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News you may have missed #424 (suspicious deaths edition II)

September 3, 2010 2 Comments

Top Russian spy dead after ‘swimming accident. The body of Major General Yuri Ivanov, 52, who was the deputy head of Russian military intelligence (GRU), washed up on the Turkish coast earlier this month, after he disappeared close to a sensitive Russian naval facility in neighboring Syria. Russian media did not report Ivanov’s death until last Saturday when he was quietly buried in Moscow.
Russian spy visited base installation shortly before death. According to Israeli media, Ivanov was last seen visiting the building site for a new Russian military base in the Syrian coastal city Tartus. After his visit, he left for a meeting with Syrian intelligence agents, but went missing.
Ivanov’s body found in Turkey on August 16. Russian authorities have refused comment on why Ivanov’s death was only announced on Saturday, even though his body was found in Turkey on August 16.

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Analysis: How the CIA bedded down in Burma

September 2, 2010 Leave a comment

Burma

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is a story that was largely ignored when it surfaced last year: since 1994, US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer Richard A. Horn had been claiming that CIA agents illegally wiretapped his conversations while he was stationed in Burma. It appears that, at the time, the US diplomatic representation in Burma and the CIA station in Rangoon were at loggerheads with the DEA. The latter, represented by special agent Horn, had a policy of publicly commending the Burmese government for its significant efforts to end the vastly lucrative illegal drug trade in the country. But the diplomatic leadership at the US embassy in Rangoon, supported by the CIA, felt that their inroads with the Burmese military junta, which has controlled the country since 1990, were being obstructed by the DEA. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #423

September 1, 2010 2 Comments

Mysterious Russian numbers station changes frequency. The output of a mysterious radio station in Russia, which has been broadcasting coded information to secret agents almost continuously for 20 years, has suddenly changed.
US contractor charged with leaking North Korea intel to Fox News. Steven Kim, who worked at the US Department of State as a federal contractor, is accused of passing classified US intelligence on North Korea to a Fox News reporter. The Obama administration appears determined to prosecute more such cases.
Israel using espionage balloons, says Lebanese army. The Lebanese army is claiming that Israel has begun using a new tool to collect intelligence above Lebanon’s skies, namely hot air balloons equipped with cameras, transmission capabilities and self-destruction mechanisms. The US has been using spy balloons in Afghanistan for almost a year.

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Taliban operate ‘very extensive’ spy network in British Afghan bases

September 1, 2010 4 Comments

Richard Kemp

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The former head of British troops in Afghanistan has warned that the Taliban are gathering intelligence from a “very, very extensive network of intelligence” operating inside British military bases in the Central Asian country. Colonel Richard J. Kemp, who was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003, said the spy network includes “sources in many places” throughout the country, such as NATO military bases and Afghan security forces outposts. He also told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that the network is so effective that it tends to possess more information about the itineraries of foreign officials visiting Afghanistan than Western diplomats, NATO or Afghan military commanders realize. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #422 (suspicious deaths edition)

August 31, 2010 Leave a comment

Self-described CIA assassin dies in gun accident. Roland W. Haas, a senior intelligence officer in the US Army Reserve who claimed in a 2007 memoir that he was a CIA assassin, died over the weekend when he accidentally shot himself, police in the US state of Georgia said.
Russian military intel chief in mystery death. General Yuri Ivanov, 52, deputy head of Russia’s powerful military intelligence agency, the GRU, died mysteriously in a swimming accident “several days ago”, Russian media has reported. No further details have been released on the circumstances or the location of Ivanov’s death.
David Kelly inquest calls ‘outrageous’, says friend. Professor Christian Seelos, was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq alongside British biological weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, who was found dead four days after appearing before a UK Parliament committee investigating claims about Iraq’s purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Seelos now says that calls for a fresh examination into Dr. Kelly’s death are “totally politically motivated”.

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News you may have missed #421 (‘not news’ edition)

August 30, 2010 1 Comment

Not news: Senior Afghan officials on CIA payroll. The New York Times‘ Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins are right to air this story, but the real news here is the media industry’s collective gasp of fake shock and horror. Really?
Not news: Pentagon breached by foreign hacker. US Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn has disclosed that an undisclosed foreign spy agency carried out a serious cyberattack on US military networks with the help of a tainted flash drive that was inserted into a laptop in the Middle East. Ah, the old memory-stick gift trick…
Not news: Sex-obsessed coverage of Russian espionage continues. Russian and US media keep avoiding serious analysis of post-Cold-War Russian intelligence operations by focusing on Anna Chapman. This is no surprise, since pursuing the real story behind Russian deep-cover espionage in the United States takes hard work.>response to Le Carre’s comments.

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Police see ‘professional job’ in British spy’s death

August 30, 2010 1 Comment

Gareth Williams

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As authorities investigate the recent death of British spy Dr. Gareth Williams, the country’s notorious tabloid media industry is having a field day disorienting interested observers. It is thus easy to miss important news breakthroughs in the cacophony of sensationalized headlines about Williams, whose body was discovered a week ago, stuffed in a sports duffle bag in the bath of his London apartment. One such breakthrough was yesterday’s report by Britain’s widely respected Channel 4, which said that law enforcement investigators described Williams’ death as “a neat job”, a term used to refer to professional killings. The Channel 4 report was preceded by strong official denials by police that Williams’ murder was sex-related, as had been previously reported. Some investigators now believe that Williams was killed by a foreign agent, who then deliberately “planted a trail of clues” pointing to a homosexual link to the death. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #420

August 27, 2010 Leave a comment

Nokia and Siemens deny helping Iranian spying. Isa Saharkhiz, a one-time reporter for the Islamic Republic News Agency, is suing Nokia Siemens Networks in US federal court, claiming the companies facilitated his capture and torture at the hands of the Iranian government. The European-based consortium denies the allegations.
New Aussie spy agency HQ ‘on time and on budget’. The new ASIO $606 million (USD $540 million) headquarters in Parkes, Canberra, is progressing on time and on budget, with completion scheduled for mid-2012. Meanwhile, the 270 construction workers on site have been vetted for security clearance, must pass security checkpoints each day, and have signed papers not to discuss anything that happens on site.
US Pentagon spends big on outsourced spy imagery. The production and maintenance of US spy satellites used to be in government hands, but now this critical aspect of national security is routinely outsourced. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Department of Defense’s operator of military spy satellites, recently awarded $7.3 billion in contracts for its EnhancedView commercial imagery program.

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News you may have missed #419 (Gareth Williams edition)

August 26, 2010 1 Comment

Media suggest sexual motive behind MI6 man’s murder. British media claim police suspect sexual jealousy to be behind the death of GCHQ and MI6 employee Dr. Gareth Williams. The Sun suggests Williams was “a secret transvestite who may have been killed by a gay lover”.
MI6 dead man’s post-mortem inconclusive. A post-mortem on MI6 worker Gareth Williams, who was found dead in his London apartment has proven “inconclusive”, but shows he was not stabbed.
MI6 worker may have been strangled. It appears increasingly likely that MI6 worker Dr. Gareth Williams, who was killed a fortnight ago, was strangled –rather than stabbed– to death.

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British MI6 employee found dead in London flat

August 26, 2010 1 Comment

Gareth Williams

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities are keeping silent on the mysterious death of a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) employee, whose body was found in the bath of his London apartment, stuffed in a sports duffle bag. By Monday afternoon, when police entered the top apartment of the five-storey townhouse in Pimlico, London, the man had been laying dead for nearly a fortnight. On Wednesday, he was identified as Dr. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old mathematician employed by General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British government’s foremost communications security and surveillance agency. For the past year, Williams had been temporarily transferred to MI6, the country’s external intelligence agency, whose headquarters is located less than a mile from the apartment where the mathematician’s body was discovered. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #418

August 25, 2010 1 Comment

US military pays for intel widely available online. Experts say that the vast majority of the ‘intelligence’ needed by the United States is freely available on the Internet. But that has not stopped a company called Military Periscope from selling its subscription services to the US government, on things such as updates on foreign militaries, peacekeeping missions, weapons databases and terrorist organizations “via monthly CD-ROM delivery”.
Son of Russian spies could return to US for school. Tim Foley, the elder son of Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, the two deported US residents who were living a double life as Russian spies, may be trying to return to study in the United States, but his younger brother plans to stay in Moscow.
German spy chief notes cyberattack surge. Cyberattacks against German corporate and government computers have been on the rise since 2005, according to Heinz Fromm, Director of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He said the attacks “come mainly from Asia, often from China”, and that often “state agencies are involved”.

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Ireland not to recall passports following Mossad forgeries

August 25, 2010 1 Comment

Forged passports

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The government of Ireland has decided against recalling millions of passports issued before 2005, following the discovery of several forged Irish passports used by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. At least seven of the Mossad operatives who took part in last January’s assassination of senior Hamas military official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, used forged Irish passports to enter and exit the United Arab Emirates. An official investigation into the affair by the Irish government uncovered an extensive Israeli document forgery network in Ireland, and led to the expulsion of an Israeli embassy official from the country. But Irish government officials, tired of the long history of forged Irish passports used by intelligence agencies around the world, flirted with the idea of recalling all Irish passports issued before 2005, when sophisticated security features were introduced. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #417

August 24, 2010 1 Comment

US Senators question Chinese telecom hardware bid. Senior Republican senators have called for an investigation on whether US national security will be compromised by the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei seeking to sell equipment to Sprint Nextel, which provides services to the US military and law enforcement agencies.
Pakistan environmental chaos causes security concerns. The catastrophic floods in Pakistan, which have displaced millions of persons over the last several weeks, when combined with the other socioeconomic and political stresses on Pakistan, have the potential to further weaken an already weak Pakistani state, according to a new US Congressional Research Service report.
Russian base in Armenia to stay through 2044. Russia has secured a long-term foothold in the energy-rich and unstable Caucasus region by signing a deal with Armenia that allows a Russian military base to operate until 2044 in exchange for a promise of new weaponry and fresh security guarantees.

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‘Lord of War’ weapons smuggler enjoys Russian protection

August 24, 2010 1 Comment

Viktor Bout

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The case of notorious arms smuggler Viktor Bout is well known. Born in Dushanbe, Soviet Tajikistan, in 1967, Bout served in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) until the collapse of the USSR, at which point he began supplying weapons to shady groups, ranging from Congolese rebels and Angolan paramilitaries to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In March of 2008, Bout, known as ‘Lord of War’, was finally arrested by the Royal Thai Police, after a tip by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers. The latter had managed to lure Bout to Thailand by pretending to be Colombian FARC arms procurers. Recently, Washington scored a second victory by convincing Thai authorities to extradite Bout to the United States on terrorism charges. Presumably, Bout will be tried as an arms smuggler acting on his own accord. But is this right? Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #416 (Iran edition)

August 23, 2010 Leave a comment

Israel not to attack Iran in 2011, say US sources. The Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran’s nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year for Iran to complete a “dash” for a nuclear weapon. US officials say the assessment has dimmed the prospect that Israel would pre-emptively strike Iran within the next year.
Iran launches first spy drone. Iran has launched a domestically made long-range high-altitude drone, called Karrar, according to state media. Hamed Saeedi, managing director of Farnas Aerospace Company, which is in charge of the project, said plans are under way to produce additional drones and unmanned choppers.
Iranian tried for espionage collapses in Armenian court. Behnam Bagheri, an Iranian citizen being tried in Armenia on charges of spying for Azerbaijan, collapsed in court in Yerevan on August 19 while delivering his defense speech, according to reports. In a similar case in October of 2009, Armenia charged one of its own officers with spying for Azerbaijan.