Australia, Indonesia exchange intelligence personnel to combat ISIS
July 13, 2016 Leave a comment
An ambitious new personnel exchange program between intelligence agencies in Australia and Indonesia aims to combat the unprecedented rise of militant Islamism in Southeast Asia, which is fueled by the Islamic State. The program, which is already underway, aims to strengthen intelligence cooperation between two traditionally adversarial regional powers. According to The Australian newspaper, the scheme owes its existence to the growing recognition that the security environment in the region is rapidly deteriorating due to the popularity of the Islamic State. The militant group appears to have replaced al-Qaeda in the minds of many radical Islamists in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and elsewhere, and is fueling the resurgence of smaller Islamist sects that have laid largely dormant for years.
Relations between militant Islamist sects in Indonesia —the world’s most populous Muslim nation— have traditionally been factional in nature. But some experts fear that the unprecedented growth of the Islamic State is galvanizing and uniting Islamist factions throughout Southeast Asia. Chief among them is the Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating across the region, which was behind the 2002 Bali bombings that killed over 200 people, 88 of them Australians. In January of this year, Jemaah Islamiyah praised a series of attacks in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, which were perpetrated by militants connected to the Islamic State. The attacks killed four people, far fewer than their perpetrators had hoped to harm. But they lasted for several hours and shocked many due to the ease with which the heavily armed terrorists were able to evade security measures. Similar attacks were recently prevented in their planning stages by security agencies in Malaysia and the Philippines.
These developments prompted the rapprochement that is currently taking place between two traditionally rival intelligence agencies, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Indonesia’s State Intelligence Agency, commonly referred to as BIN. The two agencies have reportedly begun posting officers to each other’s headquarters on multi-month assignments. The purpose of these exchanges is to gain a detailed understanding of each other’s counterterrorist planning and operations, and devise areas of actionable cooperation. The plan can be characterized as ambitious, given that relations between ASIO and BIN were severely disrupted in late 2013 and are still damaged, according to some observers. The break in relations was prompted by revelations, made by the American defector Edward Snowden, that Australian intelligence spied on senior Indonesian politicians and their family members, including the wife of the country’s president. Indonesia responded by withdrawing its ambassador from Canberra and terminating all military and intelligence cooperation with Australia. Nine months later, the two countries signed a joint agreement promising to curb their intelligence activities against each other. Some observers suggest that it will take years for Indonesian and Australian intelligence to fully reestablish intelligence cooperation. However, the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Southeast Asia could be significantly accelerating this process.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 July 2016 | Permalink
A major parliamentary inquiry into the operations of Germany’s main intelligence agency has concluded that it spied on nearly 3,500 foreign targets in recent years, most of which belonged to allied countries. The inquiry was initiated by the German government in response to a number of recent public controversies involving the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as BND.
A Russian former senior intelligence officer, who reportedly defected to the United States after helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrest 10 Russian spies in 2010, is believed to have died. The arrests, which revealed the so-called “Russian illegals program” in the US, were part of a counterintelligence operation codenamed GHOST STORIES by the FBI. The operation culminated in June 2010 with the 
A Russian television station has aired footage allegedly showing a Russian guard stationed outside the United States embassy in Moscow trying to stop an American diplomat from entering the embassy. The Kremlin claims that the alleged US diplomat was in fact a Central Intelligence Agency officer who was returning to the embassy in disguise following a spy operation. As intelNews 
An ethnic Albanian man facing deportation from the United States says he was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on “the most ruthless, dangerous terrorists in the Balkans and the Middle East”. Blerim Skoro, 45, from the former Yugoslav Republic of Kosovo, was arrested last February in Brooklyn, New York, for illegally using a discounted student MetroCard. He was then found to have entered the US illegally and is currently in prison in New Jersey, facing possible deportation back to Kosovo. But Skoro told The New York Times in an 
A former officer in the Cold-War-era Yugoslav intelligence service has begun testifying at a trial concerning the 1983 murder in Germany of a Yugoslav dissident by assassins sent by authorities in Belgrade. Stjepan Đureković, who was of Croatian nationality, defected from Yugoslavia to Germany in 1982, while he was director of Yugoslavia’s state-owned INA oil company. Upon his arrival in Germany, he was granted political asylum and began associating with Croatian nationalist émigré groups that were active in the country. He was killed on July 28, 1983, in Wolfratshausen, Bavaria. His killing was part of an operation codenamed DUNAV, which was conducted by the Yugoslav State Security Service, known by its Serbo-Croatian acronym, UDBA.
Seventeen senior Egyptian intelligence officials were summarily removed from their posts hours after the government’s human-rights monitoring body issued a damning report of violations by security agencies. The removal of the officers was 
A former senior member of the Official Irish Republican Army in the United Kingdom claims that he was abandoned by British and American spy agencies after he testified in a high-profile counterfeiting case. The case involves members of the Official IRA, including its alleged former chief of staff, who is wanted in the United States in connection with the so-called supernote counterfeit money investigation. The supernote, also known as superdollar or superbill, is a fake 100-dollar bill believed to be one of the highest-quality counterfeit banknotes ever detected. The US government believes that a nation-state is behind the production of the supernote, with North Korea being the primary suspect.
The Russian government says that an American diplomat, who was allegedly beaten up by a Russian security guard outside the United States embassy compound in Moscow, is an undercover spy. The man, who has not been named, was stationed in the Russian capital by the State Department as an accredited diplomat with immunity from prosecution in Russia. However, The Washington Post 
Turkish security and counterterrorism officials are blaming the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria for Tuesday’s bloody attack at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport, which left at least 41 people dead and nearly 300 injured. But will ISIS claim responsibility for the attack? And if not, why not? ISIS is indeed the 
The senior executive body of the German government has approved draft legislation that reforms the country’s intelligence services, following revelations that Germany helped the United States spy on European states. The legislation is seen as a response by the German government to a number of recent public controversies involving the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, known as BND.
A notable increase in incidents of harassment of American diplomats stationed in Europe by Russian intelligence personnel appears to be part of what some officials describe as an escalating “gray war” between the US and Russia. For over a year now, American State Department personnel stationed in Europe have been complaining of a systematic campaign of “harassment and intimidation” against them and their families by Russian intelligence operatives. The campaign is allegedly being waged in Moscow and other European capitals, and has prompted one US diplomat to say that he and his colleagues were “feeling embattled out there in the embassy”. The Washington Post, which published the 
After Thursday’s Brexit vote, European and American security officials have tried to pacify concerns about major disruption of longstanding Western security cooperation arrangements. But experts stress that the international security landscape will be significantly impacted by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU). As early as Thursday night, British defense, military and intelligence officials launched a marathon of phone calls in order to reassure their European and American counterparts that the United Kingdom was not going to retreat from its role in security pacts with Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Recently uncovered documents shed further light on an ultra-secret plan, devised by the British and American governments, to destroy oil facilities in the Middle East in the event the region was invaded by Soviet troops. The 
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Russian foreign intelligence headquarters has doubled in size since 2007
July 14, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
Until 2007, the SVR’s Yasenevo headquarters consisted of a large Y-shaped office building that adjoins an imposing 21-story skyscraper, which is visible for several miles around. But an open-source collection of recent satellite images shows that the top-secret complex has doubled —and possibly tripled— in size in the past decade. Steven Aftergood, who edits the Federation of
American Scientists’ Secrecy News blog, has published a collection of images that was compiled by Allen Thomson, an analyst who worked for the United States Central Intelligence Agency from 1972 to 1985. The images clearly show that at least three more large buildings have been erected alongside the landmark skyscraper and the adjoining Y-shaped office block. These additions, says Aftergood, appear to have increased the SVR headquarters’ floor space “by a factor of two or more”. Moreover, the nearby parking capacity at the complex “appears to have quadrupled”, he adds.
There is no information available about what may have prompted the sudden building expansion at the SVR complex, nor whether it reflects drastic changes in the organizational structure, budget or mission of the agency. Secrecy News quotes Russian intelligence observer Andrei Soldatov, who suggests that there may be a direct connection between the expansion of the SVR facility and the appointment of Mikhail Fradkov as the agency’s director, in 2007. Fradkov is a Soviet-era diplomat, who some suspect was secretly an officer of the KGB. He served as Russia’s prime minister from 2004 to 2007, when he was appointed director of the SVR —a position that he retains to this day. There have been suggestions in the Russian media that Fradkov could succeed Vladimir Putin when the latter retires from his post as president of the Russian Federation.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 14 July 2016 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Mikhail Fradkov, Moscow, News, Russia, satellite reconnaissance, SVR (Russia), Yasenevo (Russia)