Senior North Korean counterintelligence official believed to have defected
May 3, 2018 Leave a comment
One of North Korea’s most senior intelligence officials, who played a major role in building Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, has disappeared and is believed to have defected to France or Britain, according to sources. South Korean media identified the missing official as “Mr. Kang”, and said he is a colonel in North Korea’s State Security Department (SSD), also known as Ministry of State Security. Mr. Kang, who is in his mid-50s, enjoyed a life of privilege in North Korea, because he is related to Kang Pan-sok (1892-1932), a leading North Korean communist activist and mother to the country’s late founder, Kim Il-sung.
According to South Korean reports, Kang was in charge of North Korea’s counter-espionage operations in Russia and Southeast Asia, including China. He is also believed to have facilitated secret visits to Pyongyang by foreign nuclear scientists, who helped build North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In recent years, Kang was reportedly based in Shenyang, the largest Chinese city near the North Korean border, which is home to a sizeable ethnic Korean population. According to reports, Kang led Unit 121, an elite North Korean hacker group based in Shenyang, with the aim of carrying out cyber-attacks without implicating North Korea. The South Korean-based DailyNK website said on Wednesday that Kang had been based at the Zhongpu International Hotel in Shenyang (until recently named Chilbosan Hotel), which has historically been operated through a joint Chinese-North Korean business venture and is known to host numerous North Korean government officials.
But according to DailyNK, Kang disappeared from Shenyang in February and is now believed to have defected, possibly “to France or Great Britain”. The Seoul-based website said Kang took “a lot of foreign currency with him” as well as “a machine capable of printing American dollars”. Following Kang’s disappearance, the government in Pyongyang launched a worldwide manhunt for him, sending at least 10 agents to assassinate him before he is given political asylum in the West, said DailyNK. Pang’s family, including his wife and children, are believed to still be in Pyongyang.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 3 May 2018 | Permalink
Another American diplomat was detained in Pakistan last week, following the second serious traffic accident involving United States diplomatic personnel in Islamabad in less than a month. The incidents are said to be contributing to ongoing diplomatic tensions between the United States and Pakistan. Many in the South Asian country remain angry about a controversial episode in 2011, when a Central Intelligence Agency officer serving at the US consulate in Lahore killed two men by shooting them in the head with a Glock pistol. The CIA officer, 
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For the first time in its history, the United Kingdom has launched its first-ever military-style cyber campaign against an adversary, according to the director of the country’s primary cyber security agency. The target of the campaign was the Islamic State, the militant Sunni Muslim group that is also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The existence of the all-out cyber war was announced last week by Jeremy Fleming, the newly appointed director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s signals intelligence organization. Fleming, a former Security Service (MI5) officer, was 
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A former officer in the Soviet KGB, who now lives in the United Kingdom, is to be questioned by British police after alleging that there is a link between the recent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and the mysterious death of a British intelligence officer in 2010. There has been extensive media coverage in the past month of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a Russian former military intelligence officer who spied for Britain in the early 2000s and has been living in England since 2010. Nearly every European country, as well as Canada, Australia and the United States, 
The outgoing director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, appeared on Thursday to confirm reports from last February that United States troops killed more than 200 Russian soldiers in Syria. 
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The British government may relocate Sergei Skripal, the Russian double spy who appears to have survived an assassination attempt in England, to the United States, in an effort to protect him from further attacks. The BBC 
The government of Taiwan has acknowledged publicly for the first time that a Chinese major general, who was executed by Beijing in 1999 for espionage, was indeed one of its spies. The military officer was Liu Liankun, a logistician for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, who headed its Department of General Logistics. However, China arrested Liu for espionage in 1999, and accused him of having spied for Taiwan for five years, in exchange for money. At the time, Taiwan denied that Liu spied on its behalf and refused to acknowledge that it had any role in the major general’s alleged espionage activities.
The United States government has for the first time admitted publicly that it has detected devices known to be used by foreign intelligence services to spy on cellular communications in the nation’s capital. Known commonly as Stingrays, after a leading hardware brand, these devices are primarily used by government agencies, including law enforcement. But they can be purchased by anyone with anywhere from $1,000 to $200,000 to spare. They work by simulating the activity of legitimate cell towers and tricking cell phones into communicating with them. That allows the users of these cellphone-site simulators to monitor the physical whereabouts of targeted cell phones. Some of the more expensive Stingray models can intercept the actual content of telephone conversations and can even plant Trojans on the compromised phones of unsuspecting users.
The collapse of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is giving rise to a host of successor groups, which are quickly regrouping, recruiting members and launching increasingly sophisticated attacks against government forces, according to experts. A military victory in the war against ISIS was officially declared by the Iraqi government in December of last year. In recent weeks, United States President Donald Trump has repeated his government’s claim that American forces are “knocking the hell out of ISIS”. The Sunni militant group, which rose to prominence in 2014 after conquering much of Syria and northwestern Iraq, is clearly on the retreat, having lost every major urban center that it used to control. However, the collapse of the organization has led to the emergence of numerous insurgent groups that are quickly forming in Iraq and Syria.
Pakistan denies it plans to release doctor who helped CIA find bin Laden
May 4, 2018 Leave a comment
Pakistani authorities fired 17 healthcare workers who participated in the CIA scheme and arrested its head, Dr. Afridi. Bizarrely, Dr. Afridi was arrested for having alleged links with an Islamist group that operates in the region, known as Lashkar-e-Islam. He then faced charges for alleged medical malpractice, which, according to the prosecution, resulted in the death of one of his patients. He is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence in Pakistan’s northwestern border city of Peshawar. Ever since his arrest, the US has pressured Pakistan to release Dr. Afridi, and Pakistani media often publish sensational reports about alleged covert attempts by the CIA to free the imprisoned medical doctor. Last week, Dr. Afridi was transported by helicopter from Peshawar to a jail near the village of Adiala, located near Pakistan’s border with the Indian region of Kashmir. Dr. Afridi’s move, which took place amid heavy security, sparked rumors in the media that the alleged CIA agent was about to be released and transported to America.
But on Thursday, Muhammad Faisal, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dismissed intense media speculation that Dr. Afridi was about to be released. He also denied that Islamabad was attempting to swap Afridi with Pakistani nationals living in the US, including Aafia Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year prison term in the US for killing an American soldier in Afghanistan. Additionally, Faisal described as “nonsense” media reports of an alleged failed CIA attempt to organize a jailbreak in Peshawar, in order to free Dr. Afridi.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 4 May 2018 | Permalink
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