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Germany lets captured Mossad spy suspect return to Israel

August 16, 2010 1 Comment

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
German authorities have allowed an Israeli intelligence operative suspected of links to an assassination of a Palestinian official to return to Israel, despite outstanding passport forgery charges against him. The operative, whose travel documents identify him as Uri Brodsky, was arrested upon arriving in Poland on June 4, 2010. An Interpol arrest warrant for Brodsky had been previously issued by German prosecutors, who accuse Brodsky of helping procure a forged German passport for use by a member of an assassination squad operating under Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. The user of the forged passport is believed to have used the travel document to enter Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in mid-January of this year, where he participated in the killing of Palestinian Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas weapons procurer, who was found dead in his luxury Dubai hotel room on January 20. Polish authorities decided to extradite Brodsky to Germany despite intense diplomatic pressure from Israel, who pressed Warsaw and Berlin to allow the operative to return home to Israel without facing charges. But intelligence observers, who were initially impressed with Poland and Germany’s strong stance on the issue, soon realized that Brodsky’s extradition was part of a Polish-German-Israeli deal, under which Brodsky would avoid jail sentence and get away with a minor fine for forging an official German travel document. This is precisely what happened. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, Cologne (Germany), Dubai, forgery, Germany, Hamas, Interpol, Israel, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad, News, Palestine, Poland, travel documentation, United Arab Emirates, Uri Brodsky

Analysis: Russian-Czech spy scandals show new direction in Russian espionage

August 13, 2010 1 Comment

ÚZSI seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last July saw the resignations of three Czech Generals, including the head of the president’s military office and the country’s representative to NATO, following revelations that one of their senior staffers had a relationship with a Russian spy. Intelligence observers have become accustomed to frequent reports of Russian-Czech spy scandals in recent years. But, according to reports from Prague, recent Russian intelligence activity in the Czech Republic may indicate a change of direction by Moscow. Some say that Russia’s new espionage doctrine focuses less on military intelligence in the post-US-missile-shield strategic environment, and more on political and economic espionage. To be sure, Russia’s intelligence presence in the Czech capital remains substantial: Czech counterintelligence sources estimate that at least 60 –that is, one in three– Russian diplomats in Prague are engaged in intelligence-related activities. But the intensity of Russian espionage in Prague is not unique. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Aleksandr Golts, Analysis, Belgium, Bulgaria, counterintelligence, Czech Republic, Eastern Europe, energy resources, espionage, Karel Randak, military intelligence, Prague (Czech Republic), resignations, Russia, UK, UZSI (Czech Republic)

CIA hid terrorism prisoners from US Supreme Court

August 12, 2010 Leave a comment

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Central Intelligence Agency purposefully concealed at least four terrorism detainees from the US legal system, including the Supreme Court, according to an exclusive report by the Associated Press. The news agency has revealed that the CIA secretly transported the four to Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp on Cuba in 2003, two years before it publicly admitted their capture. It then secretly transferred them again to other sites in its black site prison network in various countries around the world, just three months before their prolonged stay at Guantánamo would entitle them to legal representation. While at Guantánamo, the four prisoners, Abd al-Nashiri, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah, were kept at a facility known as ‘Strawberry Fields’, which is detached from the main prison site at the bay. By hiding the four, the Bush Administration managed to keep them under CIA custody while denying them legal representation for two years longer than allowed by US law. It also concealed their detention from national and international human rights monitoring bodies and from the US justice system, including the Supreme Court. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abd al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah, ACLU, Bush Administration, CIA, Cuba, extraordinary rendition, George Little, government secrecy, Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Nancy Hollander, News, Ramzi Binalshibh, United States, US Supreme Court, War on Terrorism

News you may have missed #412

August 11, 2010 Leave a comment

British Prime Minster says Iran ‘has got a nuclear weapon’. British leader David Cameron has been criticized after he told a town hall audience in the English seaside town of Hove that “Iran has got a nuclear weapon”.
Obama nominates CIA Inspector General. The US President has nominated David Buckley, a veteran investigator with 30 years’ experience in the federal government, to head the CIA’s internal watchdog office, which has remained vacant for over a year. The Project on Government Oversight has supported the move.
CIA unmanned drone contractors in legal dispute. A breach-of-contract litigation between two Massachusetts-based computer firms has unearthed outsourced facets of the CIA’s unmanned Predator drone program.

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German ex-spies to be fined for advertising skills online

August 11, 2010 2 Comments

BND seal

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
At least a dozen German former intelligence officers are to face disciplinary action after they were found advertising their past spy careers on a job-seekers’ professional networking Web site. The German government authorized the country’s leading external intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), to initiate an internal investigation, after German tabloid newspaper Bild drew attention to the online revelations in a leading article. The newspaper listed 12 former BND officers who advertised their past intelligence careers on their publicly listed résumés on Xing.com, a German-language website that serves as Germany’s version of LinkedIn.com. German federal legislation expressly forbids BND personnel from ever publicly revealing their professional ties with the spy agency, even after dismissal, resignation or retirement. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #411

August 10, 2010 Leave a comment

Third Lebanese telecom worker charged with spying for Israel. A Lebanese prosecutor has charged a third state telecommunications employee with spying for Israel. Milad Eid, who worked at the state-owned fixed-line operator Ogero, is accused of “dealing with the Israeli enemy [and] giving them technical information in his position as head of international communications at the Telecommunications Ministry”.
Author Roald Dahl was British spy, new book claims. A new book by Donald Sturrock, entitled Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, claims that children’s author worked for British Security Coordination (BSC), a 1940s secret service network based in the United States, and was ‘run’ from New York by Canadian industrialist William Stephenson.
Israeli nuclear whistleblower wants to leave country. Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has been released from prison after serving a 10-week sentence for violating the terms of his parole by speaking to a foreign journalist. Upon his release, he asked that he be allowed to leave the country.

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Mossad operative to avoid jail in extradition deal

August 10, 2010 6 Comments

"Uri Brodsky"

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An operative of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, who was arrested in Poland on charges of forging a German passport, will avoid prison time for the offense, under a suspected Polish-German-Israeli secret deal. The man, whose travel documents identify him as Uri Brodsky, was arrested upon arriving in Poland on June 4. He is wanted by German prosecutors for procuring a forged German passport for use by a member of a Mossad hit squad, who used it to enter Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in mid-January of this year. The user of the forged passport is thought to have participated in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas weapons procurer, who was found dead in his luxury Dubai hotel room on January 20. German prosecutors believe that Brodsky, who worked in Germany under the name of Alexander Werin, assisted numerous Mossad operatives acquire forged identity papers of several European countries, including Estonia, Latvia, Austria and Switzerland. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Alexander Werin, assassinations, Austria, Cologne (Germany), Dubai, espionage, Estonia, extraditions, forgery, Germany, Hamas, Israel, Kai Petars, Latvia, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Mossad, News, Palestine, Poland, Switzerland, travel documentation, United Arab Emirates, Uri Brodsky

News you may have missed #410

August 9, 2010 Leave a comment

Clapper confirmed as US DNI in Senate-White House deal. Retired general James Clapper has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate as US National Intelligence Director, after a series of last-minute deals between objecting Republican Senators and the White House, which nominated Clapper several months ago.
Canada rejects residency request by Pakistani ex-ISI spy. The Canadian government has refused a permanent residency application by Haroon Peer, a Danish citizen, who worked for three Pakistani intelligence agencies, including the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. Haroon is married to a Canadian-born woman and has three Canadian-born children.
Lebanon in shock after ex-general’s arrest on spy charges. Last week’s arrest of Fayez Karam, a well-respected retired general and politician with the Hezbollah-allied Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), on suspicion of spying for Israel, has sent shock waves through Lebanon and left many wondering how deep the Jewish state has infiltrated the country.

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Swapped spy says he is not Russian, wants to move to Peru

August 9, 2010 Leave a comment

Mikhail Vasenkov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
One of the 11 Russian spies arrested in the US in June, and later swapped with CIA assets held in Russian prisons, claims he is not Russian, speaks no Russian, and wants to move to Peru, where he lived in the 1970s. Juan Lazaro was arrested by the FBI on June 27, along with 9 other (and later one more) Russian deep-cover operatives, who had lived in the United States under false identities for up to three decades. Lazaro, who lived in Yonkers, New York, had a doctorate in Political Science, worked as an adjunct professor, and was married to Peruvian-born journalist Vicky Pelaez. But FBI investigators unmasked Lazaro’s real name, which is Mikhail Vasenkov, before deporting him and his wife, who is also accused of working for the Russian secret services, to Moscow. According to FBI records, Vasenkov assumed the Juan Lazaro identity and ‘legend’ (biographical narrative and supporting documentation for intelligence purposes) while living in Latin America in the 1970s, using the papers of the real Juan Lazaro, an Uruguayan child who died at age 3. But now Vasenkov’s American lawyer, Genesis Peduto, claims her client is not from Russia, speaks no Russian, but is in fact the real Juan Lazaro, and wishes to leave Russia for Peru. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with counterintelligence, FBI, forgery, Genesis Peduto, imprisoned spy swaps, Juan Lazaro, Latin America, Mikhail Vasenkov, New York, News, non-official-cover, Peru, Russia, Russian illegals program spy ring, United States, Vicky Pelaez, Yonkers

News you may have missed #409

August 7, 2010 Leave a comment

Probe unearths secrets of Bulgaria’s assassination bureau. Previously unknown details on Service 7, Bulgaria’s Cold War-era assassination bureau, have been unearthed by one of Bulgaria’s leading newspapers, following a probe into 5,000 pages of declassified archives from the country’s former communist intelligence service, the First Directorate of the Committee on State Security.
US Pentagon bars troops from reading WikiLeaks. Any citizen, any foreign spy, any member of the Taliban, and any terrorist can go to the WikiLeaks web site, and download detailed information. Members of that same military, however, are now banned from looking at those internal military documents, because “doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks”.
Analysis: Chasing Wikileaks. “[W]hatever the imperfections of WikiLeaks as a startup, its emergence points to a real shortcoming within our intelligence community. Secrets can be kept by deterrence –that is, by hunting down the people who leak them […]. But there are other methods: keep far fewer secrets, manage them better –and, perhaps, along the way, become a bit more like WikiLeaks. An official government Web site that would make the implementation of FOIA quicker and more uniform, comprehensive, and accessible”.

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Iran factory blast coincides with reported bomb attack on Ahmadinejad

August 6, 2010 3 Comments

Ahmadinejad

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Official Iranian denials of an alleged bomb attack on the life of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday have been followed by reports of a simultaneous attack on a state-of-the-art Iranian petrochemicals complex. Specifically, on August 4, Reuters news agency cited an Iranian “presidential office source” in reporting a strong blast “500 meters from Ahmadinejad’s motorcade”. The blast, which Reuters attributed to either a hand grenade or a homemade explosive device, occurred as the Iranian President was being transported from the regional airport of Hamadan, in western Iran, to the city’s sports complex, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Reuters’ unnamed source said the President escaped unhurt, but subsequent reports indicated that several other passengers on the motorcade were injured. Interestingly, President Ahmadinejad’s office initially appeared to confirm the assassination attempt, but soon afterwards official state news agency IRNA attributed the blast on “an excited young man from Hamadan [who] exploded a firecracker in order to express his happiness”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Ahmadreza Radan, assassinations, Hamadan (Iran), Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Middle East, News, Pardis (Iran), Philip Crowley, sabotage, Tehran (Iran), United States, US Department of State

News you may have missed #408

August 6, 2010 Leave a comment

Russian military spy supervised Czech prisons. Robert Rakhardzho, a Russian spy whose relationship with a Czech female Army major prompted the resignation of three senior Czech military officials, worked as a psychologist at the Czech Prison Service headquarters until last September. Rakhardzho is now hiding in Russia.
US undercover feds able to easily obtain fraudulent passports. Gregory Kutz, an investigator for the US Government Accountability Office, testified last week to a Senate panel about how his team of undercover Federal agents was able to get the State Department to issue five of the seven e-Passports it requested using fraudulent information. The government apparently failed to detect such basic red flags as a fake driver’s license.
Russia widens powers of KGB successor agency. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has signed a law widening (again) the powers of the Federal Security Service, the KGB’s main successor agency. The new law allows the FSB to issue warnings to people suspected of preparing to commit “crimes against Russia’s security”. Perpetrators face fines or up to 15 days detention.

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News you may have missed #407

August 5, 2010 Leave a comment

US should dump Karzai, says ex-head of CIA Afghan Task Force. Jack Devine, who headed the CIA’s Afghan Task Force during the Afghan-Soviet War, says US efforts in the Central Asian country are “alarmingly similar to those of the Russians”, and urges Washington to dump the corrupt US-funded government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
FBI releases mug shots of 10 captured Russian spies. American authorities have released the arrest mug shots of the deep-cover Russian agents arrested in several US cities in June.
Russian accused spy held in India is released on bail. A Russian Judge has granted bail to Russian national Olga Timoshik, who was arrested for being an accomplice of German alleged spy Thomas Kuehn. The two are accused of espionage by Indian authorities.

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Comment: Is Lebanon Using US Assistance to Capture Israeli Agents?

August 5, 2010 5 Comments

Lebanon

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A minor revolution has been taking place in Lebanon over the past 16 months. Since April of 2009, Lebanese authorities have arrested nearly 100 individuals on charges of spying for Israel, three of whom have been sentenced to death. Judging by numbers alone, this may be one of the most astonishing coups in the annals of counterintelligence. There are several reasons why this is happening.

News you may have missed #406

August 4, 2010 Leave a comment

US National intelligence nominee oversaw problematic contract. While James Clapper headed the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a corporation he contracted for information technology functions was found to have “been seriously deficient with respect to security issues”. Clapper is now President Barack Obama’s controversial nominee to be Director of National Intelligence.
Pakistan spy chief cancels UK visit over terrorism comments. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent claim that Pakistan promotes the export of terrorism has led its intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to cancel a visit to Britain.
Israel alleges new Turkey spy chief is Iran supporter. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has expressed concern over Turkey’s appointment of new spy chief, Hakan Fidan, saying he is a “supporter” of the Jewish state’s enemy Iran. This is the second time in recent weeks that Israel has expressed concern over Fidan.