Belgian intelligence chief says Brussels is world’s spy capital

September 17, 2012 Leave a comment

Alain WinantsBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The head of Belgium’s counterintelligence service has said in an interview that Brussels, which hosts the head offices of several international organizations, is home to more spies than any other city in the world. Alain Winants, Director of Belgium’s State Security Service (SV/SE), made the comment during a rare public interview to the Brussels-based English-language newspaper EU Observer. Winants told the paper that Belgium hosts “an enormous concentration” of diplomats, members of international non-governmental organizations, as well as employees of transnational institutions, including the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Because of this, he said, Belgium “is like a kindergarten” for spies, “the place to be” for intelligence operatives. The latter often operate under diplomatic cover or pretend to be students, lobbyists or business executives, he added. When asked how many case officers and spies operate in the Belgian capital, Winants, whose organization is responsible for counterterrorism and counterespionage, said “we are not speaking in the dozens; we are speaking in the hundreds, several hundreds”. He added that the numbers of intelligence operatives currently active in Belgium are “at the same level as the Cold War”. These intelligence operatives, he added represent countries such as Russia, China, and many others. When asked whether nations allied with the European Union also conduct espionage in the Belgian capital, Winants responded diplomatically that intelligence “is one field where the difference between neutral, friendly and unfriendly services tends to disappear”, as “every service is in competition with the others”. And he added that “it would be naïve to think that only countries like Russia, China, Iran are spying” in the Belgian capital. Read more of this post

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CBS re-broadcasts Iran comments by former Mossad chief

September 17, 2012 9 Comments

Meir DaganBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
One of the few certainties in the spiraling crisis between Iran, Israel and the United States, is that Tel Aviv and Washington do not agree on how to respond to Tehran’s nuclear program. Nowhere is this lack of unity more noticeable than in the difference of opinion between the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the White House. Netanyahu, a leading hawk in Israeli political circles, has made it clear that, unlike United States President Barack Obama, he believes that the time for diplomacy has run out, and that Israel has no option but to consider direct military strikes on Iran. Last weekend he even took the unprecedented step of advising American voters to elect a leader willing “to draw a red line” on the issue of Iran. It is worth noting, however, that senior figures in Israel’s intelligence community seem to be siding with the US on this dispute. Leading the wave of dissention within the ranks is Meir Dagan, former Director of the Mossad, Israel’s most revered intelligence agency. In November of 2010, Meir Dagan stepped down from his post as the head of the Mossad after having led the agency for over eight years —the longest tenure of any Mossad director in history. Soon afterwards, he admonished calls by Netanyahu’s people to bomb Iran as “the stupidest idea” he had ever heard. On Sunday, September 16, the CBS flagship investigative program 60 Minutes aired again an important interview with Dagan, which was first broadcast on March 11 of this year. The timing of the re-broadcast is critical, as observers in the Middle East appear increasingly certain that an Israeli military attack on Iran is imminent. Read more of this post

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Proposed Afghan spy chief divides Western, Afghan officials

September 14, 2012 1 Comment

Assadullah KhaledBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last month we reported Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s plan to appoint one of his most trusted advisors, Assadullah Khaled, to lead the country’s intelligence agency. There appears to be a slight problem with this proposal: Khaled is known as a fierce character in Afghan politics, who has been accused by Western diplomats of corruption, extreme brutality and narcotics trafficking. During the past few years, Khaled, currently Afghanistan’s Minister for Border and Tribal Affairs, has reportedly become “almost a surrogate family member” of the Karzai family, and is viewed “as a son” by the Afghan President. He also has a close relationship with officials in the United States Central Intelligence Agency, who seem to appreciate Khaled’s hardline stance against Pakistan. Moreover, Khaled is an ethnic Pashtun, that is, he belongs to the largest Afghan ethnicity, whose members occupy central Afghanistan. However, he has strong connections with leading figures in the former Northern Alliance, whose support is crucial for the survival of the Karzai regime. Some Western officials, therefore, see him as a potential unifying figure in the country. But in a confidential cable sent to the US Department of State by the American Embassy in Kabul in 2009, and leaked by WikiLeaks, Khaled was described by one senior American diplomat as “exceptionally corrupt and incompetent”. Later that same year, a high-level Canadian diplomat publicly accused Khaled of participating in international narcotics trafficking and systematically employing torture against his political enemies in Kandahar. The diplomat, who served in Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion, was referring to Khaled’s tenure as Governor of Kandahar Province, where he personally run what Kandaharis described as “the torture prison”. Colvin is apparently not alone voicing such concerns. Read more of this post

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MI6 chief paid ‘extremely rare’ secret visit to Israel: newspaper

September 13, 2012 5 Comments

Sir John SawersBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Director of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, widely known as MI6, visited Israel in secret in late August in an effort to convince the Israelis not to launch military strikes on Iran, according to a British newspaper. In an article published on Tuesday, The Daily Mail said Sir John Sawers, who leads Britain’s foremost external spy agency, held private meetings with leading Israeli officials, among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. His message, according to the paper, was that London wanted more time so that the economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed on Iran by the international community to bear fruit. Sanctions are considered by some in the West a viable alternative to calls by Israeli officials for direct military attacks on Iran, aimed at stopping the country’s nuclear program. If confirmed, Sir John’s visit to Israel would represent a near-unprecedented move; this is because, unlike his counterpart at the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the Director of MI6, known informally as ‘C’, does not routinely travel to foreign countries as a diplomatic messenger of the British government. Many, therefore, will see Sawers’ alleged trip to Israel as yet another sign that the Jewish state is beginning to lean heavily in favor of attacking Iran using overt military means. In a possibly related development, Israel’s Minister for Intelligence and Atomic Energy said on Wednesday that he supported international sanctions on Iran. Read more of this post

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Why did Canada suddenly suspend all diplomatic ties with Iran?

September 12, 2012 2 Comments

John BairdBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On Friday September 7, 2012, John Baird, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced that Canada was suspending all diplomatic relations with Iran and was expelling Iranian diplomats from the country, effective immediately. Additionally, said Baird, Ottawa would officially list Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism under the Canadian Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. By the time Baird made his announcement, all Canadian diplomats serving in Iran were on their way home. Iranian diplomats in Canada were given five days to leave the country. Relations between the two countries have been rocky since at least 2003, when Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi was killed under detention in Tehran, and Iran has not had a full ambassador in Canada for nearly five years. Still, the news surprised even former government insiders in Canada. Ray Boisvert, until recently Assistant Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, described Ottawa’s move as “unprecedented”. What was it that caused the final rupture in Canadian-Iranian relations? Why expel the Iranian diplomats now? Leading Middle Eastern experts in Canada cannot seem put their finger on a specific reason. Iran observer James Devine, of Canada’s Mount Allison University, told CBS that Ottawa’s move was “not tied to a specific event”. The Canadian former Ambassador to Tehran, John Mundy, said he believed the break in relations was not tied to a direct threat against Canadian interests. But CBS said many Iranian-Canadians believe the drastic move by the Canadian government should be seen as “an immediate sign” of a looming military attack on Iran by Western powers or Israel. In a recent article on the subject, Canadian political analyst Brian Stewart argued that Ottawa’s “overnight liquidation” of its diplomatic relations with Tehran must be rooted in “new intelligence” showing that Iran “absolutely poses a security threat in Canada”.   Read more of this post

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Prominent Syrian defector thanks “French intelligence” for help

September 11, 2012 4 Comments

Manaf TlassBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A senior Syrian military commander, whose public defection to the rebel side last summer made news headlines around the world, has thanked the French intelligence services for helping him defect.  Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, a member of the Central Committee of the Baath Party and commander of the 10th Brigade of Syria’s elite Republican Guard, secretly left the country in early July. On July 6, he resurfaced in Paris and said he had defected to the rebel-led Free Syrian Army (FSA). His defection was hailed by both the FSA and Western powers as “an enormous blow” to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. His central position in Syria’s governing apparatus aside, Tlass was a major symbolic figurehead for the regime. His father, Mustafa Tlass, was Syria’s Minister of Defense for over three decades during the reign of Hafez al-Assad, the current President’s father. Consequently, the Tlass family has long been fully integrated in the Syrian political and military elite that has run the country for nearly half a century.  Although there were reports that the extended Tlass family was considered too close to the rebels by the Assad regime, Tlass’ defection in July came as a shock to most Syrians. The General reportedly disappeared from his post sometime in early July, shortly after sending his wife and son to Beirut, Lebanon. Rumor has it that he secretly traveled to Turkey and from there to Paris, France, either directly or after joining his family in Lebanon. The details of his defection, however, remain obscure. Speaking on Monday to French television channel BFM, Tlass, who is now based in Paris, said he was helped in “getting out of Syria” by what he called “the French services” —presumably the French intelligence services. When the French journalist asked him to clarify how exactly he was able to leave Syria, Tlass responded that he would rather not be drawn into a discussion on the details of his escape, because it could place his contacts inside Syria in danger. Instead, the prominent Syrian defector said he was grateful to the “French services for helping me get out of Syria, and I thank them for that”. Read more of this post

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CIA declassifies internal review on Iraq ‘intelligence failure’

September 10, 2012 8 Comments

Report cover pageBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An internal report on the alleged failure of the Central Intelligence Agency to accurately read the intentions of the Iraqi regime in the run-up to the 2003 invasion by the United States, has been declassified. The report, entitled Misreading Intentions: Iraq’s Reaction to Inspections Created Picture of Deception, was authored in 2006, classified ‘secret’. It was prepared by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence (DI), the part of the Agency that is responsible for collating and assessing gathered intelligence in order to assist the decisions of US policy-makers on key foreign issues. The report describes what it sees as the DI’s intelligence failure to assess the true state of Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction program in the run-up to the US invasion. It says that invalid predispositions and “analytic liabilities” among CIA analysts prevented the Agency from seeing the issue of weapons of mass destruction from the viewpoint of the Iraqi government. Although heavily redacted, the report seems to state that CIA analysts spent little time examining the view, held by many at the time, that the Iraqi regime had in fact terminated its WMD program by 1995. Furthermore, Agency analysts failed to realize in time that, although it had terminated its WMD program, the Iraqi regime maintained a deliberate policy of ambivalence about the purported existence of the program, in order to save face, deter potential adversaries and appear more dangerous than it actually was. Such a policy of deception was well within the character of the Iraqi regime and should have been detected by American intelligence experts, says the report. Read more of this post

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Israeli PM had ‘sharp exchange’ with US Ambassador over Iran

September 7, 2012 3 Comments

Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack ObamaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A United States Congressman, who chairs the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, says he witnessed a “sharp exchange” between the Israeli Prime Minister and the American Ambassador to Israel, over the Iranian nuclear program.  Earlier this week we reported that Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI), who visited Israel in an official capacity last week, said that he did not believe Israel would attack Iran before the US Presidential elections in November. But in a radio interview with the Detroit-based WJR station on Thursday, Rogers said he thought Israeli leaders were “at wits’ end” over what he described as indecisiveness by the Barack Obama administration in responding to the Iranian nuclear program. The Republican politician said that the meeting he attended at the Israeli Prime Minister’s office was supposed to be a “discussion on intelligence and technical issues”. But it quickly “spun out of control”, he said, when the Israeli leader allegedly criticized the US Ambassador to the country, Dan Shapiro, over the US government’s perceived unwillingness to go beyond imposing diplomatic sanctions on Iran. Rogers described the situation as “a very tense […], very sharp exchange” between the two men, which revealed “elevated concerns on behalf of the Israelis” about the unfolding Iranian nuclear stalemate. Responding to a question from the interviewer, Rogers added that he did not think he had ever witnessed “such a high-level confrontation” between a representative of the American government and a foreign official. Read more of this post

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Ex-CIA Director cautions Israel against attacking Iran

September 5, 2012 4 Comments

Michael HaydenBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The former Director of the United States Central Intelligence Agency has warned that an Israeli attack on Iran would likely backlash and might actually push Tehran to build nuclear weapons earlier than currently projected. General Michael Hayden, the only person to lead both the CIA and the US National Security Agency, told Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on Monday that Iran is not yet close to building a nuclear weapon and that Israel should carefully consider how to respond to its neighbor’s alleged nuclear weapons ambitions. During his CIA tenure, General Hayden supervised the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, produced cooperatively by all 16 agencies of the US intelligence community, which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons activities. In his interview on Monday, Hayden said that, in his view, the conclusion of the 2007 NIE “still holds”, as Tehran has not yet made the decision to weaponize its missile and fissile material. Hayden, who was recently appointed as national security adviser to Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, said that, by rushing to attack Iran now, Israeli military leaders would “actually push [Tehran] to do that which [an attack] is supposed to prevent: getting nuclear weapons”. The retired General added that any military attack on Iran would “pose a difficult challenge” in terms of its strategic outcome, since “there is no absolute certainty that all targets are known” inside Iran. Furthermore, he said, even if Israel decided to attack Iran militarily, it would have to go beyond mere air raids, and would soon discover that its resources were limited. Read more of this post

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CIA Director reportedly in Turkey for secret talks

September 4, 2012 3 Comments

David PetraeusBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Turkish and American authorities have refused comment on persistent reports that the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is currently on a secret visit to Turkey. News of the alleged trip was first reported on Monday by Turkish tabloid daily Akşam. The newspaper said David Petraeus, who heads the United States’ foremost civilian intelligence agency, had arrived earlier that day in Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport, on his private plane. According to the article, the CIA chief decided to embark on the unannounced trip in order to discuss “counterterrorism and the situation in Syria” with senior Turkish officials. Several hours later, French news agency Agence France Presse reported that, according to “a US official”, the CIA Director was indeed in Turkey, holding secret “meetings on regional issues”. However, the unnamed US source would not provide specific information about Petreaeus’ meeting arrangements while in Turkey, nor would (s)he divulge the names of the Turkish officials that were scheduled to meet with him. Another Turkish daily, Hürriyet, said the CIA Director would probably meet with his Turkish counterpart, MİT chief Hakan Fidan, as well as with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan . But repeated efforts by the paper to confirm this were rebuffed by representatives of the US embassy in Ankara, as well as Turkish officials. Read more of this post

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Mossad allegedly behind assassination of Egyptian militant in Sinai

September 3, 2012 2 Comments

Sinai PeninsulaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli intelligence operatives were allegedly behind the assassination late last month of an Egyptian militant who died when his motorcycle suddenly exploded in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Citing unnamed Egyptian security sources, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency said the target of the assassination was Ibrahim Ouda Bereikat, a member of the militant group Jamaat Ansar Bait Al-Maqdis fi Sinaa. The group had claimed responsibility for a series of cross-border attacks in August of 2011, which killed eight Israeli citizens. Five Egyptian police officers and ten militants were also reportedly killed in the attacks, which sparked a diplomatic episode between Cairo and Tel Aviv. The Ma’an report cited Egyptian sources who said that the Israeli raid was the first known incursion into Sinai ever since Israel and Egypt signed the 1979 Camp David Accords. The news agency said that Bereikat’s assassination was carried out by a team of four officers from the Mossad, Israel’s primary covert-action agency. The four allegedly bribed several Bedouin tribesmen who live in southern Sinai, and had them lead them to Bereikat’s whereabouts, approximately 10 miles (15 kilometers) into Egyptian territory. The report claims that the eight-member team —four Mossad operatives and four Bedouins— first tried to kill Bereikat on August 22, but failed because, ironically, their target had been picked up for questioning by Egyptian security forces. The Mossad officers thus returned late on Saturday, August 25, and planted explosives on Bereikat’s motorcycle. Read more of this post

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The mysterious case of Glenn Souther, US defector to the USSR

July 20, 2012 16 Comments

Glenn Michael SoutherBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This past June marked 23 years from the death of Glenn Michael Souther, a United States Navy photographer who defected to the Soviet Union in 1986. Despite the passage of time, a thick veil of mystery remains over the life and works of Souther, an ideological defector to the USSR, who was one of the very few foreign agents and defectors given officer rank in the KGB, the Soviet Union’s foremost intelligence agency during most the Cold War. In 1975, following his graduation from high school, Souther joined the US Navy, and was stationed in Italy in the early 1980s. It was there where he married an Italian woman, and where –it is believed– he was recruited by the KGB’s Boris Solomatin, a legendary Soviet intelligence officer who is believed to have handled US spy John Anthony Walker. In 1982, Souther left the US Navy and enrolled at Old Dominion University, where he studied Russian literature, while at the same time working as a reservist in the US Navy. During that time, Souther worked for naval intelligence, specializing in processing satellite-reconnaissance photographs; he is also believed to have had access to classified intercepts circulating within the US Navy’s communications network. In May 1986, soon after the Federal Bureau of Investigation started to suspect Souther may be working for a foreign intelligence agency, he suddenly disappeared. Two years later, an article in the morning edition of Soviet newspaper Izvestia, official publishing organ of the Soviet Presidium, announced that Souther had been granted political asylum in the USSR. Later that evening, Souther appeared on Soviet Central Television, criticizing American foreign policy and explaining his decision to defect to the Soviet Union. However, on June 22, 1989, an article in Krasnaya Zvezda, official newspaper of the Soviet Ministry of Defense, announced that Souther had killed himself in the garage of his home. Read more of this post

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Mossad gave us no terror warning before blast, says Bulgaria -updated

July 19, 2012 5 Comments

Burgas, BulgariaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Bulgarian authorities received no warning from Israeli intelligence prior to yesterday’s bombing in eastern Bulgaria, which killed at least seven and injured over 30 Israeli tourists. The bomb blast occurred outside the main airport building in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas. Less than an hour earlier, Air Bulgaria flight 392, which had departed from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, had landed at the Burgas International Airport, carrying nearly two hundred Israeli tourists. The latter were boarding three buses scheduled to transport them to various hotels in Burgas, when one of them was ripped apart by a blast —most likely caused by an explosive device placed in the vehicle’s storage compartment a suicide bomber. Reports from Bulgaria and Israel said last night that at least two of the injured were in critical condition and could die soon. Speaking to local media gathered at the site of the blast, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said that Israeli intelligence services had provided no warning of a planned attack inside the country. Plevneliev said that members of Bulgaria’s security apparatus met a month ago with officials from the Mossad, Israel’s primary external intelligence agency, but received “no warning of an expected attack”. Earlier this year, it was reported that the Bulgarian intelligence services had uncovered a plot by Lebanese militant group Hezobllah to strike Israel-linked targets in Bulgarian capital Sofia. Last January, Israel had asked Bulgaria to increase security provisions for Israeli tourists, after a suspicious package was found on a tour bus carrying Israeli holidaymakers from Turkey into Bulgaria. Ironically, Dan Shenar, head of security at the Israeli Transportation Ministry, said at the time that security measures were excellent in Bulgarian airports, but “the situation is not the same outside them”. Read more of this post

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Ukraine jails North Koreans in missile espionage case

July 18, 2012 Leave a comment

One of the two North Koreans being led to courtBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A court in Ukraine has jailed two North Korean citizens on charges of trying to obtain secret technical information about missile engines. A Ukrainian government official said on Monday that the North Koreans had each been sentenced to eight years in prison, and that “they will serve their sentence in Ukraine”. Speaking to Russian-language Ukrainian daily Segodnya, the official said that Ukrainian authorities had expected that Pyongyang would request extradition of its two citizens, but that the North Korean government’s reaction had been “passive”. According to the paper, the two convicted men, who have not been named, were employed by the North Korean trade mission in Belarusian capital Minsk. It was from there that, several months ago, they arrived by train to Kiev, where they tried —unsuccessfully— to recruit a number of locals as informants. One of the latter tipped off Ukrainian authorities, who placed the two North Koreans under surveillance. Eventually, the two suspects were arrested in a rented garage in the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, while photographing technical documents with a pair of handheld miniature digital cameras. The Segodnya report stated that the documents consisted of doctoral dissertations, marked ‘confidential’, which described highly technical methods of designing effective solid- and liquid-fuel supply systems for missile engines. Some of the documents concerned the technical specifications of computer software to assist in the design of missile fuel supply systems, said the paper. The confidential documents had reportedly been taken from the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, a cornerstone of the Soviet —and now the Ukrainian— space industry, which in the early 1960s developed the R-16 (known in the West as SS-7), the first inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) successfully deployed by the Soviet Union. Read more of this post

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Research sheds light on famed psychoanalyst’s espionage activities

July 17, 2012 1 Comment

Max EitingonBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An early student of Sigmund Freud, who introduced psychoanalysis in what is today Israel, was likely an agent of Soviet intelligence, according to historical evidence stemming from his life and the lives of his close relatives and friends. Max Eitingon, who was a member of Freud’s inner circle of students, funded and directed the Psychoanalytic Institute and polyclinic in Berlin, Germany, in the 1920s and early 1930s. In 1933, the rise of German national socialism prompted Eitingon, who was Jewish, to emigrate to Palestine, where he continued his psychoanalytic work. The view that Eitingon may have actively collaborated with Soviet intelligence in both Germany and Palestine was famously discussed in a lengthy letter exchange in The New York Review of Books in the summer of 1988. Although the debate continues among intelligence historians, two researchers, Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez, both of the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute, believe that there is “a preponderance of circumstantial evidence” that Eitingon did collaborate with Soviet intelligence in Germany and Palestine. In a paper published in March of this year, the two researchers argue that Eitingon’s services to the Soviets included dispatching messages and providing safe houses for Moscow’s operatives. But in a fascinating research update, published yesterday in online journal Tablet, Ginor and Remez contend that historical evidence pertaining to the activities of Eitingon’s Russian-born wife, Mirra, and other relatives and friends, adds credence to the view that the famed psychoanalyst was working for Soviet intelligence. The two scholars point out that Mirra Eitingon, née Burovsky, had a son from a previous marriage, named Yuli Borisovich Khariton. Yuli, who remained close to his mother even after she left Russia, grew up to become the principal designer of the Soviet atomic bomb. Additionally, Ginor and Remez call attention to the role of two of Eitingon’s professional acquaintances: Adolf Yoffe, the Soviet Union’s first ambassador to Germany, and his successor, Viktor Kopp, both of whom shared Eitingon’s psychoanalytic interests. Specifically, Kopp was second-in-command at the Soviet Psychoanalytic Association, while Yoffe had been mentored by Alfred Adler, one of the psychoanalytic movement’s co-founders in Austria. In this sense, Ginor and Remez argue that psychoanalysis and intelligence work were “intertwined” in Eitingon’s life and career. Read more of this post

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