the author has already given the proceeds away to charity.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #681

February 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

Vladimir NesteretsBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Mossad ‘bolsters activity in Tunisia’. The Mossad has bolstered its activity in several Tunisian cities since the start of the revolt that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali last January, Tunisian magazine Al-Musawar has reported. According to the magazine, the Israeli intelligence agency has been working with its US-based counterpart, the CIA, to revive its spy network in post-revolution Tunisia.
►►US ‘used quake’ to send Special Forces into Pakistan. The US Pentagon used the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 to send operatives from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) into Pakistan, reveals a new book by D.B Grady and Marc Ambinder, entitled The Command: Deep Inside the President’s Secret Army. The authors claim that dozens of CIA operatives and contractors entered Pakistan using valid US passports and posing as construction and aid workers, thus avoiding the requisite background checks from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency.
►►Russian officer convicted of spying for CIA. A Russian military court last week convicted Lt. Col. Vladimir Nesterets of providing the CIA with secret information on Russia’s new intercontinental ballistic missiles and sentenced him to 13 years in prison. The officer pleaded guilty to passing on that classified information in exchange for money, said the Federal Security Service, the main agency that replaced the Soviet-era KGB. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted the officer’s wife, Irina, as saying she could not understand the guilty plea because her husband had told her he did nothing wrong and had not betrayed his country.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #677: Analysis edition

February 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

Che Guevara after his arrest in BoliviaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►New book ties Johnson administration to Che Guevara’s death. Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith are the co-authors of a new book about the US role in the killing of Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In their book, Who Killed Che?, Ratner and Smith draw on previously unpublished government documents to argue the CIA played a critical role in the killing. “The line of the [US] government was that the Bolivians did it, we couldn’t do anything about it. That’s not true”, Smith said. “This whole operation was organized out of the White House by Walt Whitman Rostow. And the CIA, by this time, had become a paramilitary organization”.
►►CIA digs in as US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan. The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional US troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect US interests in the two longtime war zones, US officials said. They added that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years.
►►Indian Army ‘preparing for limited conflict with China’. Noting that India is increasingly getting concerned about China’s posture on its border, James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, said this week that the Indian Army is strengthening itself for a “limited conflict” with China. “The Indian Army believes a major Sino-Indian conflict is not imminent, but the Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean,” he said.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #669

January 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

Raoul WallenbergBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►UK admits using fake rock to spy on Russians. Britain has admitted for the first time that it was caught spying when Russia exposed its use of a fake rock in Moscow to conceal electronic equipment. Russia made the allegations in January 2006, but Britain has not publicly accepted the claims until now. Jonathan Powell, then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff, told a BBC documentary it was “embarrassing”, but “they had us bang to rights”. He added: “clearly they had known about it for some time”.
►►New book examines forgotten CIA officer Jim Thompson. The CIA’s longtime man in Southeast Asia, Jim Thompson, fought to stop the agency’s progression from a small spy ring to a large paramilitary agency. Now a new book, The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War, by Joshua Kurlantzick, examines the life and exploits of the man known as “Silk King” Jim.
►►Sweden to probe fate of WWII hero Wallenberg. Raoul Wallenberg (pictured) was a shrewd businessman who, in the summer of 1944, was posted as Sweden’s ambassador in Budapest, Hungary. He was also an American intelligence asset, having been recruited by a US spy operating out of the War Refugee Board, an American government outfit with offices throughout Eastern Europe. He was abducted by Soviet intelligence officers in the closing stages of World War II, and his fate is one of the unsolved mysteries of 20th century espionage. Now Sweden says it will open a new probe into his disappearance.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #665

January 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

Matthew M. AidBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Joseph Fitsanakis interviewed on ABC Radio National. IntelNews‘ own Dr Joseph Fitsanakis was interviewed on Friday by reporter Suzanne Hill, for ABC Radio National’s flagship evening news program ‘PM‘. In the interview, which was about the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, Fitsanakis points the finger at the Mossad, and explains why he doesn’t believe the United States had anything to do with the killing. You can listen to the interview here. The transcript is here.
►►India releases diplomat jailed for spying. Last April, Madhuri Gupta, second secretary at the Indian high commission in Islamabad, Pakistan, was arrested for working for Pakistan’s ISI spy agency. She apparently had a “relationship of personal affection” with an aide of her Pakistani handler. On Tuesday, she was granted bail by an Indian court, after 21 months in prison.
►►Matthew Aid interviewed about his new book. Matthew M. Aid, author of The Secret Sentry, has written a new book, Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror. You can listen to an extensive interview he gave on January 11 on NPR’s Fresh Air, in which Aid outlined his view that “overlapping jurisdictions, bureaucratic policies and a glut of data have crippled the intelligence community in its war against would-be terrorists”.
►►British spies to be cleared on torture allegations. The British government, including Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service, has just finished a four-year inquiry into the country’s security and intelligence services, sparked by allegations by terrorist suspects released from Guantanamo Bay, that they were severely tortured. The results have not yet been announced. But British media report that, according to information from trusted sources, the inquiry has concluded that (…drumroll…) there is no evidence that officers from either MI5 or MI6 were aware of the mistreatment of prisoners.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

British Nazi was in fact MI5 double spy, new book reveals

December 29, 2011 by Leave a comment

Arthur OwensBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Welsh nationalist, whose aversion to British rule led him to spy for Nazi Germany during World War II, was in fact a double spy for Britain, and was instrumental in helping he Allies win the war, a new book reveals. The book, Snow: The Double Life of a World War II Spy, by Madoc Roberts and Nigel West (At Her Majesty’s Secret Service, A Matter of Trust, etc), centers on the life of Arthur Owens, who was recruited by the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence, in 1935, during a business trip to the Continent. Given the operational codename JOHNNY O’BRIEN by the Germans, he quickly began providing Berlin with inside information on Britain’s military buildup in the run-up to the War. But, according to Roberts and West, who base their account on declassified government documents, British counterintelligence agency MI5 became aware of Owens’ espionage activities and eventually recruited him as a double agent for the Crown. According to the book, Owens, who was given the codename SNOW by his British masters, became one of the human intelligence cornerstones of MI5’s XX (Double-Cross) System. Consisting of a close-knit group of deception specialists, XX is known for a series of outrageous —and often highly successful— covert operations during World War II, including Operation FORTITUDE, a plan to deceive the Germans about the location of the invasion of Europe by the Western Allies. The authors claim that agent SNOW’s activities successfully lured a large number of Nazi agents into the arms of MI5, thus eventually paving the way for some of MI5’s greatest wartime counterintelligence successes. In fact, it is believed that Owens’ pro-Nazi activities were so convincing, and his operational cover so deeply buried within the XX System, that in 1941 his MI5 handlers recommended that he be interned in a British prison. But the book alleges that, while in prison in Dartmoor, England, SNOW continued his intelligence collection for the Crown and kept feeding his handlers with information extracted from the prison’s German inmates. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New book on British double spy Kim Philby published in Russia

December 14, 2011 by Leave a comment

Kim Philby

Kim Philby

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An important new biography of H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, the British MI6 officer who defected to Russia during the Cold War, has been published in Moscow. It is based on candid interviews with his surviving fourth wife, Rufina Pukhova-Philby, as well as on an array of declassified documents from Russian state archives. The book, titled just Kim Philby, is authored by Nikolai Dolgopolov, editor of Moscow-based daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, which acts as the official organ of the Russian state. Aside from Pukhova-Philby, the book, whose publication is set to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Kim Philby’s birth, on January 1, enjoyes the official blessing of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the successor organization to the KGB’s external intelligence directorate. The SVR allowed Dolgopolov access to previously secret documents on Philby, including a newly declassified Russian translation of the British double spy’s personal account of the events that led to his 1963 defection, as well as a description of his escape to Russia through Lebanon. Dolgopolov’s books describes Philby as “one of the greatest Soviet spies”, thus siding with the mainstream view in intelligence research literature, which recognizes Philby as one of the most successful double spies in history. While working as a senior member of British intelligence, Philby spied on behalf of the Soviet NKVD and its successor, the KGB, from the early 1930s until his 1963 defection. Two years later, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. The Soviet authorities buried him with honors when he died in 1988. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #641 (US edition)

December 2, 2011 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

►► US Navy memo had warned Roosevelt of 1941 attack. Three days before the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, US President F.D. Roosevelt was warned in a memo from US naval intelligence that Tokyo’s military and spy network was focused on Hawaii. The 20-page memo has been published in the new book December 1941: 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World, by Craig Shirley.
►►US spy agencies cut their holiday parties. Holiday gatherings have provided rare opportunities for US congressional staff, embassy aides, government officials, and the media to mix it up —off the record— with the spy set. But this year, agency budget Scrooges have taken aim at high-priced holiday merriment. The Director of National Intelligence has canceled holiday parties altogether, and the Central Intelligence Agency has drastically downsized its guest list and lavish spread by more than 50%.
►►Ex-DNI Blair wants Pentagon in charge of drone strikes. The United States’ former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who previously proposed scaling back the armed drone operation run in Pakistan by the CIA, is now urging that the program be publicly acknowledged and placed in the hands of the US military.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #637

November 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

Dmitri Bystrolyotov

D.A. Bystrolyotov

►►South African spy boss to quit. Director General of the State Security Agency Jeff Maqetuka, who has been entangled in a never-ending war with Minister Siyabonga Cwele, is expected to step down this week, according to South Africa’s Sunday Independent. The paper claims that that plans are afoot to expedite Maqetuka’s departure from the country’s intelligence infrastructure by placing him on summer leave and then making sure he would not return to work in 2012.
►►Slovakian defense minister resigns over wiretap scandal. The interception of journalists’ telephone calls by the Slovakian Defense Ministry’s counterintelligence arm has cost the country’s Defense Minister, Lubomír Galko, his job. The scandal involved Slovakia’s Military Defense Intelligence (VOS). It has also emerged that the VOS operation involved wiretapping of the head of TV news channel TA3 and two senior Defense Ministry employees, according to leaked documents obtained by Slovak media outlets.
►►Book on Soviet spy Dmitri Bystrolyotov. Excerpt from Emil Draitser’s book Stalin’s Romeo Spy: The Remarkable Rise and Fall of the KGB Most Daring Operative (Northwestern University Press, 2010), about one of the 20th century’s most outstanding undercover operatives. Bystrolyotov acted in Western Europe in the interwar period, recruiting and running several important agents in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #599

September 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel

►►SAS planned to kill Nazi Field Marshal Rommel. The veil of secrecy surrounding Britain’s SAS special forces unit has been partially lifted to allow the publication of a new book detailing daring attacks behind Nazi lines in the Second World War. The book features an order for an ambitious but unsuccessful mission to kill or kidnap Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel just after D-Day in 1944.
►►CIA says global-warming intelligence is ‘classified’. Two years ago, the US Central Intelligence Agency announced it was creating a center to analyze the geopolitical ramifications of “phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts and heightened competition for natural resources”. But whatever work the Center on Climate Change and National Security has done remains secret.
►►Japan sends new spy satellite into orbit. Japan at present has a total of three information-gathering satellites in orbit. All three are optical, which means they are able to capture images in broad daylight and in clear weather. The new spy satellite is said to replace one which is almost at the end of its useful life. The country is also planning to launch in two years time, radar satellites which can capture objects at night and in cloudy weather.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #584

September 4, 2011 by Leave a comment

Nicky Hager

Nicky Hager

►►Billing dispute reveals details of secret CIA flights. On August 12, 2003, a conracted Gulfstream IV aircraft carrying six passengers took off from Dulles International Airport for Bangkok. When it returned four days later, it carried Indonesian terrorist Riduan Isamuddin, who had been captured in Thailand and would spend the next three years in various secret CIA prisons. The Gulfstream IV’s itinerary, as well as the $339,228 price tag for the journey, are among the details of shadowy CIA flights that have emerged in a New York courthouse, in a billing dispute between contractors. Incidentally, even the airplanes’ owners didn’t always know that the CIA was using them.
►►French admit secret service spied on reporter. French interior minister Claude Guéant has admitted that the secret service spied on investigative reporter Gérard Davet, from the newspaper Le Monde, in order to trace the source of a leak about the so-called “Bettencourt party funding scandal“, which has been a source of embarrassment for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party.
►►NZ let Israeli spies go free in return for passports. Another revelation from Nicky Hager’s book Other People’s Wars (see previous intelNews coverage here). The investigative reporter claims that New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service released captured Mossad spies Eli Cara and Uriel Zoshe Kelman, in return for Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #581

September 1, 2011 by Leave a comment

Jin Yinan

Jin Yinan

►►CIA wants to censor book by ex-FBI agent. The agent, Ali H. Soufan, argues in the book that the CIA missed a chance to derail the 9/11 plot by withholding from the FBI information about two future 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego. He also says that torture interrogation methods against terrorism detainees were unnecessary and, ultimately, counterproductive. Both these things are known and have been publicly discussed. As The Independent correctly notes, the CIA’s objections are “less for national security reasons than out of a desire to avoid re-airing incidents that show the Agency in an unflattering light”.
►►New scandal at India’s SIGINT agency. The Indian government founded the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) in 2004, as a potential communications nerve center for all of India’s intelligence agencies. But the SIGINT agency has been involved in one financial scandal after the other, most recently relating to an elaborate procurement scam.
►►China silent about spy lecture leak. China has remained quiet as a recently leaked video of a Chinese general’s candid remarks on sensitive spying cases continued to draw international attention. The ministries of defense and foreign affairs have not responded to media inquiries, and numerous phone calls to National Defense University, where the general, Jin Yinan (pictured), teaches, went unanswered. State media made no mention of the story.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New Zealand base in Afghanistan was secret CIA station, book claims

September 1, 2011 by 1 Comment

Nicky Hager

Nicky Hager

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Kiwi “peacekeeping” and “civil reconstruction” base in Afghanistan was a secret station for the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to a new book by New Zealand’s preeminent investigative writer. Nicky Hager first made international headlines in 1996, with his groundbreaking book Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role in the International Spy Network. In it, he revealed the existence of the UK-USA Security Agreement and of ECHELON, a US-managed signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis platform that serves as an intelligence-sharing mechanism between UK-USA signatories. The publication of his latest book, entitled Other People’s Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror, is scheduled to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of 9/11. The book focuses on —among other things— the Bamyan Province base in central Afghanistan, which serves as the center of operations for the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Central Asian country. It serves as a symbol of New Zealand’s cautious contribution to the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, by allowing Kiwi forces to participate with boots on the ground, while performing strictly noncombatant functions, officially described as “peacekeeping” and “civil rebuilding”. But Hager’s book alleges that the “noncombatant” mission of the Bamyan base was simply a cover, devised by the New Zealand Defence Forces’ public relations apparatus, and aimed at pacifying the country’s population. The real mission of the Bamyan base, says Hager, was to “help the Americans” by essentially concealing a covert CIA station. The author further alleges that the Kiwi forces at Bamyan were instructed to keep the presence of the CIA team secret. This they did, even as they shared daily meals with American spies in civilian clothes, who refused to disclose even basic details of their mission to their New Zealand guardians. Hager alleges that New Zealand’s defense establishment took the decision to help the CIA as part of a broader strategy of rapprochement between Wellington and Washington. Why rapprochement? It was in 1984, when, under mounting popular pressure, New Zealand’s Labour government of David Lange voted to bar nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships from entering New Zealand territorial waters. At the time, the nuclear ban imposed by New Zealand was heralded by the global nuclear disarmament movement as a major victory. But Washington did not see it this way. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #578

August 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

Syria

Syria

►►CIA agent who helped kill Che wants payout from Cuba. This is from the “news that isn’t” department: Gustavo Villoldo, a Cuban-born CIA operative, who helped track down and kill Che Guevara in Bolivia, has won $2.8 billion in damages from the Cuban government, for confiscating his family property after the 1959 revolution. But he is unlikely to ever collect the money because Cuba does not recognize US court rulings.
►►Cheney wanted Bush to destroy suspected Syrian nuke site. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Bush opted for a diplomatic approach expressed misgivings. Eventually Israeli jets bombed the site. Cheney’s account of the discussion appears in his autobiography, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, which is to be published by Simon & Schuster next week.
►►South Korea indicts five for spying for North. Five South Koreans, including a former parliamentary aide, have been indicted for allegedly spying for North Korea, in connection with the Wangjaesan spy ring.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #572

August 20, 2011 by Leave a comment

David Wise

David Wise

►►New Zealand spy service now welcomes online tip-offs. Ten years ago, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) introduced a free telephone number that people could ring if they suspected any suspicious intelligence activity. Now the spy service has entered the 21st century by changing its website so the public can provide details online.
►►Book claims Coco Chanel spied for Nazis. Frankly, who gives a damn? Is anyone surprised to hear that yet another member of French high society was pro-Nazi in the lead-up to World War II? It is disappointing to see how many news outlets are going over-the-top with this story, while mostly ignoring the truly important historical revelation of the last few days, namely the declassification of the CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
►►David Wise on Sino-American spy wars. Longtime investigative journalist David Wise, who focuses on the intelligence community, talks to Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman about his new book Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China.

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Exclusive: Interview with ex-CIA officer Charles S. Faddis

August 18, 2011 by 8 Comments

Charles S. Faddis

Charles S. Faddis

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Yesterday I reviewed Charles S. Faddis’ new book, Codename Aphrodite (Orion, 2011), a gripping novel about a former CIA case officer’s freelance operation in Athens, Greece, in pursuit of November 17, one of Europe’s most notorious urban guerrilla groups. Today intelNews hosts an exclusive interview with Faddis, a straight-talking ex-CIA clandestine operations officer, who admits that his novel “is based on some very personal experiences” and that many of the book’s characters “are drawn much more from memory than they are from imagination”. Most regular readers of this blog probably know Charles “Sam” Faddis as the former head of the US National Terrorism Center‘s WMD Unit. His 20-year career as a CIA operations officer, with posts in South Asia, Near East and Europe, arguably culminated in 2002, when he led a CIA team into Iraq to help prepare the ground for the US invasion. He documented this in his 2010 book (co-authored with Mike Tucker) Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War Inside Iraq. Following his 2008 retirement, Faddis, who was CIA Chief of Station in his last overseas tour, frequently comments on intelligence matters, most notably in his 2009 exposé Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. Faddis’ answers to intelNews‘ questions are below. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

IntelNews book review: Codename Aphrodite, by Charles S. Faddis

August 17, 2011 by Leave a comment

Codename Aphrodite

Codename Aphrodite

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Most intelNews regulars know Charles S. Faddis as the former head of the US National Terrorism Center‘s WMD Unit. His 20-year career as a CIA operations officer, with posts in South Asia, Near East and Europe, arguably culminated in 2002, when he led a CIA team into Iraq to help prepare the ground for the US invasion. He documented this in his 2010 book (co-authored with Mike Tucker) Operation Hotel California: The Clandestine War Inside Iraq. Following his 2008 retirement, Faddis, who was CIA Chief of Station in his last overseas tour, frequently comments on intelligence matters. He took a stance against the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program (but objected to a government investigation), and has penned hard-hitting critiques of American intelligence culture and practices, most notably in his 2009 exposé Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. His latest creation, Codename Aphrodite (Orion, 2011), is a gritty novel set in the backstreets of Athens, Greece, where a former CIA clandestine operations officer goes after November 17, one of the world’s most active Marxist terrorist groups. Bill Boyle and his wife, Sarah, are both clandestine officers in the CIA’s European Division. Sarah, who is pregnant with their child, is brutally killed by November 17, after a CIA operation in pursuit of the group goes horribly wrong. Haunted by his wife’s murder, which he witnessed, Boyle quits the Agency and soon ends up as a permanent fixture in a depressing Mexican beach bar. Things take an unexpected turn, however, when political winds change in Greece. Petros Salamis, an ascending Athenian politician and aspiring Prime Minister, contacts Boyle with an irresistible offer: a hefty monetary reward and the satisfaction of revenge for his wife’s death in exchange for returning to Greece and eradicating November 17. Read more of this book review

Filed under A specialized intelligence blog written by experts Tagged with , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,367 other followers