FIFA World Cup host Qatar ‘used ex-CIA agents to sabotage rival bids’
July 30, 2018 1 Comment
The government of Qatar, which won the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, hired a high-profile public relations group and a team of former officers of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in order to undermine rival bids to host the tournament, according to a British newspaper. In December 2010, Qatar was named as the host of the lucrative tournament, which is held every four years under the auspices of the International Federation of Association Football. In winning the right to host the tournament, the Middle Eastern oil kingdom beat formidable rival bids from Japan, South Korea, Australia and the United States. FIFA’s decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar has been heavily criticized –not least because it will take place in the winter, so as to avoid Qatar’s scorching summer temperatures. Many countries in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere will therefore have to resort to the highly unusual step of disrupting their domestic football seasons in order to send their national teams to compete in Qatar.
Now controversy over Qatar’s winning bid is likely to intensify following a claim by a leading British newspaper that the oil kingdom hired former CIA officers and public-relations specialists to discredit rival bids. According to the London-based Sunday Times newspaper, Qatar employed the public-relations firm Brown Lloyd Jones (now known as BLJ Worlwide) and a team of ex-CIA operatives. The Times said it had seen internal documents leaked by an unnamed whistleblower, which reveal the sinister nature of Qatar’s public-relations offensive. Much of it, said The Times, centered on propagating the view that World Cup bids by the United States and Australia would not be supported by the two countries’ domestic audiences. Organizations, academics, journalists and pressure groups from Australia and the United States, who were critical of their countries’ efforts to host the tournament, were clandestinely funded in order to promote their views. Additionally, BLJ and the former CIA operatives compiled intelligence folders on the leading figures of the rival countries’ bids.
If The Sunday Times’ allegations are correct, it would mean that Qatari authorities violated FIFA’s regulations for bidding to host tournaments. But last night the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, Qatar’s state-run group that organized the country’s World Cup bid, disimssed the newspaper’s accusations. Its spokesman rejected “each and every allegation put forward by The Sunday Times” and assured reporters that Qatar had “strictly adhered to all FIFA’s rules and regulations”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 29 July 2018 | Permalink
An American cyber security firm has reported the discovery of a previously undetected, “highly active” Iranian cyber espionage group, whose extensive target list consists mainly of large organizations and companies in the Middle East. The cyber security firm Symantec, makers of Norton antivirus software, which uncovered the cyber espionage group’s existence, has dubbed it “Leafminer”. It said the group has been active since the beginning of 2017, but has “significantly ramped up its activities” in 2018 and is currently involved in dozens of ongoing attacks.
Adherents of a bizarre far-right movement in Germany, who claim to be citizens of Prussia, are arming themselves and pose a growing security threat, says a new report by the country’s domestic spy service. The members of the movement call themselves Reichsbuerger (“citizens of the Reich”) and reject the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Instead of the modern-day German state, which emerged in 1990 from the union of East and West Germany, Reichsbuergers swear allegiance to the Deutsches Reich (German Reich), the Nazi German state that existed between 1933 and 1945. They also claim that the Deutsches Reich, which they occasionally refer to as Prussia, continues to exist in its pre-1945 state and is still governed by a provisional government in exile.
The Prime Minister of Britain, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was kept in the dark by his own home secretary about the discovery of a fourth member of the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring in 1964, according to newly released files. The Cambridge Spies were a group of British diplomats and intelligence officials who worked secretly for the Soviet Union from their student days in the 1930s until the 1960s. They included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, all of whom eventually defected to the Soviet Union. In 1964, Sir Anthony Blunt, an art history professor who in 1945 became Surveyor of the King’s Pictures and was knighted in 1954, admitted under interrogation by the British Security Service (MI5) that he had operated as the fourth member of the spy ring.
Iranian military officials have warned of extracting “revenge from foreign intelligence services”, as Reuters reported that an aggressive campaign against Tehran has been launched by Washington. On Sunday, the Reuters news agency said that senior officials in the administration of US President Donald Trump had launched a concerted offensive “meant to foment unrest” in the Islamic Republic. 
Israel helped foil an alleged Iranian-sponsored bomb attack in Paris, which involved arrests of several Iranian agents and at least one diplomat in France, Belgium and Germany, according to media reports. As intelNews 
Several American former intelligence officials have called on their active colleagues to resign despite President Donald Trump’s retraction of his remarks about Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. On Tuesday, the US president issued an unusual retraction and correction of his public statement on Monday in Helsinki, Finland, in which he appeared to side with the Kremlin over his own Intelligence Community’s views. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which is the coordinating body of the US Intelligence Community, has said that Russia tried to systematically interfere in the 2016 US presidential elections. According to the ODNI, the Kremlin’s goal was to augment the already heightened discord in American political life and deepen the mistrust between the electorate and state institutions, including Congress and the White House.
A group of 12 female North Korean restaurant workers and their male manager claim that their widely advertised defections in 2016 were fake, and that they were in fact abducted by South Korea’s spy services. The North Korean government maintains a chain of North Korea-themed restaurants throughout Asia, which operate as popular tourist attractions across Southeast Asia. The state-owned restaurants help provide the cash-strapped regime in Pyongyang with desperately needed foreign funds. The North Korean staff —almost all of them female— who work at these restaurants are carefully vetted and chosen to represent the reclusive regime abroad. Some observers 
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A member of one of the United Arab Emirates’ seven royal families has defected to Qatar and asked for political asylum, in what appears to be the first time that an Emirati royal has publicly turned against the oil-rich kingdom. In May of last year, the UAE 
In a rare moment of downturn in relations between Athens and Moscow, Greece has expelled two Russian diplomats and refused to accredit two more, reportedly for “undermining Greek national security”. Greece was not among nearly 30 countries that expelled or refused to accredit over 150 Russian diplomats in March, in an act of solidarity with the United Kingdom. The 
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North Korea offered to stop selling missile technology to Iran and other enemies of Israel in exchange for $1 billion in cash from the Jewish state, according to former senior North Korean diplomat who has now defected. The account of the offer can be read in Password from the Third Floor, a book published earlier this year by Thae Yong Ho. Thae, a member of a prominent North Korean family, defected with his wife and children in 2016, while he was serving as a senior member of the diplomatic staff of the North Korean embassy in London. 
Holland has expelled two Iranian diplomats without saying why, leading to speculation that the expulsions may be related to the arrests of members of an alleged Iranian sleeper cell in Belgium, Germany and France last week. On Friday, a spokesperson from Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) 
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US diplomats secretly met with Taliban without Afghan government
July 31, 2018 by intelNews 2 Comments
Last week, however, The Wall Street Journal reported that a series of unannounced meetings have been taking place between a delegation of senior Taliban officials and an American team led by Alice Wells, principal deputy assistant secretary of the US Department of State’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. On Saturday, The New York Times confirmed the story, saying that meetings between the two sides were being held in Qatar, where the Taliban maintain an informal diplomatic mission. Citing “two senior Taliban officials”, The Times said that the American diplomats have been meeting with members of the Taliban’s political commissariat. But the paper said it had no information about the substance or progress of the talks. If The Times’ claims are accurate, they would mark a dramatic reversal of longstanding US policy on the Taliban. Since 2001, Washington has consistently argued that any negotiation process involving the Taliban would be “Afghan-owned and Afghan-led”. Therefore, direct talks between Washington and the Taliban without Kabul’s mediation would mark a major shift in America’s security strategy in Afghanistan and beyond.
The New York Times said it contacted the US Department of State in Washington, seeking clarification about the alleged talks. But a spokesman refused to discuss the claims and insisted that “any negotiations over the political future of Afghanistan will be between the Taliban and Afghan government”. However, The Times noted that the spokesman did not expressly deny the existence of the talks with the Taliban.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 31 July 2018 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Alice Wells, News, secret meetings, Taliban, United States, US Department of State