South Korea charges North Korean agent caught carrying ‘poison-tipped needle’

October 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

Park Sang-hak

Park Sang-hak

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The South Korean government has formally pressed charges against a North Korean defector, whom it accuses of trying to kill an outspoken anti-Pyongyang activist living in the South, with the use of a poison-tipped needle. As intelNews reported last month, a man identified only as ‘Ahn’ was arrested at a subway station in southern Seoul, as he tried to assassinate Park Sang-Hak. The alleged target of the assassination is a high-profile North Korean defector known for spearheading an imaginative —and often controversial— propaganda campaign directed against the government of North Korea. In one recent case, Park, along with his wife and children, employed dozens of inflatable helium balloons to smuggle thousands of leaflets, dollar bills, solar-powered radios, and DVDs into North Korea. According to the Korean Central Prosecutor’s Office in Seoul, Park’s activities prompted Pyongyang to employ ‘Ahn’, a North Korean former Special Forces commando, to try to kill the anti-communist propagandist. According to South Korean officials, ‘Ahn’, has operated as a North Korean sleeper agent ever since his relocation to Seoul, in the late 1990s. In the summer of 2011, ‘Ahn’ contacted Park and eventually managed to arrange a meeting with him at a suburban subway station in the South Korean capital for September 3. However, several days prior to the arranged rendezvous, Park received notice from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) that ‘Ahn’ was out to either kidnap or kill him. The alleged North Korean agent was arrested at the subway station at the time of his meeting with Park. South Korean government prosecutors claim that NIS agents found a poison-tipped needle in ‘Ahn’s’ possession, which they plan to use as evidence at his upcoming closed-door trial. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #605

October 6, 2011 by Leave a comment

Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

►►French intelligence ‘spied on Socialist politician’. Hand-picked” French intelligence agents allegedly spied on the private life of François Hollande, the Socialist whom polls predict is best-placed to beat Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential elections. They are also said to have spied on Hollande’s partner, Valérie Trierweiler –-potentially France’s future first lady.
►►US to release Cuban spy under supervision. Rene Gonzalez, the first of five Cubans imprisoned in the United States as spies since 1998 will regain his freedom Friday but won’t be able to go home for three more years because of a court order requiring he remain under US supervision.
►►Afghan intelligence says it stopped plot to kill Karzai. A plot to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been foiled by Afghan intelligence agents in Kabul who arrested six men with links to al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network. The discovery of the plot comes just two days before the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for the September 11 attacks in the US and, had it been successful, would have plunged the country further into chaos.

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Russia reveals arrest of Chinese national on spy charges

October 6, 2011 by Leave a comment

FSB officer

FSB officer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Russian counterintelligence officials have revealed the arrest of an alleged Chinese intelligence operative, who has reportedly been imprisoned in Moscow for nearly a year and is awaiting trial on espionage charges. Russia’s FSB domestic intelligence agency said on Wednesday that it arrested Chinese national Tong Shengyong on October 28 last year. In a press statement, the FSB said that Tong’s professional cover was that of an “interpreter for official delegations”, but that in reality he was operating in Russia on an assignment from China’s Ministry of Public Security. The Ministry is the principal police and security authority of the People’s Republic of China, and is considered one of the world’s largest intelligence organizations. The FSB claims that Tong allegedly used his high-level contacts in Moscow and elsewhere to routinely solicit Russian nationals, offering to purchase from them information relating to Russian missile systems. According to the FSB, Tong was particularly interested in the S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile system, which developed for the Soviet Air Defense Forces as protection against American aircraft and cruise missiles. The Soviet-era system has since been replaced by the more advanced S-400, but China, which has historically been Russia’s largest weapons procurer, is already in possession of several S-300s, which it purchased from Moscow in the 1990s. Beijing is therefore desperate to access classified manuals that would allow it to repair and modify S-300s currently in its possession, without giving in to Russia’s insistence to upgrade to the post-Soviet S-400. Moreover, during the past decade, China has begun developing its own missile system technology, which some say is loosely based on Russian blueprints. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #604 (CIA edition)

October 5, 2011 by Leave a comment

Raymond Allen Davis

Raymond Davis

►►Aid agency leaves Pakistan following CIA vaccination scheme. Fears that a fake CIA vaccination scheme, created to hunt Osama bin Laden, has compromised the operations of aid agencies in Pakistan have intensified, after it emerged that Save the Children, a major NGO, was forced to evacuate its staff following warnings about their security.
►►CIA contractor arrested in car park brawl. A CIA contractor Raymond Davis, who was freed by Pakistani authorities after the families of two men he killed in a shootout agreed to accept more than $2.34 million in blood money, has been arrested after a brawl over a car parking space, according to police in the US state of Colorado.
►►Judge approves secret evidence for CIA leak trial. A federal judge has ruled that prosecutors pursuing a leak case against former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling may use a controversial procedure known as the “silent witness rule” to present evidence to the jury that will not be seen by the public. Sterling is accused of leaking CIA secrets to New York Times journalist James Risen.

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News you may have missed #603

October 5, 2011 by Leave a comment

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

Syed Fai

►►Turkey has names of Israeli soldiers who attacked Gaza Flotilla. According to Turkish media, government officials succeeded in amassing the list of 174 names of officers and soldiers involved in the 2010 MV Mavi Marmara attack, by planting intelligence agents inside Israel. Turkish government officials have denied the reports.
►►Ex-MI5 chief to hear deportation case of alleged spy. A British judge has ruled that Sir Stephen Lander, former director of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service, can help to decide whether Katia Zatuliveter should be deported from the UK for allegedly spying for Russia. Zatuliveter, a Russian citizen who worked as an assistant to former British Member of Parliament Mike Hancock, may be deported on the basis of espionage evidence gathered by MI5.
►►Analysis: Pakistan’s spy plot to influence Washington. Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai came to the US on Saudi money with hopes of helping people in the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir. But he found himself spending millions on behalf of Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence and, now, under arrest. An excellent article by The Atlantic‘s Kim Barker, Habiba Nosheen, and Raheel Khursheed.

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Germany releases Mongolian spy master wanted for abduction, torture

October 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

Bat Khurts

Bat Khurts

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On May 15, 2003, Mongolian refugee and political-asylum seeker Enkhbat Damiran was kidnapped outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Le Havre, France. According to Amnesty International, Damiran was apprehended by a team of officers of the General Intelligence Agency of Mongolia (GIAM), who kicked him, drugged him and beat him with electric batons, before ushering him to the Mongolian embassy. From there, Damiran was illegally smuggled into Germany, where he stayed for a few days, before being transported to Mongolia, through Belgium. Once back in his homeland, Damiran effectively ‘disappeared’ in the custody of GIAM, where he was allegedly subjected to systematic torture by his captors. The latter believe him to be connected with the 1998 assassination of Zorig Sanjaasürengiin, Mongolia’s former Minister of Infrastructure. Following complaints about the abduction from the European Union, the Mongolian government apologized to the governments of France, Germany and Belgium. But Damiran’s abduction has continued to be at the root of a diplomatic rift between Europe and Mongolia, which has widened in recent years. Things became even more heated in September 2010, when British intelligence, acting on a Europe-wide arrest warrant, captured Bat Khurts, former Director of GIAM, who is believed to be responsible for Damiran’s abduction and torture. Khurts was arrested in London, after being lured there in a carefully planned and executed intelligence operation. This past July, the British government decided to extradite Khurts to Germany, where was scheduled to be tried on abduction charges on October 24. So it was a bit of a surprise to say the least, when, yesterday, the Mongolian former spymaster was unexpectedly released by German authorities, after having all charges against him dropped. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #602 (Israel edition)

October 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

Ahmed Jamal Daif

Ahmed Jamal Daif

►►Lebanon arrests three suspected of spying for Israel. Lebanon has arrested three people suspected of spying for Israel and trespassing, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported Tuesday. According to the report, an Egyptian citizen and his wife were arrested on suspicion of spying, and an Arab-Israeli man was arrested on suspicion of trespassing. The Israeli, Ahmed Jamal Daif (pictured), was found on Monday in a diving suit on a beach in the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura, a Lebanese army source said.
►►Egypt may release alleged Israel spy. Agence France Presse is reporting that Cairo is considering the release of alleged Israeli spy Ilan Grapel, in exchange for “political and economic incentives” offered by the United States. Grapel was arrested by Egyptian state security officers in June, on charges of spying for Israel. According to one source, former CIA Director and current US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is set to visit Egypt today and is supposed to “take Grapel with him at the end of his visit”.
►►Jordanian accused of spying for Israel pleads not guilty. A Jordanian telecommunications engineer, who is on trial in Egypt on charges of spying for Israel, pleaded not guilty on Sunday. Bashar Ibrahim Abu Zeid was detained in Egypt last April after intelligence information allegedly showed he was spying for the Mossad, with Ofir Herari, an alleged Mossad agent, being tried in absentia.

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Biden stopped Obama from granting clemency to Israel spy

October 3, 2011 by Leave a comment

Joe Biden

Joe Biden

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The President of the United States considered clemency for an American Navy analyst who spied on the US for Israel, but was stopped by his Vice President, Joe Biden, according to a report in The New York Times. The report claims that Barack Obama gave in to concerted pressure from the Israeli government and members of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, and proposed that Jonathan Pollard, who was jailed for life in 1986 for handing over classified US government documents to Israeli spies, be released. But Joe Biden rejected Obama’s proposal, reportedly telling the President that “over my dead body are we going to let [Pollard] out before his time”. The information appears to have come from Joe Biden himself, who revealed it during a recent meeting with rabbis in Boca Raton, Florida. The Times reports that, “according to several people at the meeting”, Biden was asked by one of the rabbis why it was that Pollard remained in prison, despite a lengthy campaign in Israel to have him released, or transferred to an Israeli jail. Biden responded that Obama had proposed releasing Pollard, but his suggestion never reached the heads of America’s intelligence community, because it was blocked by Biden himself. The Vice President said he told Obama that, if it were up to him, Pollard “would stay in jail for life”. The Times article does not relay the reaction to Biden’s forceful answer at the meeting; but the paper states that Biden appears to be on a mission to improve Obama’s image with Jewish voters in the United States. Although Jewish Americans traditionally tend to vote for the Democratic Party, they are currently being aggressively courted by the Republicans, worrying some Democratic electoral strategists. By answering the way he did in response to the question about Pollard, Biden “took a punch meant for his boss”, argues the paper. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #601 (CIA edition)

September 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

Tony Mendez

Tony Mendez in 1990

►►CIA invests in information technology. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technology investment group, is backing NetBase, which develops semantic search technology, as well as Connectify, which develops VPN software. In-Q-Tel’s role is to back commercial technologies that have the potential to aid intelligence and national security operations if developed further.
►►Interview with CIA disguise experts. The Washington Times has an interesting, lengthy interview with Tony and Joanna Mendez, both retired CIA disguise specialists. The two worked in the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, helping develop and deploy espionage gadgets –including a low-light camera that was used during the first moon landing and miniature lithium batteries that were the predecessors of the batteries used in modern portable electronics.
►►US government fights to keep Osama bin Laden death photos secret. Photographs and videos of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden after he was killed in May in a US military/Central Intelligence Agency raid in Pakistan should not be released publicly. The reason, according ot the Obama administration, is because they would reveal military and intelligence secrets and could lead to violence against US personnel. This was argued by the administration’s lawyers in federal court in Washington on Monday.

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News you may have missed #600 (China edition)

September 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

Lo Hsien-che

Lo Hsien-che

►►Chinese spy stirs unease in Taiwan military. Excellent, well-researched piece by The Washington Post about Lo Hsien-che, a Major General in the Taiwanese military, who earlier this year was convicted in what has been described as Taiwan’s biggest spy scandal in over 50 years. Lo appears to have fallen victim to a carefully planned Chinese honey-trap operation, involving a “tall, beautiful and chic” Chinese female operative, who held an Australian passport.
►►US consulate guard accused of trying to spy for China. Bryan Underwood, a former contract security guard at a US consulate under construction in southern China’s largest city, Guangzhou, was charged Wednesday with trying to pass defense secrets about the site to Chinese intelligence officials. Scheduled for completion next year, the consulate is the only one under construction in the world’s most populous nation.
►►Taiwan professor detained for spying for China. Wu Chang-yu, of Taiwan’s Central Police University, was detained Friday for allegedly providing data on visiting Chinese activists to Beijing. Taiwan’s United Daily News quoted unidentified sources as saying Wu was recruited during a recent visit to China.

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Spy archivist discusses fate of Swedish diplomat abducted by KGB

September 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The fate of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was abducted by Soviet intelligence officers in the closing stages of World War II, is one of the unsolved mysteries of 20th century espionage. The 33-year-old Wallenberg was a shrewd businessman who, in the summer of 1944, was posted as Sweden’s ambassador in Budapest, Hungary. During his time in Budapest, he was able to save over 20,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazi concentration camps, by supplying them with Swedish travel documentation, or smuggling them out of the country through a network of safe houses. He is also reported to have managed to dissuade German military commanders from launching an all-out attack on Budapest’s Jewish ghetto. But Wallenberg was also an American intelligence asset, having been recruited by a US spy operating out of the War Refugee Board, an American government outfit with offices throughout Eastern Europe. In January of 1945, as Soviet forces descended on Axis ally Hungary, Moscow gave orders for Wallenberg’s arrest on charges of spying for Washington. The Swedish diplomat disappeared, never to be seen in public again. Some historians speculate that Joseph Stalin initially intended to exchange Wallenberg for a number of Soviet diplomats and intelligence officers who had defected to Sweden. But according to official Soviet government reports, Wallenberg died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947, while being interrogated at the Lubyanka, a KGB-affiliated prison complex in downtown Moscow. Despite the claims of the official Soviet record, historians have cited periodic reports that Wallenberg may have managed to survive in the Soviet concentration camp system until as late as the 1980s. Earlier this week, Lt. Gen. Vasily Khristoforov, Chief Archivist for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), one of two successor agencies to the old Soviet KGB, gave an interview about Wallenberg to the Associated Press. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #599

September 28, 2011 by 1 Comment

Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel

►►SAS planned to kill Nazi Field Marshal Rommel. The veil of secrecy surrounding Britain’s SAS special forces unit has been partially lifted to allow the publication of a new book detailing daring attacks behind Nazi lines in the Second World War. The book features an order for an ambitious but unsuccessful mission to kill or kidnap Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel just after D-Day in 1944.
►►CIA says global-warming intelligence is ‘classified’. Two years ago, the US Central Intelligence Agency announced it was creating a center to analyze the geopolitical ramifications of “phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts and heightened competition for natural resources”. But whatever work the Center on Climate Change and National Security has done remains secret.
►►Japan sends new spy satellite into orbit. Japan at present has a total of three information-gathering satellites in orbit. All three are optical, which means they are able to capture images in broad daylight and in clear weather. The new spy satellite is said to replace one which is almost at the end of its useful life. The country is also planning to launch in two years time, radar satellites which can capture objects at night and in cloudy weather.

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More Arabs want to work for Mossad, says Israeli Foreign Ministry

September 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

Ahmed Jamal Daif

Ahmed Jamal Daif

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The unprecedented political changes in the Arab world have generated a flurry of electronic correspondence between young Arabs and the Israeli government, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Israeli officials say that the lifting of Internet restrictions in much of the Arab world has allowed young people to access the Israeli government’s Arabic-language websites and social networking sites. This has facilitated “thousands of messages […] with words of praise, requests for asylum […], and even offers [by young Arabs] to serve in the [Israel Defense Forces] and Mossad”. In a carefully coordinated public relations campaign, the Ministry voluntarily released on Monday some anonymous messages —allegedly from Arabs and Iranians— to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, which leans politically toward Israel’s center-right Kadima party. In one message, an Iraqi computer technician wrote to request political asylum, adding that Israel is the Middle East’s “only country that respects personal freedom”. In another released message, an Iranian Muslim expressed the will to resettle in Israel, because its population is “the strongest and most cultured in the region”. The story in Yedioth Ahronoth includes comments by the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson, who argues that the flood of electronic correspondence from the Muslim world “is illustrative of the fact that across the Middle East there are people who hold Israel in far higher regard than is presumed”. Hirschson added that some of the electronic messages have come from “from Arab politicians and officials”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #598 (US edition)

September 27, 2011 by Leave a comment

Brian Kelley

Brian Kelley

►►CIA officer wrongly accused of being KGB mole dies. CIA officer Brian J. Kelley, who was falsely accused by his own agency, as well as by the FBI, of supplying covert information to Moscow, has died at the age of 68. The real mole, the FBI agent-turned-spy Robert P. Hanssen, was apprehended in 2001, but not before Mr Kelley had been followed, interrogated, suspended and told that he might well be charged with a capital offense.
►►NSA working on secure smartphone technology. Troy Lange,  mobility mission manager at the US National Security Agency, says he is developing a secure smartphone that can be used to access classified information and apps while on the move. He is working on a pilot project using a smartphone that looks like any bought in stores but with security configurations to allow top-secret communication.
►►Kabul attack kills CIA contractor. An Afghan working for the US government killed a CIA contractor and wounded another American in an attack on the intelligence agency’s office in Kabul, making it the latest in a series of high-profile attacks this month on US targets. An anonymous US official in Washington said the Afghan attacker was providing security to the CIA office and that the American who died was working as a contractor for the CIA.

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German agency hired ex-Nazi mass murderer to spy on Cuba

September 27, 2011 by 1 Comment

Walther Rauff

Walther Rauff

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A senior member of the German SS, the Nazi party’s Praetorian Guard, who was wanted for the murder of nearly 100,000 people, was hired by West German intelligence to spy on the communist government of Cuba, according to newly released papers. Colonel Walther Rauff, who held several intelligence-related positions in the Nazi state apparatus during the Third Reich, is mostly known for his work for the Main Office of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Reich. While there, he led the working group that designed the so-called gas vans, which used exhaust fumes to exterminate large groups of prisoners trapped inside a tightly sealed vault at the back, while the vans drove to designated burial sites. Nearly 100,000 people were killed in this way in Germany, Poland and the Ukraine, between 1942 and 1945. Soon after the end of World War II, Rauff escaped from an American internment camp in Rimini, Italy, and eventually managed to escape to Chile with the help of the Catholic Church. According to German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, it was in Chile that Rauff was hired by West Germany’s main foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The organization approached Rauff in 1958, through Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf Oebsger-Röder, another former SS member, who was working for the BND under the alias O.G. Roeder. Der Spiegel, which accessed the BND’s folder on Rauff, says the former SS member was asked to use his Latin American contacts to infiltrate the communist government of the island of Cuba. At the same time that the BND was recruiting Rauff, he was under investigation by Germany’s Department of Justice, for complicity to mass murder during World War II. In 1962, the German government, which had no idea Rauff was working for the BND, successfully pressured Chilean authorities to arrest the former Nazi official. But he was soon released from prison, because a 15-year statute of limitation made his arrest illegal under Chilean law. Read more of this post

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