FBI ordered to release Cheney records in Valerie Plame probe

October 2, 2009 3 Comments

Valerie Plame

Valerie Plame

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A US federal judge has ordered the FBI to release the transcript of an interview with former US vice-president Dick Cheney, conducted during an investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame sought compensation after she was publicly named as a secret CIA operative. Along with her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, she has fought a legal campaign, arguing that several Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, and even President George W. Bush himself, were behind the leak of her CIA role. Cheney had a lengthy interview with prosecutors pursuing the leak case, but the transcripts of the exchange have so far remained secret on national security grounds. But US district Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said yesterday that there is no justification to withhold the entire interview since the FBI investigation has now concluded. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0124

October 2, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Top Russian spy indicted in sex trafficking case. One of thirteen people indicted on Tuesday in an international sex trafficking case is Dmitry Strykanov, a senior intelligence officer with the Russian Military Intelligence Directorate. Immense corruption still plagues Russian intelligence.
  • Colombian intelligence officer detained in Venezuela. An agent of Colombia’s scandal-prone DAS security agency was detained at a hotel in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The agent, Julio Enrique Tocora Parra, says he was invited to Venezuela by the country’s SAIME immigration agency. A classic case of luring?
  • Spain uncovers double agent’s Russian handler. Spain’s National IntelligenceCenter (CNI) says Petr Melnikov, political attaché at the Russian Embassy in Madrid, facilitated the transfer of Spanish classified documents to Russian intelligence. The documents were allegedly supplied between 2001 and 2004 by Roberto Flórez García former CNI agent, who was arrested by Spanish counterintelligence agents in Tenerife in July of 2007.

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US Looks Away from Worsening Philippines Rights Record

October 1, 2009 Leave a comment

Lumbera

Lumbera

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS and IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Just days after Filipino prizewinning poet and dramatist Bienvenido Lumbera caught a Naval Intelligence Security Force agent spying on him outside his home, another Filipino intellectual has come forward with allegations of government spying. Pedro “Jun” Cruz Reyes, professor of creative writing at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, said he has been the subject of surveillance investigations by government agents since 2006. Such incidents are not a new phenomenon in the Philippines. In 2005, the US State Department noted in its annual human rights report that the Philippines National Police was the country’s “worst abuser of human rights” and that government security elements often “sanction extrajudicial killings and vigilantism”. However, the report adds that these practices are utilized “as expedient means of fighting crime and terrorism”, which may explain why no discernable action has been taken by US authorities to prevent them. In an article published today in The Foreign Policy Journal we examine the recent record of US-Philippine relations. Continue reading at The Foreign Policy Journal →

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News you may have missed #0123

October 1, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Get ready for body cavity airport searches! Security officials are concerned over a tactic newly employed by al Qaeda, whereby suicide bombers store explosives inside their bodies to avoid detection.
  • Did the US do a deal with Russia on Iran? Two weeks ago, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hinted that Russia could back tougher sanctions against Iran’s nuclear energy program. Does this signify a deal with Washington, namely US scrapping its missile shield program if Moscow would back efforts to impose tougher sanctions against Iran?
  • Lebanese mayor accused of spying for Israel. Lebanese authorities say Ziad Homsi, mayor of the city of Saadnayel, was recruited by Israeli intelligence in Beijing, China. Lebanon’s immense counterintelligence operation is widening by the hour.

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Pakistani spies “visibly angry” at US charge of Taliban links

September 30, 2009 2 Comments

A.S. Pasha

A.S. Pasha

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Recently, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s secretive spy service, gave Washington Post’s associate editor, David Ignatius, a rare look inside its Islamabad headquarters. However, the first known visit to the ISI by a Western journalist in recent years failed to impress the Pakistanis. The latter became “visibly angry” when Ignatius asked them whether they are withholding information about al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as the CIA and other US intelligence agencies claim. The charges, which are disputed by Pakistani officials, led to “a long and animated conversation” with ISI Director, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who forbade the US journalist from quoting him directly. Read more of this post

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US State Dept. third highest official was espionage suspect, says ex-FBI agent

September 30, 2009 3 Comments

Marc Grossman

Marc Grossman

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Marc Grossman, Under Secretary of State during the Bush Administration, was suspect in a lengthy counterespionage probe by the FBI, according to a former senior Bureau agent. John M. Cole, an 18-year FBI veteran who worked for the Counterintelligence Division of the Bureau’s National Security Branch, said the investigation into Grossman centered on activities by Turkish and Israeli intelligence in the United States. Cole was speaking to former CIA agent Philip Giraldi, currently of The American Conservative magazine, a paleoconservative publication, which was one of a handful of US media outlets that gave column space to recent revelations of Turkish intelligence activities by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds, a translator for the FBI, spent seven years trying to get a US court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0122

September 30, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Canada authorities push for Internet spy bill. The push for new Internet surveillance capabilities in Canada –dubbed the “lawful access” initiative– dates back to 1999, when government officials began crafting proposals to institute new surveillance technologies in Canadian fifth-generation networks. Internet Service Providers are skeptical of the initiative, while law enforcement and security agencies argue that the changes are long overdue.
  • Peru’s former leader guilty of spying, bribery. Peru’s former strongman Alberto Fujimori pleaded guilty today to charges of wiretapping opponents and paying bribes to lawmakers and publishers during his rule from 1990 to 2000. Unfortunately, the CIA supported Fujimori and his right-hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos and even suppressed a CIA officer who tried to argue that supporting such lowlifes was politically wrong and ethically immoral.
  • CIA honors two spies. CIA director Leon Panetta awarded the Trailblazer Medal (the supreme decoration in the US intelligence community) to two agents, one of whom is the late John Guilsher, who recruited Soviet scientist Adolf Tolkachev at the height of the Cold War. Are we to presume that Panetta has not read the recent paper by Benjamin Fischer, former CIA clandestine operative and retired CIA historian, who claims that Tolkachev was actually a KGB double agent tasked by Soviet intelligence with providing US military strategists with false information?

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News you may have missed #0121

September 29, 2009 Leave a comment

  • DHS intelligence official speaks on cross-department collaboration. Since its establishment, the US Department of Homeland Security has been involved in almost every major turf battle within the US security and intelligence community. Bart Johnson, the department’s Acting Undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis, speaks about collaborating with non-DHS actors.
  • Somali group executes two for spying for CIA. Somalia’s al-Shabaab on Monday publicly executed two people accused of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency and the country’s embattled government. Before the US-assisted Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, al-Shabaab (The Party of Youth) used to be the youth organization of the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Al-Shabaab shares the ICU’s mission of turning Somalia into an Islamic khalifat.
  • US intelligence veterans group backs CIA torture probe. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have authored a memorandum addressed to US President Barack Obama, in which they “voice strong support for Attorney General Eric Holder’s authorization of a wider investigation into CIA interrogation”.

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New documents point to innocence of convicted Swedish “spy”

September 29, 2009 1 Comment

Bertil Ströberg

Bertil Ströberg

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A man who was jailed in Sweden in 1983 for spying on behalf of the Eastern Bloc may be innocent, according to an investigation by Sweden’s TV4 channel. On May 20, 1983, Bertil Ströberg was arrested in Stockholm’s main post office, while picking up correspondence for a ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’. What he didn’t know is that Sweden’s Security Service (SAPO) was looking for Larsson after it had surreptitiously opened a letter addressed to the Polish embassy in Stockholm. The letter, which was signed by Larsson, contained a number of classified Swedish security documents and requested $25,000 Swedish kronor ($3,500) in return for further secret information. During his closed-door trial, Ströberg claimed he had made the acquaintance of someone calling himself ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’ in Stockholm, who later sent him a letter asking him to pick up a delivery in his name from the city’s main post office. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0120

September 29, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Film on America’s most famous whistleblower. A new documentary film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, examines the life of Daniel Ellsberg, a US Pentagon employee who leaked documents to the American public in order to stop the Vietnam War. Ellsberg, 78, is still a pariah in the US defense community. He told the Associated Press that at a RAND (research arm of the Pentagon, where he used to work) reunion several years back, no one would shake his hand.
  • Retired US Air Force officer convicted in China spying case. Retired US Air Force officer James W. Fondren Jr. faces a maximum of 20 years behind bars, after being convicted of selling classified information on US-China military relations to a Chinese agent and lying to the FBI about it. The US Department of Justice accused Fondren, 62, of being part of a spy ring that operated on US soil under the supervision of Chinese government officials, whom Fondren supplied with classified documents for over three years, beginning in 2004.
  • Request to halt CIA probe “nonsense” says former agent. A controversial request by seven former heads of the CIA to end the inquiry into abuse of terrorism suspects held by the Agency is “nonsense”, says Bob Baer, a 20-year CIA caseworker in the Mid-East and former CIA station chief in Iraq. “To say let’s not look further into this because it could upset the agency is like saying let’s not look into Bernie Madoff because it could upset the financial sector”, said Baer.

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News you may have missed #0119

September 28, 2009 Leave a comment

  • CIA opens center on climate change. The CIA Center on Climate Change and National Security is a small unit led by senior specialists from the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology. It focuses on “the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources”. Methinks the emphasis will probably be on the latter.
  • Brazilian political figures spied on after dictatorship. Senior Brazilian politicians, religious leaders and activists were spied on illegally for 16 years after the 1964-1985 military regime, according to recent allegations in the country’s press. Major surveillance targets included Brazil’s current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, opposition leader and Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, and others.
  • New book examines life of Franco-sympathizer British spy. Jimmy Burns has written a biography of his father, Tom Burns, an anti-communist sympathizer of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who organized the British intelligence network in Spain during and after World War II.

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Comment: How did Iran know US planned to reveal nuclear facility?

September 28, 2009 1 Comment

Barack Obama

Barack Obama

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The question may be confusing at first, but it makes perfect sense, considering the series of events. Late last week the US put together a secret plan to reveal to the world that Iran has built a previously undeclared nuclear facility to enrich uranium. However, on the morning of September 25, that is, just hours before US President Barack Obama made the revelation, Iran pre-emptied him with a formal letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in which it volunteered the information that it has built a facility inside a mountain near the city of Qum. Now, we know that US and other Western intelligence agencies have known about the existence of that nuclear facility for many years. However, from an intelligence point of view, the revelation of the site is secondary to the issue of how Iran came to know about the US President’s plan to reveal its existence. Read more of this post

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IBM bungles expensive IT project for UK intelligence

September 28, 2009 Leave a comment

IBM logo

IBM logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The British government has scrapped a major intelligence-related network development project due to substandard security standards and several missed deadlines by International Business Machines (IBM). The company, which is the leading contractor in the project, has been blamed for its failure and will probably be taken to court by the government, which is eager to recover £24.4 million ($38,8 million) in research costs. Relatively little is known about the project itself, codenamed SCOPE, which the British government initiated in 2003 with the aim of facilitating increased cross-department collaboration between as many as ten government departments with security or intelligence components. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0118

September 28, 2009 Leave a comment

  • Second spy operation against media revealed in Bulgaria. A few months ago, Bulgarian public opinion was shocked by revelations about Operation GALLERY (a.k.a. Operation GALERIA), a project by Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS) aimed to intimidate the country’s press. Now a second domestic spying program has been discovered by the appropriately named Bulgarian Parliamentary Committee for Controlling DANS.
  • US military cannot analyze surveillance footage influx. The heaps of intelligence footage gathered by US military spy drones and surveillance cameras are already more than analysts can handle. So DARPA, the US military’s research arm, is looking for a software program that will automate the analysis process.

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Portrait of ex-spy said to be “close with militant Islamists”

September 27, 2009 2 Comments

Alastair Crooke

Alastair Crooke

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Writing for Mother Jones magazine, David Samuels presents an interesting portrait of Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence agent who brokered deals with the Irish Republican Army, funneled arms to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, spent time with rebel groups in the jungles of Colombia, and later served as British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s eyes and ears in the Middle East. In late 2003, after three decades as an MI6 field officer, he was called home and, in classic British bureaucratic fashion, given a royal honor for his service and then fired from his job. It was rumored in London and in Jerusalem that Crooke had alienated the British prime minister by becoming too closely affiliated with militant Islamists. Read more of this post

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