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US mosque says FBI informant responsible for shootout killing

January 20, 2010 Leave a comment

L.A. Abdullah

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Community relations between the FBI and American Muslim groups took a turn for the worse yesterday, after an African-American Muslim congregation in Detroit accused a Bureau informant of luring a Mosque member to his death. Luqman Ameen Abdullah, leader of the self-described Ummah Mosque in Detroit, was killed in a shootout with FBI agents on October 28, during a raid at a warehouse reportedly aimed at recovering stolen goods. But Mosque worshipers claim that Abdullah was led to the warehouse by a man going by the name of Jabril, who they say was an FBI informant. The man allegedly infiltrated the Mosque for several months leading to the shootout, but disappeared following the FBI raid. The FBI has admitted it employed three informants to spy on the group, but has refused to reveal details, and is now seeking a protective order to shield the informants’ identities. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with American Muslims, California, Craig Monteilh, Detroit, domestic intelligence, FBI, informants, Jabril, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, News, Ummah Mosque, United States

News you may have missed #0260

January 20, 2010 Leave a comment

Senior Iran military official says foreign correspondents “clearly spying”. Speaking at a gathering of Iranian armed forces personnel, Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said individuals who have links with some foreign radio and television networks are “clearly spying on Iran in a modern way”. This comment comes after last year’s arrest in Iran of Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, who was accused by Tehran of being a “media spy”.
Protest organized near CIA headquarters. Activists led by antiwar campaigner Cindy Sheehan have staged a rally near the CIA’s headquarters and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s home in northern Virginia, protesting the use of unmanned drone aircraft to assassinate al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, assassinations, CIA, Cindy Sheehan, Dick Cheney, espionage, Iran, Iranian armed forces, journalism, Massoud Jazayeri, Maziar Bahari, News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, political activism, Predator drones, United States

Georgian paramilitaries posed as election observers, say Ukrainians

January 20, 2010 Leave a comment

V. Yanukovych

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Ukraine’s largest political party has accused the nearby nation of Georgia of sending to Ukraine a team of paramilitary operatives disguised as international election monitors. Vladyslav Lukianov, who represents Ukraine’s Party of Regions in the country’s parliament, has given to the press ten names of Georgian paramilitary agents who allegedly performed “law enforcement operations” in Ukraine, while supposedly monitoring last Sunday’s Ukrainian elections. It appears that three more Georgians, who were arrested on Saturday in Donetsk, reportedly did not possess identity papers or travel documentation, and are so far refusing to speak to Ukrainian security officials. To further complicate the issue, an allegedly wiretapped conversation between Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, and an unidentified woman surfaced in the Ukrainian news media last week. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” party (Ukraine), black operations, Donetsk (Ukraine), Eastern Europe, Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, News, Party of Regions (Ukraine), Russia, Ukraine, United States, Viktor Yanukovych, Vladyslav Lukianov, Yulia Tymoshenko

Who tried to burn down the US embassy in Skopje in 1999?

January 19, 2010 Leave a comment

Pavlovic-Latas

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On March 25, 1999, approximately 200 people broke off from a much larger crowd of pro-Serbian demonstrators in downtown Skopje, Macedonia, and, in a military-style operation, tore down the security perimeter around the US embassy and occupied its courtyard for several hours. With the US ambassador, Christopher Hill, and most of the embassy staff inside the building, the occupiers set fire to embassy cars and tried to set the building alight. By the time they were dispersed by police, the rioters had managed to destroy all the cars parked in the embassy’s courtyard, as well as a large part of the embassy building’s exterior. The demonstrators were protesting US and NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia, which had begun on the previous day, sparked by brutal ethnic clashes in the Kosovo region. But the question remains: who, if anyone, organized the attempted burning down of the US embassy? Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Balkans, Christopher Hill, Dragan Pavlovic-Latas, former Yugoslavia, informants, Kosovo, lawsuits, Macedonia, NATO, News, Serbia, Skopje (Macedonia), State Security Service (Serbia), United States, US embassy in FYR Macedonia

News you may have missed #0259

January 19, 2010 Leave a comment

Jordanians threatened Balawi’s family, says paper. The Washington Post reports that members of the Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) threatened to end Khost suicide bomber Humam Khalil al-Balawi’s “medical career, and […] hinted they could cause problems for his family”, unless he cooperated with them.
Google hack attack was ultra sophisticated, new details show. Unknown hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released last week by the anti-virus firm McAfee.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Adobe, China, CIA, computer hacking, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, General Intelligence Department (Jordan), Google, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, Humam Khalil al-Balawi, informants, Jordan, McAffee, News, news you may have missed, suicide bombings, torture

France accuses US of launching military invasion of Haiti

January 19, 2010 3 Comments

Haiti

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Rivalries between the major donor powers, as well as non-profit agencies, in earthquake-devastated Haiti are delaying humanitarian help to the island. The infighting surfaced during the weekend, as the growing US military force in Haiti appeared to refuse flights from other nations consistent access to the island’s airport, giving priority instead to its own military aircraft. The move triggered a diplomatic row between the US, France, Haiti’s former colonial power, and Brazil, which technically commands the United Nations mission there. Complaints by the two countries, which lodged official protests with Washington, were echoed by officials from the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, who said emergency flights to the island were diverted to the Dominican Republic by the US military. The tense situation led to France accusing the US of using the island’s Toussaint L’Ouverture airport as a “military annex”, while French and Brazilian diplomats in the Caribbean complained that the US has launched what appeared to be a military invasion of Haiti. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2010 Haiti earthquake, Brazil, Doctors Without Borders, France, Haiti, Hilary Clinton, International Red Cross, News, Toussaint L'Ouverture international airport, United Nations, United States

News you may have missed #0258

January 18, 2010 Leave a comment

Cambridge University exhibition documents famous spy ring. Called Under Covers: Documenting Spies, the exhibition features previously unseen student records of the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring (Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, and John Cairncross).
CIA Abdulmutallab report not distributed, awaiting photo. On Christmas Day, 2009, as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was preparing to bomb an inbound flight to Detroit, a draft CIA memorandum on him was “still sitting in the computer of a junior CIA analyst, waiting until a photo of the young Nigerian was located. Unbeknownst to the analyst”, however, a photo of Abdulmutallab “had already been delivered to other counterterrorism agencies”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Anthony Blunt, Cambridge Five, CIA, Cold War, Donald Maclean, espionage, exhibitions, Guy Burgess, H.A.R. "Kim" Philby, history, intelligence analysis, intelligence sharing, John Cairncross, News, news you may have missed, UK, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, United States, University of Cambridge, USSR

Mystery surrounds arrest of renegade CIA agent in Indonesia

January 18, 2010 2 Comments

Bogor, Indonesia

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In January of 2008, a man with an American accent appeared at a passport office in the popular West Java tourist resort of Bogor, Indonesia, and applied for an Indonesian passport. But his inability to speak Bahasa Indonesia triggered the suspicion of passport officials, who subsequently discovered that his Indonesian birth certificate was faked. He was arrested on the spot, but it took nearly a year for Indonesian authorities to ascertain the man’s real identity: he was Bob Marshall, a 61-year-old American-born former CIA agent who allegedly went renegade on the Agency in 1974. For the past 35 years, Marshall has reportedly been cited in dozens of countries, operating a worldwide arms smuggling and check-fraud network. There are rumors at Interpol that Marshall has made use of no fewer than 40 passports during this time, some of which he acquired while working for the CIA. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bob Marshall, Bogor (Indonesia), check fraud, CIA, forgery, Indonesia, Interpol, News, renegade spies, travel documentation, United States, weapons smuggling, West Java (Indonesia)

News you may have missed #0257 (assassinations edition)

January 18, 2010 Leave a comment

Who tried to kill the Israeli diplomats in Jordan? “Whoever placed the bomb targeting the two armored embassy vehicles on their way from Jordan to the Allenby Bridge, last Thursday, appears to have had very good intelligence. They knew that many Israeli diplomats, who normally live in Amman without their families, usually depart for Israel for the weekend on Thursday afternoon, and they knew how to identify the two-car convoy”.
Iran insists in Israeli link to Mohammadi assassination. Last week’s assassination of Iranian scientist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was carried out in a “Zionist style”, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said in his first direct comment on the killing.
Pakistanis urge US to stop drone attacks. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has renewed calls on the US to stop its CIA-operated targeted assassinations, using unmanned Predator drone attacks on Pakistani soil, as they “kill civilians and ruin its efforts to isolate militants sheltering with tribes in the border region”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Amman (Jordan), assassinations, CIA, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, Predator drones, United States, Yousuf Raza Gilani

Cash register ringing for NSA’s corporate suitors

January 18, 2010 1 Comment

NSA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The decision by the US National Security Agency to build 5.8 million square feet of data-storage and office space by 2029 has drawn mixed reactions by intelligence observers. But for businesses in northern Utah, where the NSA is preparing to build a million-square-foot facility, at Camp Williams, it’s party time, in the middle of a crippling word-wide economic recession. The gigantic government Agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security, will build the billion-dollar facility within the next two years, and is already consulting with building contractors. But how does one do business with the notoriously secretive NSA? Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Camp Williams (Utah), databases, intelligence outsourcing, lobbyists, Maryland, News, NSA, Shawn Justice, United States, Utah

News you may have missed #0256

January 17, 2010 Leave a comment

Descendant of Richard Sorge’s accomplice receives Soviet-era award. The 81-year-old niece of Yotoku Miyagi, a Japanese accomplice of famous German-born Comintern spy Richard Sorge, has been awarded the Soviet Order of the Patriotic War medal in a ceremony at the Russian embassy in Tokyo, Japan. The medal was originally granted in 1965, but Miyagi was unable to collect it, as he had been executed, along with Sorge, by the Japanese in 1944.
Analysis: Alleged US spy’s arrest in Cuba affects bilateral relations. Cuban officials say that a US citizen working for Maryland-based aid group Development Alternatives Inc., who was arrested in Havana last month, was actually recruiting local Cubans to spy on the government. This development means that initial hopes for better US-Cuban relations after Barack Obama’s election success may be fading.
CIA, DoD drone attacks in Afghanistan intensify under McChrystal. Under the command of US and NATO forces by US Army general Stanley McChrystal, unmanned drone strikes in Afghanistan have been steadily increasing. A good question to ask is who is in charge of similar strikes in Pakistan, which are also on the increase.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Barack Obama, CIA, Comintern, Cuba, Development Alternatives Inc., diplomacy, espionage, history, Japan, NATO, News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, Predator drones, Richard Sorge, Russian embassy in Japan, Sorge spy ring, Stanley McChrystal, Tokyo, United States, US DoD, USSR, World War II, Yotoku Miyagi

Analysis: Should US spy agencies learn from France?

January 16, 2010 3 Comments

J.L. Bruguiere

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
What precisely is wrong with the US intelligence system? I have read several good analyses lately, all sparked by the disastrous Christmas holiday week, which included the Christmas Day bomber fiasco and the killing of seven CIA personnel in Afghanistan. One is written by ex-CIA operations officer Charles Faddis, who argues that the Agency’s central deficiency is that it places emphasis on process, rather than on mission accomplishment. Another, broader, analysis is authored by Ron Capps, the US Pentagon’s former director of human intelligence/counterintelligence operations in Afghanistan, who suggests that the way to break down bureaucratic walls between US intelligence agencies is to publish more unclassified reports. The most interesting commentary, however, is written by Paris-based Jean-Louis Bruguière, a French former Magistrate who led counterterrorism investigations from 1981 to 2007. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Analysis, Charles "Sam" Faddis, CIA, France, immigration intelligence, intelligence cooperation, intelligence reform, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, Ron Capps, suicide bombings, terrorism, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, United States, US DoD

News you may have missed #0255 (espionage edition)

January 15, 2010 Leave a comment

South Korea jails alleged spy for 10 years. A 37-year-old college professor, identified only as Lee, has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for allegedly spying undercover on behalf of North Korea for 17 years. South Korean authorities said Lee, who was charged in November, was recruited by the North in 1992, while studying in New Delhi, India.
New details in Nozette spy case. Maryland scientist Stewart Nozette, who is accused of giving classified defense information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, may have impersonated a naval research official in order to acquire classified information, according to new court documents.
“I didn’t kill Islamic Jihad members because I was busy spying for Israel“. Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, a retired Lebanese Internal Security Forces official, has already confessed to having “collaborated with Israeli intelligence agents” between 1993 and 2006. But he denies having participated in the 2006 assassinations of two Islamic Jihad leaders in Lebanon, because on the night of the assassinations he was conducting a reconnaissance mission in Lebanon on behalf of Israeli spy agency Mossad.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, counterintelligence, espionage, FBI, India, informants, Islamic Jihad of Lebanon, Israel, Lebanese Internal Security Forces, Lebanon, Lee, Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, Mossad, New Delhi, News, news you may have missed, North Korea, South Korea, Stewart David Nozette

Jordanian opposition seeks to end Jordan’s CIA links

January 15, 2010 Leave a comment

Khalil al-Balawi

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Earlier this month we reported on the excellent analysis by Jordanian blogger Naseem Tarawnah about the view from Jordan on the December 30 suicide bombing in Afghanistan. He suggested that the immediate impact of the bombing, which killed at least seven CIA agents and a senior Jordanian intelligence official, was the revelation of Jordan’s covert CIA connection. The latter, “while relatively well-known before, has now been put out in the public sphere for all to see –especially the Arab street”, he wrote. This is precisely what appears to be happening. The Jordanian government is coming under pressure by opposition groups to end its cooperation with American military and intelligence services operating in Arab and Muslim lands. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, CIA, Hammam Said, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, Humam Khalil al-Balawi, Islamic Action Front (Jordan), Jordan, Muslim Brotherhood (Jordan), Nasser Judeh, News, Pakistan, Samir Rifai, suicide bombings, United States

News you may have missed #0254 (activism edition)

January 15, 2010 Leave a comment

US activists file lawsuit over domestic spying. Anti-war activists in Washington State are suing military analyst John Towery and police officials for allegedly infiltrating and spying on two antiwar groups in Olympia. The suit also names the City of Olympia and a US Coast Guard employee.
Antiwar activist to stage sit-in at CIA HQ. American political activist Cindy Sheehan says she intends to stage a sit-in in front of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on January 16, to protest the Agency’s unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan. Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq War in 2004, attracted international attention for her extended protest at a makeshift camp outside President George Bush’s Texas ranch.
Is there legal basis for CIA drone strikes in Pakistan? We at intelNews have asked this question before. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is asking it also, and has requested to see the US government’s estimates of civilian casualties caused by the strikes.