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News you may have missed #381 (Russian spy ring edition II)

July 1, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Accused Russian spies lived perfect Boston lives. It is almost certain that the members of the Russian spy ring, arrested by the FBI last weekend, trained for years in Moscow’s most elite SVR intelligence school to pass as Canadians or Americans. Their real-life identities and backgrounds may never be learned.
Russian spies blended well, sought contacts. The 11 people arrested and accused of being members of a Russian spy ring operating under deep cover in America’s suburbs were active in the East Coast networking circuit.
Kremlin adopts calmer tone on US spy affair. Moscow on Wednesday softened its initially furious reaction to this week’s spy scandal in the US, when it said that the arrest of 11 people accused of working for Russian intelligence would not have a negative impact on bilateral relations. Earlier in the week, Vladimir Putin had accused US authorities of having “gone on a rampage”.

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Wanted Russian spy ring member skips bail in Cyprus

July 1, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Achilleos Hotel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Police in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus have issued an arrest warrant for a member of an alleged Russian spy ring in the United States, who had been released on bail following his capture on Tuesday. The FBI says that Christopher R. Metsos, who holds Canadian citizenship, was the financial go-between in the 11-member Russian spy ring, which was busted in a series of coordinated raids across several US states on Saturday. On June 25, Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Metsos, who escaped arrest in the US because he was in Cyprus, where he had arrived on June 17. He was arrested at the island’s Larnaca International Airport on Tuesday, while trying to board a flight for Budapest, Hungary. Remarkably, however, Metsos was soon released on bail, awaiting an extradition request from Washington. Predictably, on Wednesday, he failed to report to Larnaca police, as stipulated in his bail release court order. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #380 (Russian spy ring edition I)

June 30, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

FBI criminal complaint against Russian foreign agents (pdf). It is worth noting that the alleged Russian spies arrested by the FBI last weekend have not been charged with espionage, but rather with “conspiring to act as unauthorized foreign agents” and “conspiracy to commit money laundering”.
Russian spy ring member was preparing to leave country. Anna Chapman, the woman dubbed the ‘femme fatale’ of the alleged Russian spy ring uncovered in the US last weekend, suspected she had been uncovered by the FBI, and was preparing to leave the US.
Russian spy ring relied on ‘primitive’ spycraft. Arrested members of the Russian spy ring operating in the US communicated mostly through ‘old-school’ radio transmissions of Morse code messages, and surreptitious exchanges of cash in grocery bags. This (minus the cash) is reminiscent of the Walter and Gwendolyn Myers case, an American couple who spied for Cuba.

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Canadian politicians work for foreign powers, says Canada spy chief

June 30, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Richard Fadden

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Canadian state’s senior intelligence executive caused an uproar last weekend after he claimed that several Canadian politicians were under the control of foreign governments. In an interview for an investigative program on state-owned CBC television, Richard Fadden, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS), said that his intelligence officers are aware of “some political figures who have developed quite an attachment to foreign countries”. He also claimed that CSIS investigators were aware of at least two cabinet ministers in two Canadian provinces, who were “agents of influence”, as well as other public officials that were secretly representing “foreign interests”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #379

June 30, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Lebanon arrests Palestinian for spying for Israel. Lebanese police have arrested a Palestinian refugee from the Burj al-Shemali refugee camp on suspicion that he was spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, a police spokesman said last week. More than 70 people have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on alleged Israeli spy rings in Lebanon, launched in April 2009, some of them policemen and security officials.
US spy agency chief nomination held up by Congress. US Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says she won’t hold confirmation hearings for James Clapper, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the next Director of National Intelligence, until she completes her top priority, namely congressional passage and presidential signature on the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill.

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FBI busts alleged Russian spy ring, 11 arrested [updated]

June 29, 2010 by intelNews 7 Comments

Anna Chapman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Ten members of an alleged Russian spy ring operating in America’s East Coast were arrested in a series of coordinated raids on Sunday. US Department of Justice insiders said that the arrests, which took place in Arlington, New Jersey, New York, and Boston, marked the culmination of an FBI counterintelligence operation initiated during the second administration of President Bill Clinton. It appears that the alleged Russian agents were non-official-cover (NOC) operatives, otherwise known as ‘illegals’, a term used to identify deep-cover intelligence operatives not associated with the diplomatic representation of the Russian Federation in the United States. Eight of the arrestees were married couples and all were using fake identities. Almost all are fluent in several languages; they include “Vicky Pelaez”, who worked for a New York Spanish-language newspaper, another woman identified as “Anna Chapman” (see photo), and “Mikhail Semenko”, who is said to be fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, and even Mandarin. An eleventh alleged member of the spy ring, named as “Christopher R. Metsos”, remains at large and is wanted by the FBI was captured by Greek-Cypriot authorities at Larnaca airport earlier today, while trying to board a flight for Hungary. Read more of this post

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European Union targeted by Colombian intelligence, documents show

June 29, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

DAS seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Several members of the European Parliament have voiced concern over the recent disclosure in Colombia of an alleged operation to undermine the European Union’s parliamentary and human rights bodies. The operation is reportedly mentioned in internal documents belonging to Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (DAS), which were recently confiscated by the office of the Colombian Attorney General. The confiscated documents describe a clandestine program codenamed Operation EUROPE, which aims to wage a “legal war” intended to discredit and “neutralize the influence of the European judicial system, the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee, and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #378

June 28, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Knesset thanks Hamas leader’s son for spying for Israel. The Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has sent a letter of thanks to Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas West Bank leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who from 1998 to 2007 spied for Israel’s Shin Bet security service.
Analysis: Will McChrystal’s intel staff survive his exit? In the shock wave following General Stanley McChrystal’s abrupt summons from Kabul, there were rumors in special operations circles that his senior staff had been relieved of duty, too. But the fevered buzz appears to have been false, or at least premature.
Iran embassy dismisses Czech report on weapons smuggling. The Iranian embassy in Prague has criticized the Czech counterintelligence’s (BIS) 2009 annual report, which says that Iran strove to gain access to component parts that can be used in the production of mass destruction weapons.

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CIA slowly opens up about botched 1952 mission in China

June 28, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The CIA has produced an hour-long documentary about a failed 1952 covert mission inside China, which resulted in the death of two American pilots and the capture of two CIA paramilitary officers, who spent a total of 40 years in Chinese prisons. The documentary, which premiered last week on a restricted basis at the Agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters, is based on internal CIA accounts of the operation, some of which were released in 2006. The premiere was reportedly attended by John Downey and Richard Fecteau, two CIA paramilitary officers on their first mission, who were captured by Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units inside Chinese territory, after the CIA-operated C-47 Skytrain airplane that was carrying them deep inside Chinese airspace was shot down in a Chinese ambush. Read more of this post

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Has US Pentagon revived Bush-era domestic spy program?

June 25, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

US Pentagon

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A little-known US Department of Defense counterintelligence is suspected to have resuscitated a notorious Bush-era domestic surveillance program, which was banned by Congress for being too obtrusive. In 2002, the then Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz authorized the Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON), a US Air Force intelligence collection program aimed to gather data on potential threats to American armed forces personnel in the US and abroad. But the initiative was allegedly shelved by the Bush administration, after it emerged that TALON intelligence collection focused largely on political policing against lawful antiwar groups. But now new reports suggest that an obscure unit under the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), called the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC), is creating a new system of consolidated databases whose focus closely resembles that of TALON. Read more of this post

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Germany refuses to drop Mossad prosecution, despite Israeli pressure

June 24, 2010 by intelNews 5 Comments

"Uri Brodsky"

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
German-Israeli relations sunk to a new low this week, after the German government rejected Israel’s call to drop a public investigation into the actions of a suspected Israeli spy. The alleged spy, whose travel documents identify him as “Uri Brodsky”, was arrested upon arriving in Poland on June 4. He is wanted by German prosecutors, not for directly participating in the assassination by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of senior Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, as had been previously reported, but for procuring a forged German passport for the assassins. “Brodsky” appears to have traveled under the cover name of “Alexander Verin” to Cologne, Germany, where he employed the services of a lawyer to acquire the forged passport. It was later used used by Israeli Mossad agents to travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #377

June 23, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Romania sentences two for espionage. A court in Bucharest has sentenced Romanian citizen Floricel Achim and Bulgarian Petar Marinov Zikolov to 12.5 years in prison each, for passing classified information to Ukraine. The two were arrested last February.
Top US senator has concerns about Obama’s DNI nominee. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, has publicly joined those who have expressed concern about President Barack Obama’s nomination of James Clapper to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She says she prefers a civilian for the post.
Yemen arrests leader of attack on southern spy HQ. Yemen has arrested the suspected mastermind of Saturday’s spectacular attack on the government’s southern intelligence headquarters in Aden, which freed detainees and left 11 people dead.

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Senior Russian nuclear expert found dead in Malta

June 22, 2010 by intelNews 4 Comments

Alexander Pikayev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Malta have reported the death of a senior Russian expert on nuclear disarmament, whose body was discovered in his holiday apartment. Dr. Alexander Pikayev, 48, was the director of the Department of Disarmament and Conflict Resolution at the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations. His work on nuclear armaments policy is internationally recognized and he was among Russia’s most visible media commentators on issues relating to nuclear proliferation. But last Wednesday, Dr. Pikayev’s body was discovered lying on the floor of an apartment he owned in Bugibba, Malta, where he had been holidaying since earlier this month. The German Press Agency reports that the Russian scientist appeared to have “accidentally slipped” and hit his head on a door. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #376

June 21, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Dubai plans more cameras after Mossad operation. Dubai will beef up its surveillance capability by installing more cameras around the city-state after the Israeli hit squad that murdered a senior Hamas operative was caught on a hotel video. As intelNews has reported before, Mossad has really helped the Gulf surveillance industry.
Iran hangs ‘spy’ with alleged US connections. Iran hanged Sunni militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi last weekend for allegedly having connections with foreign secret services, including “intelligence officers of the US and Israel working under the cover of NATO and certain Arab countries” as well as “anti-revolutionary expatriate groups such as the MEK”, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran.
Analysis: FBI use of Muslim informers now part of daily life. Gathering information on people in Muslim communities in the United States has become part of daily life. After 9/11, all data is considered useful. But, Stephan Salisbury of The Philadelphia Inquirer asks, is that how America should be?

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US intel wants to automate analysis of online videos

June 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

IARPA logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new project funded by the US intelligence community’s research unit aims to automate the collection and analysis of videos from YouTube and other popular online platforms, with the intent of unearthing “valuable intelligence”. The program is called Automated Low-Level Analysis and Description of Diverse Intelligence Video (ALADDIN). It is directed by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), whose mission is to work under the Director of National Intelligence to create hi-tech applications for America’s intelligence agencies. Few people are aware of the existence of IARPA, which was quietly established in 2007, is based at the University of Maryland, and is staffed mostly by CIA personnel. The research body’s latest project apparently aims to equip the US intelligence community with the ability to scan “for the occurrence of specific events of interest” embedded in online video files, and then “rapidly and automatically produce a textual English-language recounting [and] describing the particular scene, actors, objects and activities involved”. Read more of this post