Estonian intel officer comes out as Russian spy in TV interview

December 17, 2014 by 1 Comment

Uno PuuseppBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Estonian authorities have charged a retired officer in the country’s internal intelligence service with espionage, after he revealed in a television interview that he spied for Russia for nearly 20 years. Uno Puusepp retired from the Internal Security Service of Estonia, known as KaPo, in 2011. He first joined the Soviet KGB as a wiretapping expert in the 1970s, when Estonia was part of the USSR. Following the dissolution of the USSR, when Estonia became an independent nation, he was hired by KaPo and worked there until his retirement, three years ago, at which time he moved permanently to Russian capital Moscow. Last Sunday, however, Puusepp was the main speaker in a documentary entitled Our Man in Tallinn, aired on Russian television channel NTV. In the documentary, Puusepp revealed that he was a double spy for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), which is KGB’s successor, from 1996 until his retirement. He told the network that he was one of several former KGB operatives who had gone on to work for independent Estonia’s intelligence agencies, but that he had quickly decided that his true allegiance was to Russia. He eventually supplied Moscow with information on the activities of Western intelligence agencies in Estonia, including those of the American CIA, Britain’s MI6 and Germany’s BND. One commentator said in the documentary that “for 15 years, practically everything that landed on the desk of the Estonian security service’s director also landed on the desk of the FSB” thanks to Puusepp. The retired double spy said that one of his successes was letting the FSB know about a planned CIA operation that involved setting up a signals intelligence station in a disused bunker in the northern Estonian town of Aegviidu. The station was aimed at collecting communications from Russian diplomats and intelligence officers, but the Russian side terminated those networks once it got word of the CIA’s plans. Puusepp’s FSB recruiter and handler, Nikolai Yermakov, also spoke in the documentary, saying that the Estonian double spy was not motivated by financial profit, but rather by grievances against what he called “the Estonian establishment”. It is unclear why the Russian authorities permitted Puusepp to speak publicly at this particular time.

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Norway probes intercept equipment found near PM’s home

December 16, 2014 by Leave a comment

Parliament of NorwayBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Authorities in Norway are probing a possible espionage operation by a foreign intelligence agency, following the discovery of several electronic surveillance devices located near government buildings in downtown Oslo. The presence of the devices was revealed on December 12 in a leading article by Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten, which published the findings of what it said was a two-month technical investigation into the matter. The paper said its reporters teamed up with two leading companies specializing technical surveillance countermeasures. According to the article, investigators came up with a network of surveillance devices disguised to look like cell phone base stations, known as transceivers. But the devices were actually International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) catchers, essentially fake cell phone towers that are often used clandestinely to intercept telephone traffic among users, as well as their movements. Aftenposten said that the devices, whose unauthorized use is illegal in Norway, had been placed outside the official residence and office of the prime minister, outside the houses of parliament, as well as near major banks and corporate headquarters. IMSI catchers cannot access the content of cellular communications, as most providers encrypt them nowadays; but they can record the telephone numbers of users, as well as pen-register data —namely who calls whom, when, for how long, etc. Additionally, if those behind the surveillance knew the telephone numbers of targeted subscribers, they could keep track of their physical movements through their phone’s GPS system, and identify who they contact on their cellular devices. The newspaper said the surveillance devices were almost certainly installed to monitor the activities of senior Norwegian government officials, as well as perhaps senior executives of companies headquartered in the Norwegian capital. On Monday, Norway’s National Security Authority (NSM) said it thought Aftenposten’s claims were probably correct. NSM Director Kjetil Nilsen said the main question was now who was behind the installations. Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) spokeswoman Siv Alsen told reporters on Monday that “the possibility that this is coming from foreign state agencies” could not be dismissed. She added that the PST would now proceed to probe whether the surveillance network was the work of foreign spies or organized criminal networks. Norway, a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is traditionally seen as an ally of the United States and has seen its relations with Russia and China strained in recent years.

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Yemeni troops kill al-Qaeda suspects disguised as women

December 15, 2014 by 1 Comment

Yemeni women in Ta'izzBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
Troops in Yemen shot dead five men, believed to be members of al-Qaeda, who tried to pass through a security checkpoint disguised as women. The incident reportedly happened on Saturday at an emergency roadside checkpoint set up by Yemeni troops in Harad, a dusty desert town located 10 miles south of Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia. According to official reports, a minivan drove up to the checkpoint carrying what appeared to be six women, which was heading toward the Saudi border. All passengers were dressed in black robes and wore the niqab, a black cloth used to hide the face and worn along with the hijab, which typically covers a woman’s hair. The niqab is worn in several Arab countries, including Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Bahrain. Yemeni soldiers conferred briefly with the male driver of the vehicle before one of them climbed onboard the minivan for a routine inspection. At that moment, one of the minivan passengers opened fire at the soldier, wounding him. The rest of the members of the inspection unit then opened fire on the passengers, killing five of them. Following the incident, the Yemeni soldiers discovered that the minivan’s passengers were all men and had been armed. An official speaking at a press conference later that day reported that at least two of those killed were Saudi citizens. He added that one of the passengers, who was also disguised as a woman, survived, as did the male driver of the minivan. All are believed to be members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an armed Islamist movement that is widely seen as the most formidable branch of al-Qaeda anywhere in the world. Following the 2011 uprising in Yemen, which was part of the Arab Spring, AQAP took advantage of the collapse of the Yemeni state and took over large swathes of territory in Sunni-dominated eastern and southern Yemen. These areas are still considered AQAP strongholds today. Security forces in Yemen often conduct roadside inspections, but they rarely enter vehicles carrying women, in an attempt to respect tribal customs in what is a very conservative part of the Arab world. Authorities in Harad said on Saturday that, following the shootout, a suicide belt and several weapons were discovered onboard the minivan. The surviving passenger is being questioned, along with the driver of the vehicle.

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Comment: CIA ‘enhanced interrogations’ have long history

December 12, 2014 by 4 Comments

Yuri NosenkoBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The public controversy surrounding the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary-report on detentions and interrogations continues to feed media headlines. But, as veteran intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein notes in his Newsweek column, there is one crucial aspect missing from the debate: historical precedent. Stein observes what many commentators have missed, namely a reference in the 500-page document to KUBARK. KUBARK is in fact a coded reference used by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s and 1960s to refer to itself. The KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual was produced by the Agency to train civilian and military intelligence officers in what the CIA called “coercive counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources”. The document actively promoted the use of aggressive interrogation techniques and went so far as to make references to the use of electric shocks. The manual is believed to have been used by the CIA on several occasions, including in the interrogation of Yuri Nosenko. A colonel in the Soviet KGB, Nosenko first made contact with the CIA in Vienna in 1962, while he was accompanying a Soviet diplomatic mission to the Austrian capital. In 1964, he asked to be exfiltrated to the United States, at which point he was placed in a ‘grinder’, a CIA safe house, where he was interrogated at length. After failing two polygraph tests administered to him by his CIA handlers, some in the Agency began to believe that he might be a ‘dangle’, a double agent sent deliberately by the Soviets to spread confusion in the CIA’s Soviet desk. He was aggressively interrogated and detained until 1969, when the CIA formally classified him as a genuine defector and released him under the witness protection program. An updated version of the KUBARK manual resurfaced during the war in Vietnam, when the CIA operated an extensive complex of interrogation centers in South Vietnam. As Stein notes, the detention centers were “chiefly designed to extract information from captured communist guerrillas”. The Agency blamed several known instances of torture of prisoners of war on the US Army or on overzealous South Vietnamese interrogators. In the closing stages of the Cold War, the CIA was also implicated in having authored the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual, which was used to train interrogators in a host of US-supported Latin American military regimes, including most controversially Honduras. One could go back even further, to Project MKNAOMI/MKULTRA, a joint effort by the CIA and the US military to study the effects of substances such as heroin and LSD on the human brain, for the purposes of —among other things— interrogation. The program was marred by repeated instances of forced medication of prisoners, mental patients, prostitutes, and others. It resulted in the 1953 death of Dr. Frank Olson, a specialist in biological warfare working for the US Pentagon, who studied the effects of toxic substances on the brain. All that is to say that the public discussion on torture techniques and the CIA has long historical roots and appears to be going in circles —something which does not appear about to change.

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Secret document sheds light on North Korean abduction operations

December 11, 2014 by Leave a comment

Choi Eun-hee and husband Shin Sang-okBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A document allegedly acquired from the government of North Korea by Western spy agencies appears to shed light on a top-secret North Korean intelligence program to kidnap dozens of foreigners in the 1970s and 1980s. That the North Korean regime engaged in systematic abduction of foreign citizens during the Cold War is not new information. International sources estimate the total number of foreign subjects abducted by North Korean intelligence to be in the dozens. They are said to include 17 citizens of Japan, as well as Chinese, South Korean, Malaysian, Italian, French and Lebanese nationals. In September 2002, during a brief period of rapprochement with Japan, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il admitted that 13 Japanese citizens had been abducted and taken to North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. They included Megumi Yakota, a 13-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared from Japan 1977 and is believed to have died while in captivity in North Korea. The most famous case of abduction is undoubtedly that of South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee and her husband, the director Shin Sang-ok. The two were abducted by North Korean intelligence operatives in 1978 and taken to Pyongyang. They were then forced to lead the North Korean government’s efforts to develop its motion-picture industry. The two collaborated with the regime until 1986, when they managed to escape while on a visit to Vienna, Austria. On Wednesday, The Washington Times said it had seen a North Korean document “recently obtained” by Western intelligence agencies, which traces the history of the reclusive regime’s abduction unit and directly implicates its late leader, Kim Jong-il, in its creation. The paper cited “diplomatic sources familiar with the discovery”, in claiming that the document shows “how and why” Kim established the unit, called the Investigation Department, in 1977. The unit, known by its Korean acronym JOSABU, operated as part of the ruling Korean Party Central Committee. Its mission was to abduct foreigners, bring them to North Korea, and use them to train North Korean intelligence operatives in foreign languages and cultural knowledge. Some of the abductees were turned into spies and were sent abroad to conduct intelligence operations on behalf of the North Korean state. The document cited by The Times details two meetings, in September and October 1977, in which North Korean leader Kim instructed intelligence officials to establish JOSABU and explained the logic behind the proposed kidnappings. Apparently, Kim believed that if young foreigners were brought to North Korea and instructed for a period of up to seven years they could turn into “valuable intelligence agents who would be useful until the age of 60”. Not long afterwards, North Korean abduction teams were dispatched to various countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, according to the document. The paper notes that most of the abductees are believed to have been used for training purposes, propaganda activities, or dispatched abroad to conduct intelligence operations.

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Reactions to US Senate’s CIA report fall along party lines

December 10, 2014 by Leave a comment

Cover of the Senate reportBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Almost immediately following the release of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary-report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program, American public figures began to hurriedly fall in line along predictable partisan positions on the subject. The 500-page document, released on Tuesday, represents the publicly available version of a 6,000-page report that dismisses the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and interrogation program as an intelligence failure. It also details instances of systematic use of torture by the Agency and accuses it of lying to Congress and the Executive about the effectiveness of its detention methods. But the published report was boycotted by the Senate Committee’s Republican Party members; consequently, it was authored solely by the group’s Democratic Party members, who currently constitute a majority in the Committee. Its Republican members, led by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga), released an alternative 160-page minority report that dismisses the majority document as an inaccurate and hastily produced account, which endangers American national security. The Republican-supported minority statement praises the CIA for weakening al-Qaeda in the years after 9/11 and lambasts its critics for “misrepresentations of fact” rooted in “political motivations”. Meanwhile, as senior officials in the administration of US President Barack Obama voiced support for the Senate report, an anonymous group of former senior CIA officials launched a website lambasting it as “the single worst example of Congressional oversight in our many years of government service”. IntelNews understands that the website, entitled “CIA Saved Lives”, is organized by Bill Harlow, the CIA’s public-affairs director from 1997 to 2004, who is close to the Agency’s former Director, George Tenet. Tenet was a trusted advisor of then-US President George W. Bush, and led the CIA during the implementation of the early stages of the post-9/11 interrogation program. The CIA’s own response to the Senate report came in a public press release that acknowledged “serious mistakes” in the interrogation program while defending its alleged effectiveness in weakening of al-Qaeda. Rare examples of public figures that broke party lines were Susan Collins (R-Me), the only Senate Intelligence Committee Republican not to endorse the minority report, and Senator John McCain (R-Az). McCain, who underwent years of torture as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, said the CIA’s use of torture “stained [America’s] national honor” and had done “much harm and little practical good”.

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Irish police mole helped entire IRA leadership avoid capture in 1974

December 8, 2014 by Leave a comment

Provisional IRA volunteer in the 1970sBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The former intelligence director of the Provisional Irish Republican Army has claimed that an informant within the Irish police helped the entire leadership of the militant organization avoid capture during a raid in 1974. The raid was conducted in December of 1974 by Garda Síochána, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, in the village of Feakle, County Claire, in western Ireland. On the day of the raid, the entire leadership of the Provisional IRA was taking part in a secret meeting with Protestant clergy, which had been pursued by the separatist organization following the so-called pub bombings in the English cities of Guildford and Birmingham. The bombings were meant to take the war in Northern Ireland to the British mainland, but were eventually deemed disastrous to the image of the IRA. Nearly 30 people died in the bombings, while hundreds were injured, many of them seriously. The secret meeting between the IRA’s leadership and Protestant clergy was part of a wider negotiation campaign between republican separatists and pro-British loyalists, which eventually led to a ceasefire that lasted until the start of 1975. However, an informant had given the Garda accurate information about the meeting location between the IRA senior command and Protestant clergy, and the agency’s Crime and Security Branch planned to swoop on the meeting and arrest the republican militants. However, in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian, the IRA’s former director of intelligence, Kieran Conway, said the IRA leadership managed to escape arrest thanks to “a tip-off from high-placed figures within the Garda”. Conway joined the IRA in 1970 and became director of its intelligence wing in 1974. He left a year later and joined again in 1981 during the hunger strikes by republican prisoners. He left for good in 1993, in protest against the IRA’s decision to sign the Downing Street Declaration, which formed the basis of the IRA’s eventual decision to decommission its weapons and enter the political process. Conway also told The Guardian that the IRA had the support of “prominent members of the Irish establishment” including mainstream politicians, senior bankers, stockbrokers and journalists. Many of these supporters provided safe houses for members of the IRA in affluent neighborhoods of Irish capital Dublin, he claimed. Conway was speaking to promote his recently published book, called Southside Provisional: From Freedom Fighter to the Four Courts. This is not the first time allegations have surfaced about IRA moles inside the Irish Garda. In 2011, an Irish government investigation unearthed intelligence reports claiming that an informant within the agency helped the IRA plan the killings of a judge and two senior British police officers in the 1980s.

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NSA spies on every cell phone company in the world, new data shows

December 5, 2014 by Leave a comment

NSA headquartersBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The United States National Security Agency has spied on virtually every cell phone manufacturer and provider in the world in an attempt to uncover security weaknesses that can be exploited for surveillance, according to newly leaked data. It also appears that the NSA has worked to sabotage the technical security features of commercial telecommunications systems in order to be able to spy on their users. The documents were released on Thursday by The Intercept’s Ryan Gallagher, who said he acquired them from American defector and former NSA computer technician Edward Snowden. The documents reveal the existence of an NSA project codenamed AURORAGOLD, which appears to have been operational since at least 2010. It has targeted telephone companies in virtually every country in the world, including in the US, as well as in nations closely aligned with Washington, such as Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, France and New Zealand. The project has been carried out by at least two separate NSA units, whose existence appears to have been publicly disclosed for the first time. One is the Wireless Portfolio Management Office, which is tasked with outlining and implementing the NSA’s strategy for penetrating wireless telecommunications systems. The other is the Target Technology Trends Center, whose mission is to track the development of emerging communications technologies so as to detect security innovations that could prevent the NSA from spying on their users. The leaked documents show that, as of late spring of 2012, the NSA had collected detailed technical information on nearly 70 percent of the world’s cellular telecommunications networks and was preparing to spy on the email accounts of their employees. The goal was to acquire technical blueprints and other planning papers that could help the NSA penetrate those networks. According to Gallagher, the broad scope of AURORAGOLD appears to be aimed at “ensuring virtually every cellphone network in the world is NSA-accessible”. But the publication quotes leading cellphone security experts who express strong skepticism over the NSA program. One of them, the University of Virginia’s Karsten Nohl, warns against any policy that aims to deliberately install security vulnerabilities on telecommunications networks. “Once NSA introduces a weakness, a vulnerability, it’s not only the NSA that can exploit it”, he says. Another security expert, F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen, cautions that criminals and spies from every country could be among AURORAGOLD’s “inadvertent beneficiaries”. The Intercept spoke to an NSA spokeswoman, who said the Agency was committed to ensuring “an open, interoperable and secure global Internet”. But she declined to discuss AURORAGOLD.

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After China, Russia may ban some Apple products, fearing espionage

December 4, 2014 by 1 Comment

Russian State DumaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Parliamentarians in Russia are preparing a bill that would prevent lawmakers from using several Apple products, including iPhones and iPads, due to fears that they are susceptible to penetration by foreign intelligence agencies. A group of lawmakers in the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, have drafted the bill, which argues that State Duma deputies with access to confidential or classified government information should be banned from using iPhones and iPads, among other Apple products. One deputy, Dmitry Gorovtsov, from the center-left Just Russia party, said parliamentarians should simply “switch to simple mobile phones”, preferably produced by Russian manufacturers, and should use them “only for phone calls”. Last month, the Russian Ministry of Defense stepped in to deny media reports that it was about to ban Apple products. The denial came in response to a leading article in mass circulation daily Izvestia, which cited an unnamed Defense Ministry employee as saying that the Russian armed forces were about to ban the use of iPhones by all servicemen. The article claimed the move was designed to stop “information leaks”. But a Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, told a press conference that the Russian armed forces had no plans to ban “the mobile devices of a certain manufacturer”. The news from Russia comes a just months after authorities in China announced the removal of some Apple products from a government procurement list, reportedly because of fears that they were susceptible to electronic espionage by the United States. As intelNews reported at the time, nearly a dozen Apple products were removed from the Chinese government list; they included the iPad and iPad Mini, as well as MacBook Air and MacBook Pro products —though interestingly the inventory of removed items did not include Apple smartphone products. The Russian State Duma initiative to ban some Apple products has already been approved by a security-related committee and has now been forwarded to the Duma Council. The latter will consider the bill for approval, before sending it to a plenary session on the floor of the Duma for discussion. The process is expected to take up to two weeks.

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Israeli ex-spy chief says Netanyahu policies ‘will destroy Israel’

December 3, 2014 by 4 Comments

Carmi GillonBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The former director of Israel’s internal security service has warned that the policies of the Israeli government could lead to the complete destruction of the country. Carmi Gillon, Israel’s former ambassador to Denmark, led the Shin Bet, also known as Israel’s Internal General Security Service, from 1994 to 1996. In a scathing attack against Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gillon accused him of being “an egomaniac” heading “a bunch of pyromaniacs” in government, who are leading the state of Israel “to its final destruction”. Gillon, 64, was speaking on Saturday evening at the “Peace Now” rally, organized outside the official residence of the Prime Minister in Jerusalem. Participants in the rally were protesting against the so-called Jewish State Law, a bill currently being discussed in the Israeli Knesset, which seeks to officially define Israel as “the nation state of the Jewish people”. The effort enjoys broad support from the Israeli right, including from Prime Minister Netanyahu. But it has been condemned by the country’s left, as well as by non-Jewish citizens of Israel, as a deliberate attempt to marginalize approximately a quarter of Israel’s population, which is non-Jewish. Some critics claim that Netanyahu and his supporters are attempting to prevent Israel from ever becoming a binational state, consisting largely of Jewish and Arab citizens, thus forever eliminating the so-called ‘one-state solution’ to the Jewish-Palestinian problem. The bill had been scheduled to be voted on in the Knesset on Wednesday, but its supporters in the Israeli parliament postponed the vote, following a wave of popular anger against the bill that has erupted throughout Israel in recent days. Speaking on Saturday at the rally in Jerusalem, Gillon said the Jewish State Law would “enshrine Israel’s status as a Jewish state” and would “eat the body of the entire nation like a cancer”. He added that he was speaking “with full professional authority” and urged opponents of the bill to “fight this fascism” that was propagated by “Bibi Netanyahu and the extreme right”. Later on Saturday, Israel’s former President, Shimon Peres, also spoke out against the proposed bill, which he described as “an attempt to undermine [Israel’s] Declaration of Independence for political interests”. He added that, if enacted, the bill would “damage the country both at home and abroad” and would “erode the democratic principles of the State of Israel”.

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Pollard’s Mossad handler says he failed to follow agreed escape plan

December 2, 2014 by Leave a comment

Jonathan PollardBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A convicted spy who betrayed American secrets to Israel in the 1980s was captured by the FBI because he failed to follow a prearranged escape plan to flee America for Israel, according to his Israeli former handler. Jonathan Jay Pollard is a former intelligence analyst for the United States Navy, who has so far served nearly 29 years in prison for selling American government secrets to Israel. Ron Olive, an Assistant Special Agent at US Navy Counterintelligence, who in cracked the Pollard case, leading to the spy’s arrest and conviction, has called Pollard the most damaging spy in American history. “Pollard stole so many documents, so highly classified, more so than any other spy in the history of this country, in such a short period of time”, he said in 2012. On November 21, 1985, while under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pollard panicked and attempted to gain asylum at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. However, he was thrown out by embassy guards and was immediately arrested by FBI agents, who had surrounded the Israeli embassy. Ever since his arrest and conviction, Pollard and his family have repeatedly hinted that his Israeli handlers failed to protect him when he sought their help. But in an interview on Israeli television, Rafi Eitan, Pollard’s handler at the time of his arrest, placed the blame squarely on Pollard himself. Eitan was at the time head of the Scientific Relations Office, an obscure unit inside Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, for which Pollard had agreed to spy in exchange for money. On Monday, he told Israel Channel 2 television’s flagship investigative program Uvda that Pollard had been specifically instructed by the Israelis to stay away from their Washington embassy. Instead, said Eitan, the American spy had agreed to follow “a prearranged escape plan that would get him safely out of the United States”. But instead of following the plan as soon as he was approached by the FBI, Pollard waited for three days before panicking and deciding to go to the Israeli embassy without giving his Mossad handler prior notice. Eitan told his Channel 2 interviewers that he received a telephone call notifying him that Pollard was at the gates of the embassy asking for asylum, while the embassy had been surrounded by FBI personnel. “I immediately said ‘throw him out'”, said Eitan, “and I don’t regret it”, since offering Pollard asylum in the presence of a strong FBI force around the Israeli embassy, would have “created an even greater crisis between the United States and Israel”, said the former Mossad spy handler. Eitan added that he took full responsibility for the decision to abandon Pollard. As for the decisions that led to Pollard’s arrest, he said: “you can’t wage war without making mistakes”.

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Islamic State shuts down phones in Mosul to stop informants

December 1, 2014 by 1 Comment

Mosul, IraqBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The Islamic State has cut off all telephone service provision in the largest city under its control, reportedly in an effort to stop spies from passing information to Syrian, Iraqi and American intelligence services. Militants from the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), conquered the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in June. They encountered almost no resistance upon entering the Sunni city of over a million inhabitants, as the crumbling Iraqi military kept hastily retreating south. Today Mosul is the most populous urban center under direct Islamic State rule. In July, the group’s seldom-seen leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, used Mosul as the backdrop of his propaganda video, in which he announced the official establishment of the Islamic State, a militant Sunni caliphate that is administered strictly through sharia law. Just weeks later, on August 8, the United States military began conducting airstrikes in Mosul, targeting senior Islamic State personnel there. The precise effects of these airstrikes are under debate in strategy circles in Washington, Baghdad and elsewhere. Last Thursday, however, residents of Mosul told the Associated Press news agency that Islamic State authorities had decreed the temporary termination of all telephone provision in the city. The measure was allegedly taken in order to prevent informants in and around Mosul from tipping off adversary intelligence agencies as to the physical whereabouts of senior Islamic State commanders. The measure was reportedly announced in the evening of Wednesday, November 26, through a radio station in Mosul that acts as the official news organ of the Islamic State in the Iraqi city. The Associated Press reported scenes of “chaos” and “paralysis” in the streets of Mosul on Thursday, as businesses came to a virtual standstill following the decision by the Islamic State to terminate telephone provision throughout the city. Some observers note that this move by the Islamic State constitutes a drastic change from the group’s standard tactic so far, which has centered in the efficient provision of basic services to the Sunni populations under its control, in an effort to win over their ideological support and political allegiance. Moreover, Mosul, whose population is almost uniformly Sunni, and is viscerally opposed to the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, is generally believed to be an Islamic State stronghold. If the militant group is finding it difficult to ensure the allegiance of Mosul’s population, then this could be a sign of fragmentation within the ranks of its supporters in all of northern Iraq. The Associated Press said some residents of Mosul are reportedly still able to access the Internet, which operates through a network that is separate from that of the telephone system.

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White House weighs increased CIA involvement in Syrian war

November 20, 2014 by 3 Comments

Syrian rebelsBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The government of the United States is considering plans to augment the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine role in Syria, amid fears that similar efforts by the US Department of Defense are failing. The CIA’s involvement in the Syrian civil war began in 2012, when US President Barack Obama issued a classified presidential finding that authorized Langley to arm and train opposition militias. The clandestine program was initially based in training camps in Jordan before eventually expanding to at least one location in Qatar. The CIA currently vets and trains approximately 400 opposition fighters every month with the help of commandos detailed to the Agency from the Pentagon. But the program may be about to escalate considerably, according to The Washington Post. The paper said last week that the option of expanding CIA arming and training operations in Syria was on the agenda at a recent meeting of senior national-security officials in Washington. The paper said that the proposed escalation of CIA operations in the region “reflects concern” about the slow pace of similar programs run by the US Department of Defense, which aim to train and arm anti-government militias. The latter have so far proved unable to counter the dominance of a host of al-Qaeda-inspired groups operating along the Iraqi-Syrian border. Earlier this month, a major CIA-backed armed group, known as Harakat Hazm, abandoned many of its positions in northern Syria, after it came under attack by Jabhat al-Nusra, an official al-Qaeda affiliate. Along with territory, Harakat Hazm left behind significant amounts of war material supplied to it by the US Pentagon. The Post said that other moderate opposition militias are beginning to view al-Qaeda-linked groups as their most viable option in defeating the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, something which is worrying the White House. Spokesmen for the US government refused to comment on the report of a possible increase of CIA operations in Syria, or on whether the White House had reached a decision on the matter.

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Turkish prosecutor indicts 13 with tapping PM’s phone

November 19, 2014 by 1 Comment

Recep Tayyip ErdoğanBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Turkeys’ chief public prosecutor has indicted 13 suspects with charges of wiretapping the personal telephone of the country’s former prime minister. Authorities believe the suspects are part of a broader criminal conspiracy whose members wiretapped phones belonging to senior political figures, as well journalists and government administrators, including judges and military officials. The indictment was presented on Tuesday before the 7th high criminal court in Turkish capital Ankara. It accuses the 13 suspects of conducting systematic “political and military spying”, and claims they targeted the personal telephone communications of Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time. The charges represent the culmination of a tumultuous period of antagonism between Mr. Erdoğan and his critics in Turkey, who accuse him of absolutism and megalomania. Last July over 100 members of the country’s police force were arrested in raids that took place on all over Turkey. They were accused of illegally wiretapping the telephones of senior government figures including Mr. Erdoğan and Hakan Fidan, director of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, known as MİT. Hadi Salihoglu, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, said at the time that the alleged conspirators had concocted a fake police investigation of a made-up terrorist organization called Tevhid-Selam (Al-Quds Army, in English), in order to justify the wiretapping of the officials’ phone lines. However, critics of Mr. Erdoğan noted that one of the police officers arrested in July was the former deputy chief of the Istanbul police department’s financial crimes unit, which earlier this year led an investigation into alleged corrupt practices by senior members of Erdoğan’s former cabinet. The investigation led to the exposure of corrupt practices by several cabinet members and their families, and resulted in several ministerial resignations. Several months ago, a wiretapped conversation emerged in the media, in which Mr. Erdoğan can allegedly be heard discussing with his son how to hide large sums of money. Some observers have expressed the view that the leaked telephone conversation between the two men emerged from the Tevhid-Selam investigation, which may be why Mr. Erdoğan has now decided to shut it down and arrest those behind it. The 13 suspects are expected to stand trial in Ankara once the court approves the indictment by the office of the prosecutor. Mr. Erdoğan is listed as a plaintiff in the indictment.

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Russia expels Polish, German diplomats in ongoing spy row

November 18, 2014 by 1 Comment

Polish embassy in MoscowBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The Russian government has formally expelled several Polish and German diplomats in what appears to be a tit-for-tat move, following the removal of Russian envoys from Warsaw and Berlin on charges of espionage. The Polish government expelled a number of Russian diplomats last week, after it announced the arrest of two Polish citizens in Warsaw, on charges of spying for a foreign intelligence agency. Polish media reported that a colonel in the Polish Army had been arrested by security personnel for operating as an unregistered agent of an unnamed foreign country. Subsequent media reports said a second man, a lawyer with dual Polish-Russian citizenship, had also been arrested. According to unconfirmed Polish media reports, the two men had been recruited by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Last Friday, Polish media reports said that four Polish diplomats stationed in Moscow had been given 48 hours to leave the country. One report suggested that the diplomats included an employee of the political section of the Polish embassy in the Russian capital, as well as three military attachés. The four had reportedly left the country by Sunday night. Authorities in Moscow said they had been forced to take the step of expelling the Polish diplomats following Warsaw’s “unfriendly and unfounded step” of ordering a number of Russian envoys to leave Poland. The four Poles were officially declared “unwanted persons” in Russia for “activities incompatible with their [diplomatic] status”, which is considered code-language for espionage. Also on Monday, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ordered the expulsion from Moscow of a German diplomat, just hours after a Russian diplomat was asked to leave the German city of Bonn by German authorities. Diplomatic sources said the German diplomat, a female employee at the German embassy in Moscow, was expelled in direct response to the earlier removal of the Russian diplomat, who was exposed as a spy following an extensive surveillance operation that lasted several months. German authorities refused to comment on the case. In Poland, Minister of Foreign Affairs Grzegorz Schetyna said simply that Warsaw “now considered the matter closed”.

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