News you may have missed #885

November 14, 2014 by 2 Comments

Shin BetBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►Americans’ cellphones targeted in secret US spy program. The US Justice Department is scooping up data from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes that mimic cellphone towers, a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects that is snagging a large number of innocent Americans, according to people familiar with the operations. The US Marshals Service program, which became fully functional around 2007, operates Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population, according to people familiar with the program.
►►Israel’s usually secretive spy agencies get into public spat. Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, known as the Shin Bet, has been trading barbs with the military over whether faulty army intelligence left Israel unprepared for war with the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The spat went high-profile this week when Israel’s Channel 2 aired a report featuring Shin Bet officials –-rendered in pixilated, shadowed form-– claiming the military had brushed aside the agency’s assessment, months before fighting erupted in July, that an armed conflict with Hamas was in the making.
►►Poland mulls military intelligence brigade close to Belarus border. Polish Armed Forces will make emphasis on the unfolding of reconnaissance troops and will set up a separate brigade and military command in the north-east of the country, National Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said on Thursday. The region he visited is located along the border with Belarus and close to the border with Russia’s westernmost Kaliningrad region, an exclave on the south-east shore of the Baltic Sea.

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Lithuania charges state employee with spying for Belarus, Russia

November 13, 2014 by Leave a comment

Belarus and LithuaniaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
Prosecutors in Lithuania have charged an employee of a state-owned airline navigation services provider with spying for neighboring Belarus, though it is presumed the compromised information may have also been shared with Russia. Lithuanian government prosecutor Darius Raulusaitis told reporters at a news conference on Monday that the man charged was a Lithuanian national living and working in capital Vilnius. He has been identified only with his initials, which are R.L. The alleged spy is being accused of collecting information relating to Lithuania’s military strength with the intention of sharing it with unregistered agents of Belarus. He has also been charged with passing information on what the Lithuanian prosecutor described as “strategically important companies” in the Baltic republic. His alleged targets are said to include Oro Navigacija, Lithuania’s state-owned aviation company, for which he worked. Court documents accuse R.L. of surreptitiously photographing documents in his office at Oro Navigacija’s headquarters, and then transferring them to facilities belonging to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Belarus. Raulusaitis told reporters that R.L. had been charged with “spying against the Lithuanian Republic on orders of intelligence services of the Belarus Republic”. He added, however, that Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) considered it likely that “any information obtained by the Belarus secret service” had been “shared with the Russian [intelligence] services”. At a separate news conference, VSD Director Gediminas Grina said that passing classified information to Belarus “is the same to us as spying for Russia”. Belarus is arguably Russia’s closest European ally; many international observers consider Belarus a supranational part of the post-Soviet Russian Federation. Regular intelNews readers will recall that in 2012 Belarus arrested a military attaché at the Lithuanian embassy in Belorussian capital Minsk, after accusing him of running an espionage ring allegedly incorporating an undisclosed number of Belorussian nationals. Lithuanian authorities said earlier this week that R.L. is one of two Lithuanian citizens arrested in 2013 following a three-year investigation by the VSD. The second suspect, who has not been named, is reportedly under “pre-trial investigation”, which is expected to take “weeks or months’ to complete. The announcement of the charges against R.L. marks the first time Lithuanian authorities have leveled charges of espionage against an individual since 2004, when the former Soviet republic joined the European Union. If found guilty, R.L. faces up to 15 years in jail.

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High-profile US diplomat probed by FBI counterintelligence

November 12, 2014 by Leave a comment

Robin L. RaphelBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
A highly experienced American diplomat, who is commonly described as “a fixture in Washington foreign policy circles”, is reportedly being investigated by counterintelligence agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Washington Post named the diplomat last week as Robin L. Raphel, who served as United States ambassador to Tunisia before being appointed as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, during the administration of US President Bill Clinton. The New York Times described Ms. Raphel as one of the US Department of State’s highest-ranking female diplomats. She is considered an expert on Pakistan and until recently served as an adviser to the Department of State’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ms. Raphel officially retired from the Foreign Service in 2005 and joined the ranks of Cassidy & Associates, a high-powered government-relations firm based in Washington, DC, which is known to have performed lobbying assignments on behalf of the government of Pakistan. In reporting the alleged investigation of Ms. Raphel by the FBI, The Washington Post said last week that the nature of the probe was “unclear”. But it stated that FBI counterintelligence agents had searched the former diplomat’s house and office. Citing unnamed government sources, The New York Times reported that the FBI was trying to determine why Ms. Raphel had taken classified information to her house, and whether she had shared it, or planned to share it, with a foreign government. There was no mention in the article of the identity of the foreign government that may have been privy to classified information allegedly taken home by Ms. Raphel. Media reports suggested that the former diplomat had been placed on leave and stripped of all her government security clearances as part of the ongoing FBI investigation. Insiders note that it is extremely rare for such a prominent figure in Washington to become the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation.

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UK report warns about sexual entrapment by foreign spies

November 11, 2014 by 2 Comments

UK Ministry of DefenceBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
A leaked report issued by military authorities in the United Kingdom cautions British officials to be aware of attempts by Chinese and Russian intelligence services to compromise them using sexual entrapment. The London-based Sunday Times newspaper said it had acquired a copy of the document, entitled Manual of Security, authored by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence for use by senior officials. The manual warns that foreign intelligence services are known to employ sexual entrapment or romantic attachment as a means of compromising their targets. The document singles out the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Chinese Ministry of State Security as two adversary agencies that are known to employ sexual entrapment on a regular basis. British officials are warned in the document that the FSB could gain classified information by exploiting “knowledge of marital infidelity or sexual activity the target may wish to hide”. The Times spoke to an unidentified “senior military official”, who told the paper he was recently approached by “a very attractive blonde woman in her early 30s” in a hotel in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg. The woman began telling him of her fascination with vintage British sports cars, which happened to be the British official’s favorite hobby. He eventually terminated the encounter after he became suspicious of the woman’s motives. But he remains puzzled as to how the woman knew details of his personal hobbies. In 2009, the British Foreign Office had to recall its deputy consul-general in the Russian city of Ekaterinberg, after he appeared in an explicit video on YouTube having a sexual encounter with two Russian prostitutes. Many speculated at the time that the video had been posted online by the FSB in an attempt to embarrass the diplomat and have him removed from Russia. Later that year, London’s former deputy mayor, Ian Clement, admitted he was lured by a female Chinese secret agent, who drugged him and ransacked his Beijing hotel room after having sex with him. Clement said he fell for what he called “the oldest trick in the book” while in Beijing to “build contacts with potential investors” for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Sir Christopher Meyer, a career diplomat with the Foreign Office, who served in several countries during his career, including the Soviet Union, has written about the case of Sir Geoffrey Harrison, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow from 1965 to 1968. The ambassador, said Sir Christopher, “had to leave [the Soviet capital] in a hurry, having fallen for the charms of his Russian maid –trained and targeted, of course, by the KGB”. Read more of this post

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KGB officer who handled Aussie double spy is now Putin crony

November 10, 2014 by Leave a comment

Lev KoshlyakovBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A KGB intelligence officer, who handled an Australian double spy during the closing stages of the Cold War, now holds several prestigious corporate posts in Moscow and is believed to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lev Koshlyakov, 69, is director of corporate communications for two Russian airline companies, including the state carrier, Aeroflot, and a member of the prestigious Moscow-based Council for Foreign and Defense Policy. But from 1977 until 1984, Koshlyakov served as the press and information officer for the Russian embassy in Australian capital Canberra. Intelligence sources, however, told The Weekend Australian last week that Koshlyakov’s diplomatic status was in fact a cover for his real job, which was station chief for the Soviet KGB. During his stint in Canberra, Koshlyakov is believed to have handled an especially damaging mole inside the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), who was allegedly recruited by his predecessor, KGB station chief Geronty Lazovik. Canberra was alerted to the existence of the mole in 1992, when the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), along with Britain’s’ Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), briefed Australian officials on information acquired from Russian defectors. Soon afterwards, a government-commissioned report produced by Australian former diplomat Michael Cook described Koshlyakov as “one of the most dangerous KGB officers ever posted” to Australia. Eventually, Koshlyakov was assigned to a desk job by the KGB, after his cover was blown in Norway, where he was also serving as KGB chief of station. The Norwegians expelled Koshlyakov in 1991 after accusing him of espionage activities that were incompatible with his official diplomatic status. Since his retirement, however, Koshlyakov has done well for himself, having been appointed to senior corporate positions —some say with the personal backing of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. As for the ASIO mole he allegedly handled in the 1980s, The Australian reports that he was forced to retire in 1992, after he was identified by the CIA and MI6. There was insufficient evidence to try him, however, so he “lived out his retirement in Australia” looking nervously over his shoulder, says the paper.

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Obama in secret negotiations with Iran over ISIS threat

November 7, 2014 by Leave a comment

Iran and its regionBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The president of the United States reportedly sent a secret letter to the supreme leader of Iran, in which he proposes cooperation against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in exchange for a nuclear deal. The New York-based Wall Street Journal newspaper reported on Thursday that Barack Obama reached out to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in October. In the letter, Obama allegedly proposes a nuclear agreement between Washington and Tehran and emphasizes the common threat the two nations face from ISIS, the Sunni Islamist group also known as the Islamic State. The paper said Obama’s letter stresses that any cooperation between America and Iran against the Islamic State is directly contingent on a nuclear agreement between the two governments, which would have to be reached before November 24 of this year. If the Journal’s information is accurate, it would appear that the US president’s move is connected with the latest round in bilateral negotiations between Washington and Tehran, which is scheduled to begin on November 8. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif will be leading their respective teams, as the two delegations meet in Muscat, capital of Oman, to explore ways of normalizing their diplomatic relations. If it is real, Obama’s purported letter would not mark the first instance in which the US president wrote to his Iranian counterpart. There are at least three other letters that Obama is known to have sent to various Iranian leaders since 2009, when he assumed the presidency of the US. However, if the proposal in the letter, as outlined in The Wall Street Journal article, is authentic, the move can be seen to highlight the view of the White House that Iran must inevitably be part of a solution regarding ISIS. Nevertheless, the revelation that America is seeking an alliance with Shiite Iran will undoubtedly frustrate America’s Arab allies in the region, especially Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and other Sunni oil monarchies, which are participating in the ongoing international military campaign against the Islamic State. The Journal contacted the White House but officials there refused to comment on what they said was Obama’s “private correspondence”. When asked by journalists on the matter, White House spokesman Joshua Earnest said only that “the policy that the president and his administration have articulated about Iran remains unchanged”.

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Spy satellites detect new nuclear weapons plant in North Korea

November 6, 2014 by 2 Comments

Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research CenterBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
A brand new nuclear weapons production plant detected by spy satellites in North Korea would enable the recluse Asian country to double its uranium-based nuclear warheads, according to intelligence sources. South Korean daily newspaper JoongAng Ilbo said the plant was detected by spy satellites equipped with infrared cameras, which are able to sense heat emissions released by gas centrifuges. The latter are essential in separating uranium-235 isotopes from the predominant uranium-238 isotope, which constitutes over 99 percent of natural uranium and cannot be weaponized. JoongAng Ilbo quotes an unnamed South Korean intelligence official, who said the data collected by the spy satellites indicate that Pyongyang has activated a new centrifuge facility inside the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center. Located approximately 60 miles north of the capital Pyongyang, Yongbyon is North Korea’s major nuclear facility, which was used to produce the fissile material for North Korea’s first nuclear weapon test in 2006. Prior to the establishment of the newly detected plant on the site, the facility was believed to contain around 2,000 centrifuges. The new facility is thought to have added significantly to North Korea’s existing capacity to enrich uranium, as it appears from its architecture and size that it contains several hundred operational centrifuges. South Korean and Western officials estimate that North Korea has the capacity to produce up to five nuclear warheads, though many doubt that the country’s nuclear engineers have been able to miniaturize the warheads so as to mount them on a long-rage delivery system. In 2012, a court in Ukraine sentenced two North Korean citizens to eight years in prison on charges of trying to obtain secret technical information about missile engines. News media contacted South Korean’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which oversees surveillance operations against the North’s nuclear program, but received no answer regarding the discovery of the new production facility.

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British spy agencies launch recruitment drive for Russian speakers

November 5, 2014 by Leave a comment

MI5 HQ Thames HouseBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Amid mounting tensions between Russia and the West, British spy agencies have announced an ambitious recruitment campaign aimed at hiring a new generation of Russian-language specialists. The Security Service, known as MI5, which is responsible for domestic security and counterintelligence, posted an advertisement on its website this week, alerting potential applicants that the job search for Russian-language speakers will officially launch “in mid-November 2014”. The recruitment campaign, which is described on the spy agency’s website as “an exciting opportunity to match your language skills to a position in MI5”, appears to be jointly administered with the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s signals intelligence agency, which is tasked with intercepting foreign communications. The move takes place in a wider context of deteriorating relations between Moscow and Western Europe, notably in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of southeastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Some suggest that there has also been a low-intensity intelligence war taking place between London and Moscow ever since the assassination in the British capital of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. In late 2012, an officer of the Royal Navy was captured during a counterintelligence sting operation while trying to sell top-secret British government documents to people he believed were Russian intelligence operatives. A few months later, the British government let it be known of its increasing annoyance by persistent allegations made in the Russian media that Denis Keefe, the UK’s deputy ambassador to Moscow, was “an undercover spy, with his diplomatic position serving as a smokescreen”. In March of 2013, Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet KGB’s former station chief in London, who defected to the UK in the 1980s, alleged in an interview that Russia operates as many spies in Britain today as it did during the Cold War. His comments were echoed earlier this year by the former director of MI5, Jonathan Evans, who said that there had been no change in the number of undeclared Russian intelligence officers operating in Britain since the end of the Cold War. Evans said that up to 50 undeclared Russian military and civilian spies were believed to be operating in Britain at any given moment. In June of this year, intelNews reported that the crisis in Crimea had caused the British military to hurriedly reach out to hundreds of retired Russian-language analysts who left the service at the end of the Cold War, most of whom are now in their 60s.

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Retired Israeli generals, spy directors, urge peace talks with Arabs

November 4, 2014 by Leave a comment

Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack ObamaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A record number of over 100 retired Israeli military commanders, police commissioners and directors of the Mossad spy agency have urged the government of Israel to initiate unconditional peace talks with its Arab neighbors. In an open letter addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 106 signatories from the ranks of Israel’s security and intelligence community have urged the Israeli leader to “initiate a diplomatic process” aimed at achieving peace with the Palestinians. All but five of the signatories are veterans of the Israel Defense Forces with the rank of brigadier or major general. The remaining five are former directors of the Mossad —Israel’s covert-action agency— and former commissioners of Mishteret Yisra’el, Israel’s national police force. The initiative was spearheaded by Major General Amnon Reshef (ret.), a former commander of Israel’s Armored Corps and decorated veteran of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War. He was joined by dozens of his former comrades-in-arms, including Major General Eyal Ben-Reuven, who warned in an interview aired last Friday that Israel is on a “steep slope toward an increasingly polarized society and moral decline”. He attributed this trend to the purported “need to keep millions of people under occupation on claims that are security-related”, but are in reality machinations by weak political leaders within Israel. Ben-Reuven told Israel’s Channel 2 News that Israel had the ability and the means to achieve a two-state solution with the Palestinians that would drastically increase regional security. But it was failing to do so, he said, due to “weak leadership” inside Israel. Referring to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ben-Reuven said he suffers from “some kind of political blindness that drives him to scare himself and us”. The action by the 106 former security and intelligence leaders was described by Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz as “the largest-ever joint protest by senior Israeli security personnel”. In their letter, the signatories argue that peace with the Palestinians “is not a question of left or right. What we have here is an alternative option for resolving the conflict […] with the Palestinians, which have failed time and again”. And they continue addressing Mr. Netanyahu directly: “We expect a show of courageous initiative and leadership from you. Lead, and we will stand behind you”. The Israeli prime minister promotes the view that Palestinian statehood would threaten Israel’s national security under the geopolitical conditions that are currently prevalent in the region.

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Brazil builds direct Internet cable to Europe to avoid US spying

November 3, 2014 by 5 Comments

Proposed transatlantic cableBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The government of Brazil is to construct a transatlantic cable across the Atlantic Ocean in order to avoid having its Internet traffic to and from Europe intercepted by American intelligence agencies. According to reports, the fiber-optic cable will stretch for 3,500 miles from the northeastern Brazilian city of Fortaleza to the Portuguese capital Lisbon. It will cost the Brazilian government in excess of US$185 million, but it will allow the country’s existing Internet traffic to and from Europe to travel without going through cables owned by American service providers. According to Brazilian officials, the construction of the cable is among several steps announced by the Brazilian government aimed at disassociating its communications infrastructure from American companies. The move follows revelations made last year by American defector Edward Snowden that the US National Security Agency specifically targeted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s personal communications as part of its intelligence-collection efforts targeting Brazil. In response to the revelations, Rousseff cancelled a planned official state visit to Washington and accused the US of having committed “a breach of international law and an affront” against Brazil’s sovereignty. The planned fiber-optic cable connection to Europe will be overseen by Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras SA, Brazil’s state-owned telecommunications conglomerate, known commonly as TeleBras. The company’s president, Francisco Ziober Filho, said in an interview last week that none of the $185 million that will be spent on the project will end up in the pockets of American companies. For over a year, experts have been warning that the Snowden revelations about the extent of the NSA’s global communications-interception activities might undermine the American telecommunications sector, insomuch as it could undercut America’s role and influence in global Internet governance. Many countries, Brazil included, are beginning to actively reconsider their dependence on US-managed Internet networks that host the content of social media sites, cloud computing databases, or telecommunications exchanges. Read more of this post

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Are militant groups interested in weaponizing Ebola?

October 31, 2014 by 1 Comment

Ebola suffererBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
Does the Ebola epidemic present militant groups, such as the Islamic State or al-Qaeda, with the opportunity to weaponize viruses and direct them against Western targets? Earlier this month, United States Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson dismissed in strong terms the possibility that Ebola would be used by Islamic State militants to attack American targets. Speaking to the Association of the United States Army, Johnson acknowledged that the Islamic State is a “very, very dangerous terrorist organization”, but added that his Department had seen “no specific credible evidence that [the Islamic State] is attempting to use any sort of disease or virus to attack” the US. A few days earlier, however, Forbes magazine had quoted Al Shimkus, Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, as saying that the Ebola outbreak presented Islamist groups with the opportunity to use a low-tech bioterrorist weapon “to attempt to wreak strategic global infection”. Shimkus added that a group like the Islamic State wouldn’t even have to weaponize the virus’ it could “simply use human carriers to intentionally infect themselves in West Africa, then disseminate the deadly virus via the world’s air transportation system”, he said. On Wednesday, a senior Spanish official told a parliamentary committee in Madrid that the government of Spain was “taking seriously” discussions in Internet forums linked to the Islamic State about using biological weapons against the West. Francisco Martínez, who is Spain’s State Secretary for Security, told the Committee of the Interior in the Spanish Congress that online commentators connected to the Islamic State have been discussing the possibility of using Ebola as a weapon against America and its Western allies. He told Committee members that the discussions had been taking place on Internet forums as recently as mid-September. He also cited “a series of tweets” from last July, in which another Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, with roots in Iraqi Kurdistan, proposed using “deadly chemical products from laboratories” as means of launching attacks against the West. Martínez did not provide further details on the allegations.

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Analysis: Well-trained spy agency adds to strength of Islamic State

October 30, 2014 by Leave a comment

ISIS parade in SyriaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The militants of the Islamic State, who now control large parts of Syria and Iraq, boast a well-trained and agile intelligence apparatus that is partly responsible for the group’s continuing expansion and strength. Sources on the ground in Iraq report that many of the intelligence officers that staff the Islamic State’s spy agency are former employees of the Syrian and Iraqi governments. They were trained by either Russian or American spies during their government service, and are now lending their advanced intelligence skills to the Islamic State. Al-Monitor’s Ali Mamouri, who is based in Iraq, writes that the Islamic State’s intelligence agency is similar to other government intelligence apparatuses around the world in both structure and operational tactics. Principal among its tasks is political protection of the militant regime’s senior commanders, several of whom have already been killed in Mosul and other cities of northwestern Iraq. Islamic State intelligence officers have tightened security precautions in recent weeks, advising Islamic State leaders to limit their public appearances and arresting individuals suspected of acting as informants for Kurdish or other opposition groups linked to the Iraqi or Syrian governments. Another task of the Islamic State’s intelligence apparatus, Mamouri reports, is counterintelligence —i.e. detecting and preventing attempts by Iraqi and Syrian government spies to infiltrate Islamic State governing structures or military outfits. The intelligence agency also works closely with armed groups reminiscent of the German Nazi Party’s Sturmtruppen (Stormtroopers), namely uniformed street thugs whose task is to identify, monitor and physically eliminate opponents of the regime. The list of undesirables includes Shiites, moderate Sunnis, as well as leaders of tribes who cooperated with the Syrian or Iraqi governments in the recent past.

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India uncovers plot to assassinate Bangladeshi prime minister

October 29, 2014 by Leave a comment

India and BangladeshBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Indian authorities claim to have uncovered a plot by an outlaw militant group to assassinate the prime minister of Bangladesh and launch a coup d’état in the South Asian country. The Reuters news agency quoted three “senior Indian officials” on Tuesday, who claimed that the plot was primarily aimed against Sheikh Hasina, leader of the nationalist Bangladesh Awami League, who was elected to the office of the prime minister in 2009 for the second time, after having led the country of 156 million people from 1996 to 2001. The National Investigation Agency of India (NIA) said the plot was to be carried out by members of the Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), a militant Islamist organization whose aim is to overthrow the government of Bangladesh and replace it with an Islamic theocracy based on Sharia law. The group, which maintains close ideological links with the Pakistani Taliban, is believed to have over 100,000 members throughout the country. It was officially banned by the government of Bangladesh in early 2005. But later that year the JMB conducted a massive terrorist operation that included over 500 explosive devices detonated in 300 locations around the country. Four leaders of the organization were later executed by the authorities for their role in the bombings and for organizing the assassination of two judges. Indian security officers reportedly discovered the coup plot earlier this month, when two members of JMB were killed in an explosion while building homemade bombs. The explosion took place in a house in India’s eastern state of West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh. NIA officials said the plotters were all Bangladeshis and were using West Bengal as an operations base from which to launch their attacks across the border into Bangladesh. According to one report, the plotters also planned to kill members of the Bangladeshi cabinet, as well as senior opposition leaders in the country. Read more of this post

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Czechs say number of Russian spies in Prague “extremely high”

October 28, 2014 by Leave a comment

PragueBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The number of active Russian intelligence operatives in the Czech Republic increased notably in the past year, according to an official report by the country’s counterintelligence service. In its annual report released on Monday, the Czech Security Information Service (BIS) said the number of Russian intelligence personnel stationed in the central European country had risen dramatically since the start of the crisis in Ukraine. The crisis, which brought Russian troops in Ukraine and resulted in the annexation of Crimea by Russia, has prompted the most serious crisis in the West’s relations with Russia since the end of the Cold War. The BIS report did not reveal the precise number of alleged Russian intelligence personnel on Czech soil, but it noted that the majority of them posed as diplomats in Russia’s embassy in Czech capital Prague. It stated that “when it comes to Russia’s diplomatic mission, in 2013 the number of intelligence officers working undercover as diplomats was extremely high”. It added that significant numbers of Russian intelligence operatives were in the Czech Republic in a non-official-cover (NOC) capacity, meaning there were not officially connected with the Russian embassy there and had no diplomatic immunity. These officers “travel to the Czech Republic as individuals, posing as tourists, experts, academics and entrepreneurs”, said the report, “or settled down in the country through purchasing property”. Nearly 50,000 Russian citizens live in the Czech Republic as long-term legal residents. Relations between Moscow and Prague have been frosty in the post-communist era, and have deteriorated significantly following the Czech Republic’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the summer of 2010, three Czech generals, including the head of the president’s military office and the country’s representative to NATO, resigned following revelations that one of their senior staffers had a romantic relationship with a Russian spy. Read more of this post

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Newly released British files shed light on 20th-century espionage

October 27, 2014 by 1 Comment

Eric HobsbawmBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
Files released last week by Britain’s National Archives have brought to the fore interesting new clues on the history of intelligence operations in the 20th century. One of the files relates to Migel Piernavieja del Pozo, a Spanish journalist in his mid-20s, who arrived in the United Kingdom in 1940, ostensibly to cover British public attitudes to the war in the continent. Britain’s counterintelligence agency, the Security Service, also known as MI5, placed Pozo under surveillance, after the debonair Spaniard proclaimed in public meetings that he was grateful for German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s support to Spain’s royalist forces and said he hoped Germany would emerge victorious from the war in Europe. The agency was right to do so, as Pozo eventually approached an agent of the Abwehr —Nazi Germany’s military intelligence agency— in the UK, and told him that he too was working secretly for Berlin. But the Abwehr agent, codenamed GW in MI5 documents, was in fact a double spy for the Crown and managed to pass deceptive information to the Spaniard. Eventually, Pozo gave GW a tin of talcum powder containing over £3,500 in banknotes, which is approximately $150,000 in today’s money. Professor Christopher Andrew, official historian of MI5, told The Daily Telegraph that the money supplied by Pozo was “probably the largest sum yet handed to a British agent” by a rival spy. Eventually, Pozo’s inability to acquire useful intelligence in the UK prompted his recall back to Spain.

Another set of files, also released last week by the National Archives, appears to show that C.A.N. Nambiar, a friend of India’s first prime minister and deputy to one of the country’s most fervent pro-independence activists, was a Soviet spy. Nambiar was known as an old comrade of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first elected leader of post-colonial India, who dominated Indian affairs for much of the last century. He was also a close associate of Subhas Chandra Bose, a pro-independence activist considered a hero by Indian nationalists, whose hatred for India’s British occupiers led him to side with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the early 1940s. After India’s independence in 1947, Nambiar worked as a diplomat in Berne, Switzerland, before becoming India’s ambassador to Sweden and later to West Germany. But according to MI5 documents released last week, an Eastern Bloc defector fingered Nambiar in 1959 as an agent of Soviet military intelligence, known as GRU. The source said Nambiar had been recruited while visiting the USSR as a guest of the Soviet state in 1929. Read more of this post

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