News you may have missed #0025

July 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

  • BREAKING NEWS: Several news outlets are reporting this morning that it was former US vice-President Dick Cheney who ordered the CIA to conceal from Congress key information about a covert action intelligence program of an undisclosed nature. See here for more.
  • New book claims Ernest Hemingway was KGB agent. The new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, alleges that the Nobel prize-winning novelist was on the KGB’s list of agents in America from 1941, when he was given the codename “Argo” by the Soviets.
  • Thousands of former Stasi spies still working in German civil service. A report in the German edition of The Financial Times claims that over 17,000 former members of East Germany’s Stasi remain employed as civil servants in reunified Germany. Stasi is the name commonly used for the Ministry for State Security, communist East Germany’s secret police.
  • NSA director’s secret visit to New Zealand revealed. A reporter accidentally spotted Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, director of the US National Security Agency, entering a Wellington building accompanied by security personnel. The revelation prompted a spokesperson at the US embassy in Wellington to admit that Alexander was indeed in New Zealand “for consultations with government officials”. The close signals intelligence relationship between the US and New Zealand have been known since 1996.
  • Chinese national caught trying to purchase crypto hardware. Chi Tong Kuok was arrested by the FBI at the Atlanta International Airport en route from Paris to Panama, where he allegedly planned to purchase US military radios. The US government claims Kuok has admitted he was “acting at the direction of officials for the People’s Republic of China”.
  • Taliban say cell phone SIM cards guide US drone strikes. A Taliban circular says SIM cards planted by informants in cell phones used by militants are used to signal American drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As IntelNews recently explained, there are suspicions that this and similar discoveries are gradually prompting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to stop using cell phones altogether.

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Revelation of secret program prompted CIA spat with Congress [updated]

July 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
More information has emerged about the background to an ongoing dispute between the US House Intelligence Committee and the CIA, which intelNews has been covering since late last month. The Washington Post has now revealed that on June 24, CIA director Leon Panetta informed the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of his decision to terminate a CIA project, which the Agency had kept hidden from Congress since 2001. Nobody will publicly state what the secret project involved, except to say that it “was planned and never executed” and that it “never quite achieved its original concept” (whatever this means). Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0024

July 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Guantánamo prisoner asked to spy on homeland radicals. Umar Abdulayev, from Tajikistan, who has been held in Guantánamo for seven years, claims in court filings that he was visited by Tajik intelligence agents in Guantánamo, who asked him to spy on Tajik Muslim radicals in exchange for his release. Abdulayev has refused the offer and has asked for asylum at a third country.
  • We were not hacked, says NZ spy agency. A New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spokesman has denied the agency’s website was hacked on July 9. Those visiting the GCSB website on that day were presented with an error message.
  • Saudi charity lawyers ask federal judge to outlaw NSA wiretap program. Saudi-based charity Al-Haramain was taken to court in September 2004 by the US government, which accused it of maintaining terrorist links. But its lawyers have managed to reverse the case, and may now be close to getting a US federal judge to rule against warrantless NSA wiretapping.
  • Cyber attacks came from 16 countries. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) officials have disclosed that the cyberattacks that paralyzed major South Korean websites last weekend were mounted from at least 16 different countries. Earlier this week, NIS said it believed North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces were behind the attacks, which also affected US government websites.

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Memo reveals Italians are listening in on confidential G8 discussions

July 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Berlusconi

Berlusconi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
London-based newspaper The Financial Times says the Italian organizers of the G8 summit are covertly listening in on confidential discussions between participating leaders. The paper bases its allegation on a leaked Italian memo it received “from a senior official, who requested anonymity”. According to the memo, the hosts of the summit, which is taking place in the Italian city of L’Aquila, are breaking strict diplomatic protocol by having a team of aides secretly monitor the confidential proceedings through concealed surveillance devices. The paper claims that the monitoring appears to be aimed at “transmit[ting] quicker advice” to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is officially chairing the summit. But it also alleges that the leaked memo, which was authored by the Italian organizers and addressed to the monitoring team shortly prior to the summit, points to the emergence of a split among the hosts, some of whom are concerned that the monitoring operation “amount[s] to spying”. Shortly after The Financial Times aired the allegations, a spokesman for prime minister Berlusconi categorically denied that there was any covert monitoring going on on the part of the G8 summit organizers. The summit is scheduled to end later today.

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News you may have missed #0023

July 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Sex video prompts British diplomat’s resignation

July 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Hudson video

Hudson video

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The British Foreign Office has confirmed that one of its officials stationed in Russia has resigned following the emergence of video footage which shows him cavorting with two prostitutes. British diplomatic sources have identified that James Hudson, a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, is indeed the man shown having sex with prostitutes in a black-and-white surveillance film, which was probably shot in a brothel in the Russian city of Ekaterinberg. Mr. Hudson was Britain’s Deputy Consul General in the city, also known as Yekaterinburg, which is a major industrial center and is described as “a key outpost for British trade”. The explicit video, which was anonymously posted on a Russian news website under the title “Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia”, is thought to have been shot by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in what is known in espionage circles as a “honey trap”. Read more of this post

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Dutch spy service sued for raiding journalist’s home

July 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

van der Graaf

van der Graaf

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) has been sued by the country’s largest newspaper for bugging telephones belonging to its journalists and editors and for raiding the house of a reporter. Last June, the home of Jolande van der Graaf, who works for De Telegraaf newspaper, was raided by security agents after she authored two investigative articles dealing with AIVD’s intelligence failures in the Iraq War. The raid followed the arrest of an AIVD worker and her partner, also an ex-AIVD agent, who allegedly leaked classified information to De Telegraaf. Following the raid, the newspaper discovered that the personal and work phones of van der Graff, as well as other De Telegraaf journalists and editors, including the paper’s chief editor, Sjuul Paradijs, were wiretapped by AIVD in the course of its investigation. Read more of this post

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Private companies to help NSA monitor US government networks

July 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

NSA HQ

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
We have already mentioned on this blog that US President Barack Obama has decided to proceed with a Bush administration plan to use National Security Agency (NSA) assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. NSA is America’s largest intelligence agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security. Critics of the program suspect it may include EINSTEIN 3, a rumored joint project between the NSA and US telecommunication service providers, which requires the latter to route government data carried through their networks to the NSA, via secret rooms installed in exchange sites. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0022

July 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Australian detained on espionage charge in China. The arrest of Stern Hu, who heads Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations in China, comes right after the company backed out of a deal to sell China’s state-owned Chinalco a big stake in Rio Tinto.
  • US diplomat implicated in CIA abduction in Italy requests immunity. Days after the wife of a of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who in 2003 was kidnapped by the CIA in Milan, Italy, announced plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, a CIA agent involved in the affair has come forward requesting immunity. Sabrina De Sousa, who was listed as a “diplomat” at the US consulate in Milan at the time of Nasr’s kidnapping, has made the request through her lawyer. Last week, Robert Seldon Lady, who was the CIA station chief in Milan at the time, came forward making a similar case.
  • CIA won’t release torture interrogation contracts. The CIA has denied a Freedom of Information Act request for post-9/11 contracts signed between the CIA and Mitchell Jessen & Associates. As intelNews explained last May, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were the psychologists hired by the CIA to design an elaborate ten-stage interrogation program of “war on terrorism” detainees, which apparently culminated in waterboarding.

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Israel directs cyberwar resources against Iranian nuclear program

July 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

Ahmedinejad

Ahmadinejad

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Israeli cyberwarfare project that began in the late 1990s is a major tool in the Jewish state’s covert war on the Iranian nuclear program. A former member of the Israeli Knesset has anonymously confirmed the program’s existence to the Reuters news agency, while US experts said they view the clandestine project as “the likely new vanguard” in Israel’s attempts to hamper Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Israel’s cyberwarfare program is apparently encouraged by Washington’s resistance to an all-out military confrontation with Tehran, which includes US President Barack Obama’s rumored reluctance to endorse conventional air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. As intelNews has reported before, the Israeli cyberwarfare project is probably part of a wider Israeli operation, which British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has described as a covert “decapitation program”. The operation, which involves assassinations, front companies and bribing, among other tactics, is supplemented by an extensive CIA operation approved by President George W. Bush in early 2008 and “hand[ed] off to President […] Barack Obama”, according to The New York Times.

 

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News you may have missed #0021

July 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US Vice President refuses comment on CIA-DNI dispute. Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Biden refused to take sides on the ongoing turf battle between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, over who should have a say in appointing CIA station chiefs around the world. Biden simply said he preferred to “comment on that next week”.
  • Lebanese officer suspected of spying flees to Israel. A Lebanese army colonel, who was about to join the nearly 40 individuals who have been arrested in southern Lebanon in connection to an alleged Israeli spy ring, managed to escape to Israel last week, sources say. 
  • Did former CIA director George Tenet get drunk at the palatial house of Prince Bandar, former Saudi ambassador to the US? Tenet is apparently disputing it, but he is not disputing that he spent the night there. 
  • Analysis: The history of CIA-ISI relations. In this well-researched article, Mark Mazzetti argues that US-Pakistani intelligence interactions show there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.

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US House Intelligence Committee says routinely misled by CIA

July 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

Reyes

Reyes

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On June 23, intelNews reported on the endorsement by key lawmakers in Washington of a proposed bill that would force US intelligence agencies to make full disclosure of covert spy programs to all members of Congress’ intelligence oversight panels. Yesterday, US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), came out once again in support of the proposed legislation, saying that he has evidence that the Committee he chairs has been routinely “misled […] and […] affirmatively lied to” by the CIA. Reyes’ allegations were included in a letter to the committee’s Republican members, in which he urged them to support the proposed bill. According to the National Security Act of 1947, Congressional intelligence committees must be “fully and currently” informed about the activities of US intelligence agencies. In recent years, however, military and intelligence officials routinely make use of a classification label called Operational Preparation of the Environment (OPE), which allows them to shield certain activities from Congressional oversight. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Al-Qaeda dumps phones, making interception impossible

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Secret Sentry

Secret Sentry

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In his brief but perceptive review of Matthew M. Aid’s new book, The Secret Sentry: The Untold Story of the National Security Agency, Craig Seligman, critic for Bloomberg News, refers to an argument made in the book, which in my opinion deserves attention. Namely, in discussing the NSA’s activities in the so-called “war on terrorism”, Aid points out that, not only are Iran and North Korea increasingly converting their analog communications networks into fiber-optic cables, thus making their internal communications virtually impossible to intercept, but al-Qaeda and other militant groups are now “practically cut[ing] out the use of telephones and radios”. All of this is gradually turning the NSA, an agency that receives over $9 billion a year in US taxpayers’ money, into a gargantuan organization whose daily tasks are becoming “maddeningly difficult” –indeed, almost irrelevant. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0020

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Social media is ruining spy industry, says IT security group. IT security consultancy NCC Group says that intelligence “agencies are concerned that Facebook and other social networking tools are ruining the spy industry”. The comments come just hours after British newspaper The Mail on Sunday revealed that personal details about the future head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, had been accessible to 200 million online users through his wife’s Facebook account.
  • Pakistan’s nukes face insider threat, says ex-CIA official. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, argues in Arms Control Today that “[t]he greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb […]. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats”, claims the retired US intelligence agent.
  • Hamas says Israeli spy cell in Ramallah busted. Hamas says it has dismantled an Israeli spy network, which served through the West Bank-based administration of Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas. The group claims that the network “channeled […] false information to Ramallah [in the Fatah-dominated West Bank] and then to the Israeli occupation”, in order to create “target bank” in Gaza.

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Facebook reveals personal details of future MI6 chief

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sir John Sawers

Sir John Sawers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Facebook, the Internet social networking site with over 200 million registered users worldwide, has made intelligence headlines once again. Last April, intelNews reported on revelations by Sweden’s armed forces that Swedish soldiers serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan were approached on Facebook and asked to provide details on NATO’s military presence in the country. Last weekend, Facebook did it again: British newspaper The Mail on Sunday argued that “potentially compromising” personal details about Sir John Sawers, who has been appointed to the post of Director of MI6, Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, were revealed by his wife on her Facebook account. The paper accused Lady Shelley Sawers of “a major personal security breach” upon discovering that “she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account”, which made it accessible to all of Facebook’s 200 million users. Read more of this post

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