As many Russian spies in UK today as in Cold War: Soviet defector

March 13, 2013 by 15 Comments

Oleg GordievskyBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Soviet KGB’s former station chief in London, who defected to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, has alleged that Russia operates as many spies in Britain today as it did during the Cold War. Oleg Gordievsky, 74, a fluent speaker of Russian, German, Swedish, Danish, and English, entered the Soviet KGB in 1963. He eventually joined the organization’s Second Directorate, which was responsible for coordinating the activities of Soviet ‘illegals’, that is, intelligence officers operating abroad without official diplomatic cover. Gordievsky’s faith in the Soviet system was irreparably damaged in 1968, when Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1974, while stationed in Copenhagen, Denmark, he made contact with British intelligence and began his career as a double agent for the UK. In 1985, when he was the KGB’s station chief at the Soviet embassy in London, he was summoned back to Moscow by an increasingly suspicious KGB. He was aggressively interrogated but managed to make contact with British intelligence and was eventually smuggled out of Russia via Finland, riding in the trunk of a British diplomatic vehicle. In 2007, Gordievsky was awarded the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG) by the Queen “for services to the security of the UK”. Russia, however, considers Gordievsky a traitor and the government of Vladimir Putin refuses to rescind a death sentence given to him in absentia by a Soviet court. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper this week, Gordievsky said London is currently home to 37 officers of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), one of the successor agencies to the KGB. Read more of this post

About these ads

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

British journalists worked for MI6 during the Cold War: investigation

March 5, 2013 by 15 Comments

George BlakeBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Numerous notable journalists working for some of Britain’s most prestigious publications routinely collaborated with British intelligence during the Cold War, according to a BBC investigation. In 1968, Soviet newspaper Izvestia published the contents of an alleged British government memorandum entitled “Liaison Between the BBC and SIS”. SIS, which stands for Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, is Britain’s foremost external intelligence agency. The paper, which was the official organ of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, claimed that the foreign correspondents of most leading British newspapers secretly collaborated with the British intelligence community. It also alleged that the BBC’s world radio service had agreed with MI6 to broadcast preselected sentences or songs at prearranged times. These signals were used by British intelligence officers to demonstrate to foreign recruits in the Eastern Bloc that they were operating on behalf of the UK. At the time, the BBC virulently rejected the Izvestia’s claims, calling them “black propaganda” aimed at distracting world opinion from the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, which had taken place some months earlier. But an investigation aired this week by the BBC Radio 4’s investigative Document program suggests that the memo published by the Soviet newspaper was probably genuine. The program says it discovered a memorandum in the BBC’s archives, which laments the embarrassment caused to MI6 by the Soviet claims. The memorandum, dated April 24, 1969, describes MI6 as “our friends”. The BBC program, which is available to listen to here, discusses the Soviets’ claims that several notable British journalists were MI6 agents. Read more of this post

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

Philby’s son, widow, speak on 50th anniversary of his defection

January 24, 2013 by 4 Comments

Philby interview c.1967 By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
For most of us, January 23, 2013, was a day like any other. But for intelligence history aficionados it marked the 50th anniversary of the escape to Moscow of notorious double spy Harold Adrian Russell Philby. Known as ‘Kim’ to his friends, Philby secretly defected to the USSR from his home in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1963. He is widely considered history’s most successful double spy. While working as a senior member of British intelligence, he spied on behalf of the Soviet NKVD and KGB from the early 1930s until his defection. In 1965, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. When he died, in 1988, he was buried with honors by the Soviet authorities. Philby’s defection sent ripples of shock across Western intelligence and is often described as one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War. On the 50th anniversary of Philby’s defection to Moscow, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph carried an article with excerpts of interviews with one of Philby’s sons, Dudley Thomas Philby, and his Russian widow, Rufina Pukhova Philby. Born in 1946, Dudley ‘Tommy’ Philby is the third of Kim’s five children with his second of four wives, Aileen Furse Philby. Aileen died in 1957, when Tommy was just 11 years old; his contact with his father was cut off as soon as the double spy defected to the USSR in January 1963. But it was resumed a few months later, when he received a letter from his father in Moscow. Eventually, Tommy visited Kim five times in Moscow in the 1970s. Speaking on the anniversary of his late father’s defection, he described him as “a very kind man” and “a very good father”, who “had his belief [in] communism [and] carried it out”. He told The Telegraph that he personally did not agree with his father’s political views, but added: “he was what he was, what could I do?”. He told the paper that Kim eventually came to think that “it was all wrong”, implying that Philby grew disillusioned with the Soviet system. Read more of this post

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

Soviets used civilian airliners to gather intelligence, documents show

December 31, 2012 by 5 Comments

Soviet Aeroflot airlinerBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Soviet spy agencies routinely used civilian airplanes to collect aerial intelligence over Western military installations, according to newly declassified documents. The revelation is contained in British government files from 1982 that were declassified on Friday, following the expiration of the United Kingdom’s 30-year classification rule. According to Bloomberg’s Robet Hutton and Thomas Penny, who accessed the files, they include a detailed memorandum addressed to Conservative Party politician Margaret Thatcher, who was serving as Britain’s Prime Minister at the time. The memorandum, which was authored by then Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, informed Mrs. Thatcher that the airborne behavior of airliners belonging to Aeroflot, the Soviet Union’s state-owned civilian air carrier, appeared suspicious. Secretary Nott wrote in the memo that Britain’s Royal Air Force had “established that some [Soviet] aircraft deviated from their flight-plan routes” when flying over Western military bases. He goes on to describe an “incident of particular interest”, in which an Aeroflot Ilyushin IL62 airplane descended without authorization from 35,000 feet to 10,000 feet right above the village of Boulmer. Located in Northumberland, England, Boulmer is adjacent to a Royal Air Force base, which at the time featured a newly modernized radar system. The same Aeroflot airplane behaved in similar fashion while flying over a United States Navy base in Groton, Connecticut, which at the time hosted the first US submarine equipped with Trident Ballistic Missiles. The memorandum states that the circumstances surrounding the flight patterns of Aeroflot airliners had led the Royal Air Force to assume that the Soviet airplanes “were gathering intelligence” on Western military targets. Read more of this post

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

Fascinating profile of the Soviet KGB’s little-known tech wizard

December 24, 2012 by 5 Comments

US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., displays the Soviet KGB's Great Seal bug at the United NationsBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is often suggested by intelligence researchers that one major difference between Western and Soviet modes of espionage during the Cold War was their degree of reliance on technology. It is generally accepted that Western espionage was far more dependent on technical innovation than its Soviet equivalent. While this observation may be accurate, it should not be taken to imply that the KGB, GRU, and other Soviet intelligence agencies neglected technical means of intelligence collection. In a recent interview with top-selling Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russian intelligence historian Gennady Sokolov discusses the case of Vadim Fedorovich Goncharov. Colonel Goncharov was the KGB’s equivalent of ‘Q’, head of the fictional research and development division of Britain’s MI6 in the James Bond films. A veteran of the Battle of Stalingrad, Goncharov eventually rose to the post of chief scientific and technical consultant of KGB’s 5th Special Department, later renamed Operations and Technology Directorate. According to Sokolov, Goncharov’s numerous areas of expertise included cryptology, communications interception and optics. While working in the KGB’s research laboratories, Goncharov came up with the idea of employing the principles behind the theremin, an early electronic musical instrument invented by Soviet physicist Léon Theremin in 1928, in wireless audio surveillance. According to Sokolov, the appropriation of the theremin by the KGB under Goncharov’s leadership “changed the world of intelligence”. Read more of this post

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

Canadian diplomats spied for the CIA in Cuba, claims new book

October 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

Embassy of Canada in Havana, CubaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Several accredited Canadian diplomats were recruited by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to spy on Cuba in the aftermath of the 1962 missile crisis, according to a new book. Authored by Canadian retired diplomat John Graham, the book, entitled Whose Man in Havana? Adventures from the Far Side of Diplomacy, is to be published this week by Penumbra Press. In it, Graham claims that he was among a number of Canadian diplomats stationed in Cuba, who were secretly recruited by the CIA. The US agency had been essentially forced out of the island after Washington and Havana terminated diplomatic relations in 1961, soon after the government of Fidel Castro declared itself a proponent of Marxism. The closure of the US embassy meant that the CIA had no base from which to operate in the Caribbean island. Two years later, in May 1963, US President John F. Kennedy personally asked Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson for assistance in intelligence-gathering efforts in Cuba. The Canadian leader consented and, according to Graham, Canadian diplomatic officials actively assisted the CIA until at least 1970. The author states in his book that he himself operated in Cuba for two years, from 1962 until 1964, under the official cover of Political Officer at the Canadian embassy in Havana. Prior to that, he says, he was provided with rudimentary training by the CIA, which consisted of spending “just a few days” at the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, VA. He was then tasked with conducting physical surveillance of Soviet military bases on Cuba and, if possible, identifying weapons and electronic security measures, and noting troop movements. Read more of this post

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

News you may have missed #795

September 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

Shakil AfridiBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►US ‘cannot verify authenticity’ of Afridi interview. The US says it cannot verify an alleged interview by Shakeel Afridi, a Pakistani medical doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden. In May, a Pakistani court sentenced Afridi to 33 years in jail after he was arrested following the killing by US troops of bin Laden in May 2011 at his compound in the town of Abbottabad. US television channel Fox News said Tuesday it had obtained an exclusive phone interview with Afridi from behind bars, in which he detailed months of torture by Pakistan’s shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence.
►►Evidence suggests US covered up Soviet massacre in Poland. New evidence appears to back the idea that the US administration of President F.D. Roosevelt helped cover up Soviet guilt for the 1940 Katyn massacre, in which more than 22,000 Poles were killed by the Soviets on Stalin’s orders. Historians said documents, released by the US National Archives, supported the suspicion that the US did not want to anger its wartime ally, Joseph Stalin. The documents show that American prisoners of war sent coded messages to Washington in 1943 saying that the killings must have been carried out by the Soviets, rather than the Nazis. Information about the massacre was suppressed at the highest levels in Washington, say historians.
►►Yemen President sacks intel agency heads. Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has sacked the heads of the National Security Agency and  Military Intelligence, just a few hours after two suicide car bombs targeted the country’s Defense Minister in the capital Sana’a killing at least 12 people. The National Security Agency’s Ali Mohammed al-Anisi has been replaced with Ali Hassan al-Ahmadi, while the head of Military Intelligence, Mujahid Ali Ghuthaim, has been replaced with Ahmed Muhsin al-Yafiee. Hadi took office in February this year after year-long street protests forced former President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down as part of an UN-backed power transfer deal in return for immunity from prosecution.

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

Missing section of Cold War spy tunnel unearthed in Germany

August 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

Part of the unearthed tunnelBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A missing section of a secret tunnel, constructed by British and American intelligence agencies to spy on Soviet and East German government communications during the Cold War has been unearthed in Germany. The tunnel, believed to be nearly half a kilometer (1/3 mile) long, was part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Operation GOLD, also known as Operation STOPWATCH in Britain. It was based on an idea initially suggested to the Americans in the early 1950s by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), which had carried out a similar scheme in Soviet-occupied Austria. The CIA adopted and funded the program at the cost of nearly $7 million. At its completion, the underground tunnel connected a secret entry-point in Rudow, West Berlin, to a location beneath Alt-Glienicke in East Berlin. The aim behind the project was to tap into underground telephone cables facilitating Soviet and East German military and civilian government communications. But the KGB, the Soviet Union’s foremost intelligence agency during the Cold War, was aware of the project almost from its infancy, thanks to George Blake, a British informant who was later convicted to 42 years in prison, but managed to escape to Moscow in 1966. Interestingly, the KGB did not reveal the tunnel’s existence to the Soviet and East German militaries, fearing that a sudden rerouting of communications cables would expose Blake as a Soviet mole. Instead, they allowed the tunnel to operate for nearly a year before publicly exposing its existence in 1956. At that time, Soviet and East German authorities dug up the eastern section of the tunnel and bussed in hundreds of international reporters, as well as tens of thousands of East Germans, to view the tunnel, in a massive propaganda campaign. In 1997, part of the tunnel that crossed West Berlin was excavated and transported to the Allied Museum in Berlin. Read more of this post

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

The mysterious case of Glenn Souther, US defector to the USSR

July 20, 2012 by 8 Comments

Glenn Michael SoutherBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This past June marked 23 years from the death of Glenn Michael Souther, a United States Navy photographer who defected to the Soviet Union in 1986. Despite the passage of time, a thick veil of mystery remains over the life and works of Souther, an ideological defector to the USSR, who was one of the very few foreign agents and defectors given officer rank in the KGB, the Soviet Union’s foremost intelligence agency during most the Cold War. In 1975, following his graduation from high school, Souther joined the US Navy, and was stationed in Italy in the early 1980s. It was there where he married an Italian woman, and where –it is believed– he was recruited by the KGB’s Boris Solomatin, a legendary Soviet intelligence officer who is believed to have handled US spy John Anthony Walker. In 1982, Souther left the US Navy and enrolled at Old Dominion University, where he studied Russian literature, while at the same time working as a reservist in the US Navy. During that time, Souther worked for naval intelligence, specializing in processing satellite-reconnaissance photographs; he is also believed to have had access to classified intercepts circulating within the US Navy’s communications network. In May 1986, soon after the Federal Bureau of Investigation started to suspect Souther may be working for a foreign intelligence agency, he suddenly disappeared. Two years later, an article in the morning edition of Soviet newspaper Izvestia, official publishing organ of the Soviet Presidium, announced that Souther had been granted political asylum in the USSR. Later that evening, Souther appeared on Soviet Central Television, criticizing American foreign policy and explaining his decision to defect to the Soviet Union. However, on June 22, 1989, an article in Krasnaya Zvezda, official newspaper of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, announced that Souther had killed himself in the garage of his home. Read more of this post

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

Research sheds light on famed psychoanalyst’s espionage activities

July 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

Max EitingonBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An early student of Sigmund Freud, who introduced psychoanalysis in what is today Israel, was likely an agent of Soviet intelligence, according to historical evidence stemming from his life and the lives of his close relatives and friends. Max Eitingon, who was a member of Freud’s inner circle of students, funded and directed the Psychoanalytic Institute and polyclinic in Berlin, Germany, in the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1933, the rise of German national socialism prompted Eitingon, who was Jewish, to emigrate to Palestine, where he continued his psychoanalytic work. The view that Eitingon may have actively collaborated with Soviet intelligence in both Germany and Palestine was famously discussed in a lengthy letter exchange in The New York Review of Books in the summer of 1988. Although the debate continues among intelligence historians, two researchers, Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, both of the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute, believe that there is “a preponderance of circumstantial evidence” that Eitingon did collaborate with Soviet intelligence in Germany and Palestine. In a paper published in March of this year, the two researchers argue that Eitingon’s services to the Soviets included dispatching messages and providing safe houses for Moscow’s operatives. But in a fascinating research update, published yesterday in online journal Tablet, Ginor and Remez contend that historical evidence pertaining to the activities of Eitingon’s Russian-born wife, Mirra, and other relatives and friends, adds credence to the view that the famed psychoanalyst was working for Soviet intelligence. The two scholars point out that Mirra Eitingon, née Burovsky, had a son from a previous marriage, named Yuli Borisovich Khariton. Yuli, who remained close to his mother even after she left Russia, grew up to become the principal designer of the Soviet atomic bomb. Additionally, Ginor and Remez call attention to the role of two of Eitingon’s professional acquaintances: Adolf Yoffe, the Soviet Union’s first ambassador to Germany, and his successor, Viktor Kopp, both of whom shared Eitingon’s psychoanalytic interests. Specifically, Kopp was second-in-command at the Soviet Psychoanalytic Association, while Yoffe had been mentored by Alfred Adler, one of the psychoanalytic movement’s co-founders in Austria. In this sense, Ginor and Remez argue that psychoanalysis and intelligence work were “intertwined” in Eitingon’s life and career. Read more of this post

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

U-2 pilot captured by USSR in 1960 to receive posthumous Silver Star

June 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

Francis Gary PowersBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An American Central Intelligence Agency pilot, who was criticized during the Cold War for allowing Soviet forces to capture him alive during the 1960 U-2 incident, is to be posthumously awarded a military decoration for valor. Francis Gary Powers was one of several pilots who participated in Project HOMERUN, a joint effort by the CIA and the National Security Agency that surreptitiously gathered signals and photographic intelligence on Soviet military sites. The program, which has been described by some historians as one of the most successful intelligence projects in US history, relied on the U-2’s ability to fly beyond 70,000 feet over the Soviet Union, thus avoiding detection or attack by Soviet forces. But this impression was false; in reality, Soviet radars had been able to detect nearly every U-2 flight over Soviet territory. Eventually, on May 1, 1960, Soviet forces were able to shoot down one of the U-2 flights using a surface-to-air missile. Shortly after the USSR announced that an American plane had been shot down over Soviet territory, the US administration of President Dwight Eisenhower pretended that the plane was a NASA weather research aircraft that had “drifted into Soviet airspace” when the pilot had “lost consciousness”. At that point, however, Washington had no idea that the CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had been captured alive by Soviet forces. This was later announced by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who scored a major diplomatic coup for the Soviets. Following his arrest, Powers spent nearly two years in a Moscow prison before being exchanged for Soviet KGB spy Rudolf Abel, who had been captured in the US in 1957.  Recently declassified documents show that some CIA analysts had refused to believe that the USSR was capable of shooting down a U-2 aircraft, and thought that Powers had voluntarily defected to the Soviet Union. Read more of this post

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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Senior Soviet KGB ex-official found dead in Moscow apartment

April 2, 2012 by 1 Comment

Leonid ShebarshinBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Leonid Shebarshin, a retired General of the KGB, who was often referred to as “the last Soviet spy” was found dead in his downtown Moscow apartment over the weekend. Police said a pistol and an apparent suicide note were found next to his body. In a separate statement on Saturday, law enforcement investigators said Shebarshin had shot himself. Born in 1935, Shebarshin was posted as an interpreter at the Soviet embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, shortly after graduating from the Moscow Institute of International Relations. He eventually became personal assistant to the Soviet Ambassador to Pakistan, who recommended him to the KGB. Shebarshin returned to Moscow in 1962 to attend the KGB’s training school, before being sent back to Pakistan in 1964, this time as an intelligence officer. In 1975, he moved to India, where he became rezident (station chief) of the KGB’s field station in New Delhi. Two years later he was transferred to the KGB’s field station in Tehran, Iran, which he headed through the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 1982, however, his meteoric rise within the ranks of the KGB was temporarily halted by the defection of Soviet Vladimir Kuzichkin, a Major in the KGB, who escaped to Turkey with the help of the British Secret Intelligence Service —also known as MI6. The British brought Kuzichkin in contact with the CIA, which in turn passed along the defector’s debriefing notes to the government of Iran. This information led to the summary expulsion from Tehran of nearly 20 Soviet KGB field officers, including Shebarshin himself. After a brief period in Moscow, Shebarshin returned to the field, this time to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, where he traveled at least 20 times. He was in Russia on August 19, 1991, during the so-called ‘August coup’, when a group of hardline communist officials took power in Moscow and temporarily arrested Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. But, even though he headed the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (now renamed to Foreign Intelligence Service), Shebarshin persisted in remaining neutral during the coup, and spent all of August 19 playing tennis at his summer residence. Read more of this post

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

News you may have missed #684

February 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

Boris KarpichkovBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Pakistan sacks health workers who helped CIA locate bin Laden. Seventeen local health workers have been fired in Abbottabad for their part in a CIA scheme to try to confirm the presence of Osama bin Laden in the northern Pakistani town. The low-ranking health department employees were punished for helping Dr Shakil Afridi, who was assigned by the CIA to set up a fake vaccination scheme in Abbottabad, ahead of the US military operation that found and killed the al-Qaida leader there.
►►Estonia arrests couple for spying for Russia. Estonian prosecutors said Aleksei Dressen, who works for Estonia’s security police, and his wife, Viktoria Dressen, were arrested at Tallinn airport as she was boarding a flight to Moscow on February 22. Aleksei Dressen allegedly went to the airport to give his wife a folder that contained classified information. Meanwhile, in neighboring Lithuania, the government has released the names of 238 citizens who were reservists for the KGB during the Cold War.
►►KGB defector talks to British newspaper. Since fleeing to Britain in the late 1990s Boris Karpichkov has preferred to keep a low profile —unlike another, better-known Moscow agent who fled to London, one Alexander Litvinenko. He says he ran audacious disinformation operations against the CIA and broke into and planted bugs in the British embassy in Riga. But in 1995 he grew unhappy with the increasingly corrupt FSB (the KGB’s successor), which, he says, failed to pay him. He spent several months in a Moscow prison before slipping into Britain on one of the false passports he was given as a KGB officer. He hasn’t been back to Russia since.

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

News you may have missed #682

February 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

Lieutenant General Ronald BurgessBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Is there a Mossad base near Iran? The London-based Sunday Times has published an interview with a man claiming to be an Azerbaijan-based agent of Israeli intelligence agency, who confirmed the existence of such a base. The man, identified in the article as “Shimon,” told the paper that there were dozens of Israeli Mossad agents working out of the base. The meeting between the agent and the London Times‘ reporter took place in Baku, near the Israeli Embassy, the report said.
►►Analysis: CIA report on Soviet bioweapons still secret. It has been three decades since the Reagan administration accused the Soviet Union and Vietnam of using chemical weapons known as yellow rain. We still do not know how the US came to this conclusion, but have good reason to believe that it was based on flawed or distorted intelligence. A classified critique of the intelligence behind those charges, written several years ago for the Central Intelligence Agency, could shed light on what happened. Last year, Matthew Meselson, a Harvard expert on chemical and biological weapons, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get the report released. He was turned down.
►►US official says Iran unlikely to strike first. Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, said the Iranian military is unlikely to intentionally provoke a conflict with the West. He said Iran probably has the ability to “temporarily close the Strait of Hormuz with its naval forces”, as some Iranian officials have threatened to do if attacked or in response to sanctions on its oil exports by the US and European Union. But, he added, “Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict or launch a preemptive attack”.

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

← Older posts

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 268 other followers