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Analysis: Inside the US-Israeli intelligence relationship

April 13, 2010 Leave a comment

US embassy, Israel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, authors of Friends in Deed: Inside the US-Israel Alliance, have produced a lengthy, well-researched and up-to-date essay on US-Israeli intelligence relations. The essay, which appears in the latest issue of Tablet, carefully examines the highly complex subject of the CIA’s associations with the Mossad and Shin Bet. The fact is that, despite their unquestionable alliance Israel and the US have for years been among each other’s primary intelligence targets. Melman and Raviv correctly remind us that, by as early as 1954, US officials at the US embassy in Tel Aviv had already discovered several microphones in the office of the ambassador. Two years later, US counter-surveillance experts uncovered electronic bugs at the Tel Aviv residence of a US military attaché. Since then, the use of bribes and even women by the Shin Bet to lure US embassy guards has been frequent –and mostly unsuccessful. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #328 (breaking)

April 12, 2010 1 Comment

Breaking: Real IRA admits NI MI5 base bomb. The Real IRA has admitted it was behind a car bomb which exploded shortly after midnight local hour, outside the Palace Barracks army base, in Holywood, County Down, which houses MI5’s Northern Ireland headquarters. Police said no warning was given.
Venezuela releases 4 of 8 alleged spies. Four of the eight Colombians arrested by Venezuela on espionage charges last week have been released, after a judge found there was not enough evidence to take them to trial. Meanwhile Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has said that the alleged spy ring used “secret or semi-secret codes”.
Analysis: Security services will determine fate of Kyrgyz uprising. Unlike the 2005 so-called Tulip Revolution, this time the anti-government protesters in Kyrgyzstan are armed. But the real question may be whether they have the support of (and control over) the Internal Security Services and the military.

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Malaysia to investigate alleged Israeli spy infiltration

April 12, 2010 2 Comments

Anwar Ibrahim

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Malaysian government has ordered an investigation into claims by a prominent opposition leader that Israeli spies, posing as communications technicians, infiltrated the headquarters of the country’s national police. Anwar Ibrahim, leader of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party), told the Malaysian parliament on April 4 that he was in possession of police documents confirming the infiltration. According to Anwar’s allegations, two former officers of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate were able to enter the head office of Malaysia’s national police, acting as representatives of a private communications technology contractor. While there, Anwar said, they were able to access the police’s communications network. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #327

April 10, 2010 2 Comments

Cyberspies eyed Canadian visa applications. Personal information about Canadians applying for visas was swiped by cyberspies who hacked into Indian embassy computers in Afghanistan. The data theft was part of a wider cyberespionage operation launched by the underground hacking community in China and aimed primarily at political targets, according to academic researchers.
Israeli Arab jailed for spying on top general. Rawi Sultani, who is accused of informing Hezbollah of his membership in the same fitness club as Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as of methods of accessing the club, has been sentenced to nearly six years’ imprisonment.
CIA places American on assassination list. US-born al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Aulaqi, who now lives in Yemen, has become the first US citizen to be placed on a CIA “targeted killing” list, which requires “special approval from the White House”.

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Analysis: Canada becoming a heaven for spies claims ex-CSIS agent

April 9, 2010 Leave a comment

Juneau-Katsuya

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Canada is today one of the world’s safest and most attractive environments for international spies, according to a former officer in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who last September co-authored Nest of Spies with Montreal-based journalist Fabrice de Pierrebourg, says that Canada is doing little to combat increasing espionage activity within its borders by agents of friendly and adversary nations alike, including China, Iran, Israel, the United States, and France. Juneau-Katsuya suggests that international spying within Canada is encouraged by the country’s prosperity, its multicultural urban environment, advanced telecommunications infrastructure, as well as by its political or geographical proximity to major world powers, such as Russia and the United States. Read more of this post

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Interview with alleged CIA spy in Iran

April 9, 2010 Leave a comment

A Time to Betray

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
US government-owned Radio Liberty has aired an interview with an Iranian defector who claims to have worked as a CIA agent in the 1980s and early 1990s. The defector, who goes by the pseudonym Reza Kahlili (codename ‘Wally’), has authored what appears to be a CIA-sanctioned book, entitled A Time to Betray, in which he says he was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC is a sizable branch of the Iranian military that is ideologically committed to the defense of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Kahlili, who now lives in California, says he concluded his studies in the US and returned to Iran shortly after the Revolution. But he quickly became disillusioned with the Islamic regime, and in 1981 met with the CIA in the United States and offered them his services. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #326

April 8, 2010 2 Comments

US spends millions on deception operations. The US Joint Information Operations Warfare Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas has a 435-person unit tasked with “development of television commercials and documentaries, focus group and polling services, television air time, posters, banners, and billboards”, as well as “novelty items”. Novelty items? Jeff Stein takes a closer look.
Iranian embassy in Australia spying on activists. The Iranian embassy in Canberra has been accused of spying on Iranian opposition activists in Australia, collecting intelligence on their activities and reporting back to Tehran. The allegations come amid growing concern within Australian security services over the activities of Iranian government-backed militants in Australia.
Newsflash: Israeli, Iranian spies active in Gulf! The profound commentary by Dubai Police continues. Last time they warned all spies “present in the Gulf” to leave the region within a week. This time they are reminding us that “Israel and Iran have their spies active in the Gulf region”. You don’t say.

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News you may have missed #325

April 7, 2010 Leave a comment

CIA investigator sentenced. CIA employee Kerry Gerdes, who falsified interview reports while performing background checks on CIA employees and potential employees, has been sentenced to two months in prison and six months of home confinement.
President Ford authorized warrantless wiretaps, memo shows. Even though he replaced Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign the US Presidency over intelligence abuses, Gerald Ford secretly authorized the use of warrantless domestic wiretaps soon after coming into office, according to a declassified document.
Yemeni court upholds alleged spies’ sentences. Three Yemenis, who were accused last year by the government of having “links to Israeli intelligence”, have had their sentences upheld by an appeal court.

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Essential links on WikiLeaks video of Iraq shooting

April 7, 2010 4 Comments

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Whistleblower site WikiLeaks has released a leaked video taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007, showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians, killing 12 people and wounding two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency. There are several edited versions of the video, which can be found in its entirety here. Cryptome offers a series of selected stills from the leaked WikiLeaks video, with some visual analysis of the footage. It is worth keeping in mind that the leaked video is of substantially lower quality than what the US helicopter pilots saw, because it was converted through several stages before it was released by WikiLeaks. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Can the CIA sabotage the Iranian nuclear weapons program?

April 7, 2010 2 Comments

Shahram Amiri

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
There is no doubt that the CIA has been actively trying to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program since at least February of 2008, when US President George W. Bush authorized Langley to intensify its covert efforts against Tehran. It is also true that the US was able to partially sabotage Iran’s nuclear program by eliminating the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, and by employing scientific front companies and c ooperative suppliers, who gave the Iranians faulty hardware. The defection to Washington of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri provides recent evidence of the existence of a covert US project to “decapitate” the Iranian nuclear weapons program, by luring away leading Iranian researchers. On the other hand, it is worth wondering why the CIA chose to remove Amiri from the Iranian nuclear program, instead of asking him to remain an agent-in-place, which would have been far more beneficial for Langley. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #324 (CIA edition)

April 6, 2010 Leave a comment

Intelligence not hampered by waterboarding ban, says CIA’s top spy. Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.
CIA given details of British Muslim students. Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies. IntelNews has frequently reported on the CIA’s increased activities in the UK.
CIA death at Salt Pit gets fresh attention. Jeff Stein revisits the case of Gul Rahman, who died in 2002 after weeks of interrogations at the Salt Pit secret CIA facility in Afghanistan. His death was kept off the CIA books, and his body, which was secretly buried, has never been found.

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Situation report on the al-Haramain wiretap case

April 6, 2010 Leave a comment

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Max Fisher of The Atlantic Wire provides an excellent situation report on the recent decision by a US district court, which faulted the US government for unconstitutionally wiretapping a US-based Saudi charity. The charity, al-Haramain, was taken to court in September 2004 by the US government, which accused it of having links to terrorist groups. But the charity has now successfully demonstrated that the National Security Agency (NSA) engaged in illegal spying against it, under the Bush administration’s STELLAR WIND warrantless spying program. Drawing from articles by a number of commentators, Fisher explains why the case took five years to conclude, pointing to the difficulty the plaintiffs had to prove that the NSA spied on the charity. Normally, this is close to impossible, as the NSA is not in the habit of disclosing information on its operations. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #323 (Cold War edition)

April 5, 2010 2 Comments

Story of the Soviet Trojan seal retold. Ken Stanley, who was chief technology officer at the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service from 2006 to 2008, retells the story of the large wooden replica of the US Great Seal, which the Soviets gave to the US ambassador to Moscow as a present in 1945. The seal, which was, of course, bugged, hanged in the US ambassador’s office until 1952, when it was discovered.
Soviet spy radio found in a Welsh field. It has been revealed that a Soviet encrypted radio transmitter was found near the Welsh coastal town of Ipcress in 1960. It is speculated that it belonged to the late Goronwy Rees, an academic from Aberystwyth, who was a friend of the Cambridge Five, although his daughter disputes it.
1950s-60s spy gadgets on sale at eBay. Gadgets used by British spies who trained from the 1940s to the 1960s at top-secret camp Camp X near Ontario, Canada, are being sold off on eBay. They include a camera that shoots darts, a lipstick tube containing a dagger and fake monkey dung that explodes (!).

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Colombia, Venezuela, silent on alleged spy arrests

April 5, 2010 Leave a comment

DISIP agents

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Caracas and Bogota are remaining silent on the arrests of eight alleged Colombian spies in northwest Venezuela. Eight people, members of a factory-owning family in Barinas, were charged with espionage last week, after Luis Carlos Cossio, 52, was allegedly caught photographing a telecommunications tower belonging to DISIP, Venezuela’s premier intelligence agency. Cossio, who is a dual Venezuelan-Colombian citizen, was arrested on Tuesday, along with his relative, Santiago Giraldo, 21. Two days later, Venezuelan counterintelligence agents raided the family’s factory in Barinas, arresting six more members of the same family. Colombian media report that at least two of the detainees, Cossio and Cruz Elva Giraldo, served in the same Colombian military unit in Medellin, namely the Colombian Army’s 4^th Brigade. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #322 (Netherlands edition)

April 4, 2010 Leave a comment

Moroccan-Dutch policeman to face spying charges. Moroccan-Dutch Ré Lemhaouli is facing charges of public service corruption and breach of his official secrets pledge, after being accused by Dutch authorities of spying for Morocco.
Easy to spy in Holland, says Dutch secret service. Technological developments and well-educated immigrants have made the Netherlands more vulnerable to espionage, according to the Dutch secret service AIVD.