Did CIA censor lawyer’s letter to President Obama?

February 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

Mohamed

Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A prominent British lawyer representing a Guantánamo detainee has said a letter he sent to Barack Obama was censored by US intelligence officials. The lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, represents Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is currently imprisoned by US authorities at the Guantánamo Bay camp. Mr. Mohamed was abducted in 2002 by Pakistani agents, who delivered him to US intelligence. US officials employed the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition and had Mr. Mohamed secretly imprisoned in Morocco and Afghanistan before taking him to Guantánamo. The Ethiopian-born Mohamed says he was brutally tortured while in Moroccan and US custody. Earlier this month, two British judges overseeing Mr. Mohamed court challenge in the UK, accused the British government of keeping “powerful evidence” about Mr. Mohamed’s torture secret, after being threatened by Washington that it would “stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: A look at new House Intel Committee appointee

February 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Rep. Smith

Rep. Smith

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Les Blumenthal, of McClatchy Newspapers, has penned an interesting article on US Representative Adam Smith (D-WA), who has just been appointed to the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In the article, Blumenthal reminds those who were surprised by this liberal Democrat’s appointment to the spy committee, that Smith was, until recently, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, where he chaired for over two years the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. Moreover, during the recent Presidential campaign, Smith “developed [ties] to the White House’s national security staff”, says Blumenthal. Read more of this post

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Ukrainian spies seek extended powers to operate abroad

February 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Malomuzh

Malomuzh

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Colonel General Mykola G. Malomuzh, the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (SZRU), has announced that his agents are seeking extended powers to perform activities abroad. The head of Ukraine’s premier intelligence organization said his operatives are in need of “new national legislation that will create the conditions necessary for [intelligence] work abroad”. Mr. Malomuzh said SZRU aims to extend its operations in areas of the world where “there are new threats”, including warzones and “terrorist-controlled territories”. He also said the initiative for expanded spy powers emerged after the capture last September of Ukrainian ship MV Faina by pirates off the Somali coast. The ship was recently released, after the pirates were given over $3 million in ransom money. However, the case led to international embarrassment for Ukraine, after the pirates publicized the captured ship’s freight manifest, which revealed that MV Faina was carrying military hardware for use by the genocidal government of Sudan, through Kenya. Speaking about the ship’s capture, the head of SZRU revealed that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had ordered SZRU agents and others to travel to the Somali coast and free the ship by any means necessary.

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Obama lawyers employ “state secrets” clause again, despite assurances for openness

February 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Judge Walker

Judge Walker

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Last week, US Justice Department officials employed a “state secrets” clause previously used by the Bush Administration, to block a lawsuit against CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The move surprised many observers, as only days earlier the new US Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, had ordered “a review of all claims of state secrets used to block lawsuits” in an attempt to stop hiding “from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know”. Remarkably, last Friday the Obama Administration tried using the same “state secrets” clause again, this time to prevent a lawsuit filed by a now defunct Islamic charity against the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping scheme. Read more of this post

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Disgraced CIA officer held far more important post than initially thought

February 15, 2009 by 10 Comments

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
On February 7, intelNews reported on the indictment of Steven J. Levan, a 16-year CIA operative who was caught using Agency credit cards to pay for over $75,000 in personal expenses, including luxury hotel stays and a $700 watch. It has now emerged that Levan was “a far more important official at the agency than previously reported”. His office is allegedly located at the CIA’s senior executive suite on the seventh floor of the Agency’s Langley, VA, headquarters, and he has also served as CIA station chief at an unidentified country. Investigative reporter Jeff Stein quotes an unnamed intelligence source who describes Steven Levan as a rising agent serving “in one of the high visibility staff aide positions which are usually reserved for folks expected to move on into top echelons”. Read more of this post

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Saudi spy chief brokers secret Afghan-Taliban talks

February 14, 2009 by 2 Comments

Prince Muqrin

Prince Muqrin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
British daily The Independent reports that the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai is now involved for the first time in direct secret talks with the Taliban. The negotiations are mediated by Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a senior member of the Saudi Royal family, who heads Saudi Arabia’s main intelligence directorate, the Re’asat Al Istikhbarat Al A’amah (a.k.a. General Intelligence Presidency, GIP). Prince Muqrin, who knew Osama bin Laden personally in the 1970s and 1980s, has supervised the negotiations since last December, when envoys of the Afghan government and the Taliban insurgency met in the Kingdom during the Muslim observance of Ramadan. Read more of this post

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Taiwan says unwilling spies blackmailed by China

February 13, 2009 by 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The Taiwanese government has announced the arrest of four Taiwanese civil servants caught spying on behalf of China. Justice Ministry spokesperson, Luo Chi-wang, said the four were blackmailed by Chinese intelligence officers after they were photographed walking into a red-light-district bar in an unnamed city of mainland China. The Chinese officers warned the four civil servants that they would send copies of the photographs to their families unless they worked as operatives for the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. Read more of this post

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Venezuela says it uncovered new coup attempt

February 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

Hugo Chávez

Hugo Chávez

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Venezuela has announced the arrest of five active duty soldiers whom it accuses of conspiring to storm the presidential palace and overthrow the government. The news was revealed on Wednesday by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The President said the country’s General Counterintelligence Office apprehended the soldiers, after intercepting messages they exchanged with “a soldier on the run in the US [and] protected by the US government”. The soldiers were allegedly conspiring to storm the Palacio de Miraflores, which houses the office of the President, under an operation codenamed “Operativo Independencia”. Read more of this post

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EU officials warned of increasing espionage

February 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has leaked an internal European Union (EU) memorandum, warning EU officials that “the threat of espionage is increasing day by day”. The memorandum, authored last December by the European Commission’s Director of Security, Stephen Hutchins, notes that an increasing number of “countries […] lobbyists, journalists [and] private agencies […] are continuing to seek sensitive and classified information” in Brussels. Commenting on the confidential memorandum, a European Commission spokesperson hinted that many of these entities use presentable female interns as agents, who often employ sexual attraction as a means of extracting classified information from EU officials. Several hundred interns descend on the Berlaymont –EU’s headquarters in Brussels– every year, most of whom are under the age of 25. Read more of this post

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Obama officials toe Bush Administration secrecy line in rendition lawsuit

February 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

Eric Holder

Eric Holder

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last Monday it emerged that the new US Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, ordered “a review of all claims of state secrets used to block lawsuits into warrantless spying on Americans and the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects”. US Justice Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, said the directive “will ensure the [state secrets] privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know”. Despite Mr. Holder’s review order, however, the Obama Administration has chosen to retain the previous government’s “state secrets” clause to block a lawsuit filed by victims of CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The case is Binyam Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, a Colorado-based Boeing Corporation subcontractor that provided logistical support to the CIA’s prisoner transfer scheme. Read more of this post

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UK Air Force deploys world’s most advanced spy plane

February 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has announced the official deployment of what it describes as “the most advanced long-range, airborne surveillance system of its kind in the world”. The aircraft-based system is called ASTOR (Airborne Stand-Off Radar) and is installed on Raytheon’s Sentinel R1 jets. The ASTOR radar is reportedly so advanced that it can detect target movement over “thousands of square miles, looking deep into valleys, picking out well-used enemy routes and mapping vehicle activity”, and can even perform during bad weather at night. What is more, the twin-engine aircraft can do all that while flying up to 7.5 miles above ground level, thus staying clear of any engagement by most air-defense systems, including surface-to-air missiles. Read more of this post

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US had secret role in attack on Lord’s Resistance Army

February 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

Joseph Kony

Joseph Kony

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
After its clandestine involvement in central Africa, in the late 1990s, and in Somalia, in 2006, the US is now actively assisting military and security operations in the Congo and Uganda. In an article published on February 7, The New York Times revealed that the US Pentagon assisted in the planning of an attack by Ugandan government forces on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a notorious Ugandan Christian terrorist group. The attack on the LRA took place inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC, formerly known as Zaire), where LRA militants have been hiding in one of the many Congolese national parks. Read more of this post

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Russian intelligence notes influx of foreign spies into Siberia

February 10, 2009 by 2 Comments

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The press office of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced a noticeable increase in espionage activity by agents of foreign governments in Siberia. Russian counterintelligence agents have apparently detected increased presence of operatives from Asian-Pacific countries in and around Siberian scientific centers in Novosibirsk, and especially in its suburb of Akademgorodok, nicknamed “science city” by the Russians. The head of FSB’s local directorate in Novosibirsk, Sergey Savchenkov, said that “dozens of foreign spies” had been discovered in the region in 2008″, and that most of them were targeting Russian scientists using “all possible means” to extract confidential information. Siberian academic facilities are noted for their research in the fields of oil and gas geology, nanotechnology, creation of new materials, and biochemistry, among other subjects. This is not the first time in recent months that the FSB has drawn attention to scientific and technical espionage on Russian soil. In December of 2008, Major-General Valeriy Beklenishchev, who heads the FSB’s Saratov branch, said nanotechnology research projects conducted at regional universities, as well as research on “heat and power engineering and electronics” were prime espionage targets of foreign operatives.

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Kosovo names first Director of new intelligence agency

February 10, 2009 by 6 Comments

Bashkim Smakaj

B. Smakaj

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Kosovo, a tiny Balkan nation that unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in February of 2007, has named the first Director of its newly launched intelligence agency. He is 32-year-old Bashkim Smakaj, an ethnic Albanian who until recently was a colonel in the Strategic Planning Unit of the country’s police force. The establishment of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency (KIA), which Mr. Smakaj will be heading, was announced several months ago, but no Director had been named until last Wednesday. Read more of this post

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CIA sees British Muslims as most dangerous threat

February 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 4, intelNews relayed reports from officials in Washington and London of an “unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain” by the CIA. The reason behind this intense activity appears to be that the Agency considers militants in Britain’s one-million-strong Muslim community to be “the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on US soil”. Now a follow-up report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reveals that US President Barack Obama has been briefed in detail by CIA officials about the “dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain” in recent months. Read more of this post

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