Year in review: The biggest spy-related stories of 2020, part III

Since 2008, when intelNews was launched, it has been our end-of-year tradition to take a look back and highlight what we believe were the most important intelligence-related stories of the past 12 months. In anticipation of what 2021 may bring in this highly volatile field, we present you with our selection of the top spy stories of 2020. They are listed below in reverse order of significance, starting from 10 and leading up to 1. This is part three in a three-part series. Part one is available here and part two is here.

01. COVID-19 prompts spy agencies’ mission shift that is ‘reminiscent of the space race’. The worldwide competition to invent a vaccine that can curtail the spread of COVID-19, and to secure sufficient quantities of the vaccine, has prompted a mission shift in major intelligence agencies around the world. This mission shift is taking place with such speed that it is “reminiscent of the space race”, according to The New York Times. In an article published in September, the paper cited “interviews with current and former intelligence officials and others tracking the espionage efforts”, who suggest that the mission shift observed in spy agencies worldwide has been among the fastest in history.

02. Swiss neutrality ‘shattered’ as leading cryptologic firm revealed to be CIA front. Switzerland continues to reel from the shock caused by revelations in February that Crypto AG, the world’s leading manufacturer or cryptologic equipment during the Cold War, whose clients included over 120 governments around the world, was a front company owned by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. The revelation, published by The Washington Post and the German public broadcaster ZDF, confirmed rumors that had been circulating since the early 1980s, that Crypto AG had made a secret deal with the US government. According to this year’s revelations, the CIA and West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) secretly purchased the Swiss company and paid off most of its senior executives in order to buy their silence. The secret deal allegedly allowed the US and West Germany to spy on the classified government communications of several of their adversaries —and even allies, including Italy, Spain and Greece, as well as Austria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

03. Danish spy service helped US collect intelligence on NATO allies. There was surprise among intelligence observers in August, when Lars Findsen, director of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE, or DDIS in English) was “relieved of duty for the time being”. The Danish Ministry of Defense said the decision was taken following “a series of whistleblower revelations”. We now know the reason: apparently a secret arrangement between Danish and American intelligence agencies enabled Washington to collect intelligence on Danish citizens, as well as spy on some of its closest European allies, including Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, and Holland. The revelation prompted a heated political discussion in Denmark, while Norwegian, Swedish and Dutch authorities launched investigations into the alleged spying. Some in Denmark called for the Minister of Defense, Trine Bramsen, to release to the public a four-volume report government produced about the alleged Danish-US spy collaboration. This has not yet happened.

04. US forces are secretly helping the Taliban fight the Islamic State in Afghanistan. The original reason the United States sent troops to Afghanistan was to fight al-Qaeda and its local allies, the Taliban. Now, however, it appears US forces are helping the Taliban defeat the Islamic State in northeastern Afghanistan. The American military’s newfound role in Afghanistan reportedly reflects the view of the White House that the Taliban have no aspirations outside of Afghanistan, while the Islamic State seeks to challenge America’s interests worldwide. According to The Washington Post‘s military affairs reporter Wesley Morgan, US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces in Afghanistan have been instructed to provide air cover to Taliban forces as they fight the Islamic State. The resources used in that capacity consist of weaponry that was initially deployed against the Taliban, but is now being secretly repurposed to assist the Taliban in their fight against the Islamic State. According to Morgan, the JSOC team in Kunar, which provides air cover to the Taliban, jokingly refers to itself as the “Taliban air force”. It is unclear whether al-Qaeda, which is a close ally of the Taliban, is benefiting from that assistance.

This is part three in a three-part series. Part one is available here and part two is here.

► Author: J. Fitsanakis and I. Allen | Date: 31 December 2020 | Permalink

Year in review: The biggest spy-related stories of 2020, part II

Since 2008, when intelNews was launched, it has been our end-of-year tradition to take a look back and highlight what we believe were the most important intelligence-related stories of the past 12 months. In anticipation of what 2021 may bring in this highly volatile field, we present you with our selection of the top spy stories of 2020. They are listed below in reverse order of significance, starting from 10 and leading up to 1. This is part two in a three-part series. Part one is available here. Part three will be published on Thursday.

05. A group of foreign mercenaries, including Americans, organized a failed coup in Venezuela. In early May, Venezuelan authorities stopped Operation GEDEÓN, an attempt by around 60 armed mercenaries and local dissidents to forcibly remove President Nicolás Maduro from office. The plan centered on infiltrating Venezuela by sea and capturing the Simón Bolívar International Airport, in an attempt to arrest and expel Maduro and other senior cabinet members. It appears, however, that the operation had been infiltrated by Venezuelan government spies and informants. At least two Americans participated in the failed operation, which was allegedly masterminded by Major General Clíver Alcalá Cordones a Colombia-based retired military officer who has since entered US custody on drug-trafficking charges. It has also been alleged that the coup was launched from Colombia with the support of Silvercorp USA, a private security group led by Jordan Goudreau, a Canadian-born former sergeant in the US Green Berets. Allegations by the Venezuelan government that the coup was also supported by the Central Intelligence Agency have not been corroborated with evidence.

06. Argentine ex-president and spy agency leaders indicted in wiretapping probe. In Argentina, a widening investigation into a domestic spying program was broadened to include Mauricio Macri, the country’s former president, and the spy chief that served under him. The alleged espionage took place between 2015 and 2019, when Macri served as the first democratically-elected non-Peronist president of Argentina. But the country’s current president Alberto Fernández, has pledged to reform the security agency, which is known as the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI, formerly SIDE). In June, the government gave a federal court in Buenos Aires a deposition containing list of over 80 names of Argentine citizens who were allegedly spied on by the AFI without a warrant during Macri’s administration. Since that time, the court has been investigating, aside from Macri, Gustavo Arribas, who served as AFI director under Macri, as well as his deputy director in the spy agency, Silvia Majdalani, and her brother-in-law, Darío Biorci. The names of other alleged culprits remain secret, reportedly because they are still serving as undercover agents in the AFI.

07. One of the world’s most wanted men may have worked for several spy agencies. Austrian financier Jan Marsalek, dubbed by some as “the world’s most wanted man”, is connected with the sudden collapse of Wirecard AG in Germany. Wirecard (est. 1999) was a German provider of financial services, such as electronic payment transaction systems. It declared insolvency in June, after an audit revealed that nearly €2 billion ($2.3 billion) were missing from its accounts. Marsalek, who had worked as Wirecard’s chief operating officer since 2010, was last seen heading to Manila, Philippines, before vanishing into thin air. An investigative report by The Financial Times revealed that his entrance record into the Philippines had been forged, probably by an intelligence agency. Some claim that Marsalek is now under Russian protection. Other reports suggest that he may have worked “for several intelligence agencies at the same time” prior to his disappearance, including as an informant for the Austrian Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT). Meanwhile, Marsalek’s whereabouts remain unknown.

This is part two in a three-part series. Part one is available here. Part three will be published on Thursday.

► Author: J. Fitsanakis and I. Allen | Date: 30 December 2020 | Permalink

Year in review: The biggest spy-related stories of 2020, part I

Since 2008, when intelNews was launched, it has been our end-of-year tradition to take a look back and highlight what we believe were the most important intelligence-related stories of the past 12 months. In anticipation of what 2021 may bring in this highly volatile field, we present you with our selection of the top spy stories of 2020. They are listed below in reverse order of significance, starting from 10 and leading up to 1. This is part one in a three-part series. Part two will be available on Wednesday and part three on Thursday.

08. Spanish high court broadens illegal wiretap probe to include senior politicians. In September, Spain’s highest criminal court broadened the scope of the Gürtel case, which refers to one of the most extensive corruption scandals in Spanish political history. It centers on an extensive network of tax evasion, bribery and money laundering, which brought together leading business executives, criminal kingpins, and senior politicians from Spain’s conservative Partido Popular (PP). In 2018, the scandal effectively brought an end to the government of conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and has virtually annihilated the PP’s once robust electoral popularity. But this corruption investigation is now resulting in several related probes, among which is Operation KITCHEN, an espionage effort connected to the Gürtel case, which targeted Luis Bárcenas, a PP senator and treasurer. It turns out that, once senior government executives realized Bárcenas was about to turn government witness, they set up an espionage operation aimed at preventing him from doing so. Now a new series of prosecutions is taking place in connection to Operation KITCHEN, involving leading PP figures.

09. Massive hacker attack triggers emergency US National Security Council meeting. The computer systems of the United States government are targeted by hackers every minute of every day. These attacks do not usually prompt emergency meetings of the National Security Council —the country’s most senior decision-making body, which is chaired by no other than the president. But the massive data breach that was uncovered earlier this month did just that, with some experts describing it as potentially being among “the most impactful espionage campaigns on record”. Although only discovered two weeks ago, the cyberespionage campaign is believed to date to last spring, possibly as early as March. Sources called it a highly sophisticated operation that originated from a “top-tier” adversary —a term that refers to a handful of state actors that have access to the most elite cyber operatives and advanced technologies in existence. It will take weeks to uncover the extent of the damage caused by this breach, and many months —possibly even longer— to recover from it. Security expert Bruce Schneier said that, in order to fend off against “persistent access, the only way to ensure that your network isn’t compromised is to burn it to the ground and rebuild it, similar to reinstalling your computer’s operating system to recover from a bad hack”.

10. In extremely rare move, Russia’s spy agency disclosed identities of undercover officers. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which inherited the external intelligence functions of the Soviet-era KGB, does not usually disclose the identities of its undercover operatives. But in January of this year, in an extremely rare move, its director, Sergei Naryshkin, did just that during a commemoration event marking the centenary of the KGB and the SVR. The identities of seven non-official-cover officers, referred to in Russian as ‘pазведчики-нелегалы’, or ‘illegals’ —most of whom are now retired or dead— were disclosed along with brief biographical notes. The term illegals refers to undercover intelligence officers who are secretly posted abroad without diplomatic cover. Accordingly, they have no official connection to a Russian diplomatic facility, while some even pose as citizens of third countries. The accompanying biographies released by the SVR disclose no specifics about the countries in which these illegals operated, the type of work they carried out, and the specific dates in which they were active. Most of them operated between the late 1960s and the early 1990s.

This is part one in a three-part series; Part two will be available on December 30 and part three on December 31.

► Author: J. Fitsanakis and I. Allen | Date: 29 December 2020 | Permalink

Year in review: The biggest spy-related stories of 2019, part III

Since 2008, when we launched intelNews, it has been our end-of-year tradition to take a look back and highlight what we believe were the most important intelligence-related stories of the past 12 months. In anticipation of what 2020 may bring in this highly volatile field, we present you with our selection of the top spy stories of 2019. They are listed below in reverse order of significance. This is part three in a three-part series. Part one is available here. Part two is available here.

04. No shortage of high-profile assassinations and abductions in 2019. There was no shortage of assassinations, assassination attempts, suspicious deaths and abductions in 2019. In January, the Dutch government officially accused Iran of ordering the contract murders of two Iranian men on Dutch soil in 2015 and 2017. The accusation prompted Iran to expel two Dutch diplomats from Tehran, which in turn prompted Holland to recall its ambassador from the Iranian capital. In March, a medical examination suggested that Mikhail Yuriyevich Lesin, a former senior adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died allegedly by falling while intoxicated in a luxury hotel room in Washington, may in fact have been strangled to death. According to the medical examiner —whose name has been redacted in the declassified report— the state of Lesin’s hyoid bone showed signs of “hanging or manual strangulation” or asphyxiation. Also in March, Daniel Forestier, a former paramilitary officer in France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), who was under investigation for allegedly plotting to kill General Ferdinand Mbahou, a senior Congolese opposition figure, was shot dead in the French Alps. According to a police report, Forestier had been shot five times in the chest and head in what a public prosecutor described as “a professional job”. In August, German authorities accused Moscow of ordering the assassination in Berlin of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Chechen separatist who was shot in the head in broad daylight by a man wearing a wig and carrying a pistol fitted with a silencer. In October, Yossi Cohen, the chief of the Mossad —Israel’s main external intelligence agency— said in an interview that he had authorized “more than a few” assassinations during his tenure and warned that more may be on the way. In October, Iranian authorities announced the capture of Ruhollah Zam, a Paris-based Iranian dissident, who was reportedly lured out of France and then abducted by Iranian agents in a third country. It was later reported that the Iranian government may have used a female intelligence officer to lure Zam from his home in France to Iraq, where he was abducted by Iranian security forces and secretly transported to Iran. In November, Ibragim Eldzharkiev, a senior counter-terrorism officer in the Russian police, was gunned down along with his brother in a downtown Moscow street, in what authorities described as a contract killing.

03. Saudi Arabia hired Twitter employees to spy on users. In November US authorities charged two Saudi-born employees of the social media firm Twitter with spying on American soil. They also charged a member of staff of Saudi Arabia’s royal family with handling the two employees. They were allegedly recruited in 2015, on orders from the Saudi government, to spy on the identities of anonymous Twitter users who posted negative views of Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty. The employees gave the Saudis private information that included the email addresses, IP addresses and dates of birth of up to 6,000 Twitter users, who had posted negative comments about the Saudi royal family on social media. One of the two Twitter employees reportedly managed to escape to the oil kingdom before he was captured by the FBI. Remarkably, only a day after the US Department of Justice charged the three Saudi citizens with engaging in espionage on American soil, Saudi officials hosted in Riyadh Gina Haspel, the director of the CIA, reportedly to discuss “the longstanding Saudi-US partnership”.

02. A wiretapping scandal of vast proportions was unearthed in Spain. At the beginning of 2019, a Spanish court widened an investigation into an illegal network that spied on scores of politicians, business executives, journalists and judges for over 20 years. At the center of the case is José Manuel Villarejo, a 67-year-old former police chief, who allegedly spied on hundreds of unsuspecting citizens on behalf of corporate competitors and individual wealthy clients. A year earlier, five active police officers and an employee of Spain’s tax revenue service admitted to working for Villarejo’s network. They disclosed information about Operation KITCHEN, an espionage effort that targeted Luis Bárcenas, a senator and party treasurer of Spain’s conservative Partido Popular, who was eventually jailed for 33 years for his role in the so-called Gürtel case. The Gürtel case was the largest corruption scandal in modern Spanish history, and brought down the conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in July of 2017. The BBVA, Spain’s largest bank, is also accused of having made illicit payments of nearly $11.1 million to Villarejo for over 13 years.

01. US weapons given to UAE and Saudi Arabia are diverted to al-Qaeda. Weapons supplied to the Saudi and Emirati governments by the United States and other Western nations are ending up in the hands of al-Qaeda-linked Sunni militias in Yemen, according to two separate investigations. The weapons are being supplied to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by the West on the understanding that they will be used in the war in Yemen, in support of the country’s Sunni-dominated government. Since 2015, the Yemeni state has been at war with an Iran-backed alliance of rebel groups from Yemen’s Shiite communities, known as the Houthi movement. In an effort to support Yemen’s Sunni government, Western countries have supplied Saudi Arabia and the UAE with more than $5 billion-worth of weaponry. However, a report published in February by Amnesty International alleged that some of that weaponry, including machine guns, mortars and even armored vehicles, are being deliberately diverted to Sunni militia groups in Yemen, which have al-Qaeda links. A separate investigation aired by CNN claimed that weaponry given by Washington to the Saudi and Emirati militaries has been ending up in the hands of Salafist militias in Yemen. Among them is the Sunni Abu al-Abbas Brigade, which is closely linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

This is part three in a three-part series; Part one is available here. Part two is available here.

► Author: J. Fitsanakis and I. Allen | Date: 2 January 2020 | Permalink

Year in review: The biggest spy-related stories of 2019, part II

Since 2008, when we launched intelNews, it has been our end-of-year tradition to take a look back and highlight what we believe were the most important intelligence-related stories of the past 12 months. In anticipation of what 2020 may bring in this highly volatile field, we present you with our selection of the top spy stories of 2019. They are listed below in reverse order of significance. This is part two in a three-part series. Part one is available here. Part three is available here.

07. Western spy agencies hacked into Russia’s version of Google. Media reports tend to portray Western intelligence agencies as constantly defending themselves against cyber attacks from abroad —notably from North Korea, Iran and Russia. The reality of cyber espionage is far more complicated, as intelligence agencies from all sides adopt defensive and offensive postures, often concurrently. One example of this complexity emerged in last June, when the Reuters news agency reported that Western spy agencies used a malware described as the “crown jewel” of cyber-espionage tools to hack into Russia’s version of Google. The hackers targeted Yandex (Яндекс), the largest technology venture company in the Russian Federation and the fifth most popular search engine in the world. Yandex also provides services such as mapping and email in Russia and several other countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. The hackers appeared to be interested in acquiring technical information about how Yandex authenticates user accounts. That information could potentially enable them to impersonate Yandex users and access private information such as email messages, geolocation information, and other sensitive data. Reuters said that the hackers attempted to breach Yandex for purposes of espionage, not sabotage or disruption, or stealing intellectual property for commercial purposes.

06. The CIA may have lost 17 of its spies in Iran. If the announcements from Tehran are to be believed, the United States Central Intelligence Agency lost at least 17 spies in Iran in the months leading up to March 2019. According to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, the Islamic Republic busted an alleged “CIA network” operating in sensitive private sector companies and government agencies that relate to defense, aerospace and energy. At least some of the 17 alleged spies have reportedly been sentenced to death, though their exact number remains unknown. As we explained in July, losing 17 assets in one big sweep sounds fantastical. However, if it is true, it would mark one of the biggest intelligence-collection disasters in the CIA’s 72-year history. What may be equally worrying for the CIA is that the Iranians claim to have visually identified a number of CIA case officers, whose job is to recruit and handle foreign assets. If the Iranians are telling the truth, many units at the CIA will be in recovery mode for quite some time.

05. NATO allies use spy agencies to back opposing sides in Libyan War. The chaos that is the Libyan Civil War deepened this year, largely because foreign countries are backing opposing sides in the conflict. In April, several European Union member-states, led by Italy, criticized France for blocking a joint resolution calling on all warring factions in Libya to cease all hostilities and return to the negotiations table. France has joined the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, in supporting the Libyan National Army (LNA), which is led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. Haftar is an old adversary of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, who lived in the United States under Washington’s protection for several decades. In 2011 he returned to Libya in order to launch a military campaign from the eastern city of Tobruk. Since that time, he has led the LNA in a war of attrition against the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which is based in the Libyan capital Tripoli. The GNA is supported by Italy, and more recently Turkey, which has offered to send troops to help the GNA in its war against the LNA. It is wroth noting that, in 2017, two leading international legal scholars accused Haftar of having ordered his troops to commit war crimes. Ryan Goodman, a professor and former special counsel to the general counsel of the United States Department of Defense, and Alex Whiting, a Harvard University law professor who served as an international criminal prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, said that in September of 2015, Haftar openly urged his troops to “to take no prisoners” in battle.

This is part two in a three-part series; Part one is available here. Part three is available here.

► Author: J. Fitsanakis and I. Allen | Date: 1 January 2020 | Permalink

Year in review: The biggest spy-related stories of 2019, part I

Since 2008, when we launched intelNews, it has been our end-of-year tradition to take a look back and highlight what we believe were the most important intelligence-related stories of the past 12 months. In anticipation of what 2020 may bring in this highly volatile field, we present you with our selection of the top spy stories of 2019. They are listed below in reverse order of significance. This is part one in a three-part series. Part two is here. Part three is available here.

10. Germany’s BND now boasts the world’s largest spy headquarters. In February, German Chancellor Angela Merkel inaugurated the Zentrale des Bundesnachrichtendienstes, which is the new headquarters of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The BND, which operates as Germany’s foreign-intelligence service, is now believed to be the owner of the largest headquarters of any spy agency in the world. Interestingly, the German spy agency employs fewer than 7,000 employees, which is only a fraction of the employees employed by the BND’s American, Russian or Chinese equivalents. Some analysts have interpreted this development as part of Germany’s attempt to reassert itself as a major player in the global security landscape, especially following the election of US President Donald Trump, whom Berlin views as being disinterested in European security. During her inauguration speech, Chancellor Merkel said that the world was becoming “increasingly confusing”, which made the need for a “strong and efficient [German] foreign intelligence service […] more urgent than ever”. Interestingly, the new complex features a sizeable visitor’s center that is open to the public, making the BND the world’s first foreign intelligence agency with a public-access visitors’ facility.

09. Israel extends intelligence document classification period to 90 years. Israel, home of one of the world’s most active intelligence communities, augmented the secrecy of its espionage apparatus by raising the classification period of official intelligence documents to 90 years. Until the end of last January, government documents produced by Israel’s spy agencies, such as its external spy organization, the Mossad, or its domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, could remain hidden from public view for up to 70 years. In 2018, Israel’s Supreme Council of Archives, a body within the Israel State Archives that advises the Office of the Prime Minister on matters of classification, recommended against extending the classification period by more than five years. But in early 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the recommendation and managed to pass an amendment to the classification regulations, which will keep documents secret for 90 years from now on. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which published news of the amended regulation, said that documents from 1949, the year that the Shin Bet and the Mossad were founded, would normally have been published this year. But now they will remain hidden from public view until 2039. Documents relating to more recent cases will not be released until 2100.

08. The CIA kept a secret communication channel with North Korea for 10 years. The overtures made in recent years by US President Donald Trump to North Korea surprised many —but probably not the United States Central Intelligence Agency. In an article published in July, The Wall Street Journal claimed that an intelligence channel between the CIA and North Korean intelligence officials has been active for at least a decade. The previously unreported channel has led to a number of public meetings, such as the 2014 visit to Pyongyang by James Clapper, the then US Director of National Intelligence, as well as an earlier visit to the North Korean capital by former US President Bill Clinton in 2009. However, most of the contacts have been secret. They include several visits to North Korea by CIA official Joseph DeTrani before and after Clinton’s visit, as well as two trips to Pyongyang by CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, in 2012 and 2013. His successor, Avril Haines, also visited North Korea, said The Journal, but noted that the channel went “dormant late in the Obama administration”. Upon becoming CIA director following the election of Trump to the presidency, Mike Pompeo was briefed about the secret channel’s existence and decided to resume it, with Trump’s agreement. That led to his eventual visit to North Korea along with Andrew Kim, who at the time headed the CIA’s Korea Mission Center. Eventually, this channel of communication facilitated the high-level summit between Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un in June 2018 in Singapore.

This is part one in a three-part series; Part two is here. Part three is available here.

► Author: J. Fitsanakis and I. Allen | Date: 31 December 2019 | Permalink