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News you may have missed #578

August 28, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Syria

►►CIA agent who helped kill Che wants payout from Cuba. This is from the “news that isn’t” department: Gustavo Villoldo, a Cuban-born CIA operative, who helped track down and kill Che Guevara in Bolivia, has won $2.8 billion in damages from the Cuban government, for confiscating his family property after the 1959 revolution. But he is unlikely to ever collect the money because Cuba does not recognize US court rulings.
►►Cheney wanted Bush to destroy suspected Syrian nuke site. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Bush opted for a diplomatic approach expressed misgivings. Eventually Israeli jets bombed the site. Cheney’s account of the discussion appears in his autobiography, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir, which is to be published by Simon & Schuster next week.
►►South Korea indicts five for spying for North. Five South Koreans, including a former parliamentary aide, have been indicted for allegedly spying for North Korea, in connection with the Wangjaesan spy ring.

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News you may have missed #577

August 27, 2011 by Ian Allen 2 Comments

Waihopai base

►►Interview with Michael Hayden. The former director of the CIA and the NSA gave a lengthy interview in preparation for his keynote speech at the Raleigh Spy Conference. Among other things, he says that he does “not immediately conclude that senior levels of the Pakistani government knew about” Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts.
►►CIA denies helping police spy on NY Muslims. The Central Intelligence Agency is denying a news report that it helped the New York Police Department conduct covert surveillance on Muslims. The agency said suggestions that it engaged in domestic spying were “simply wrong” and that the report “mischaracterized the nature and scope” of the CIA’s support for the New York police.
►►Spy base reservoir not a pool after all... A journalist at New Zealand’s Marlborough Express newspaper noticed what looked suspiciously like a swimming pool on a satellite photo (pictured) of the super-secret Waihopai listening base near Blenheim. Do spies go swimming on the base, he asked? It turns out they don’t. According to Government Communications Security Bureau Waihopai station chief Chris Farrow, the landmark is in fact a water reservoir, to be used in case of fire.

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Documents reveal MI5 role in Guyana coup

August 26, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

The Jagans

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Secret intelligence documents declassified last week reveal that Britain’s Security Service, known as MI5, played a significant role in the lead-up to the 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected government of British Guiana. The Latin American territory, which borders Suriname, Venezuela and Brazil, was once one of the British Empire’s most lucrative sugar-producing colonies. In 1963, after gaining its independence from Britain, it was officially renamed the Co-Operative Republic of Guyana. Instrumental in the fight for independence was Cheddi Jagan —an ethnic Indian former dentist who is today considered the father of the nation— and his American-born wife Janet (née Rosenberg). In 1950, the couple founded the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which became the primary pro-independence political vehicle in the British colony. But dozens of folders of classified documents that were released last Friday by Britain’s National Archives show that MI5 was suspicious of the Jagans, and believed that Janet had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States in the 1940s. Several MI5 reports from the 1950s express concern that the PPP intended to establish close proximity between a newly independent Guyana and the Soviet Union. The declassified MI5 archives contain countless transcribed telephone conversations between the Jagans and their political allies, as well as copies of intercepted correspondence and reports of physical surveillance by MI5 informants. They reveal that British intelligence closely monitored the Jagans for at least a decade. Even though MI5 concluded that the PPP had no close contacts with Soviet agents or agencies, and that the party was “not receiving any financial support from any Communist organization outside the country”, it continued to describe Janet Jagan as “a committed communist” and remained apprehensive of the couple’s “disruptive antics”. The British government of Winston Churchill decided to take aggressive action in 1953, after a landslide election victory for the PPP in British Guiana elections. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #576 (Libya edition)

August 26, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Libya

►►Rebels seize Libyan intelligence service HQ. Rebel forces of the National Transitional Council have occupied the Tripoli headquarters of Libya’s intelligence service. Al Jazeera, which was given access to the building by the rebels, says that it is “full of confidential documents that could provide a valuable insight into what was one of the world’s most secretive regimes. But”, adds the report, “it will take weeks to sift through”.
►►Gadhafi’s loose weapons could number a ‘thousand times’ Saddam’s. This is the alarming assessment of Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, who spent time on the ground in Libya during the uprising. He told Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog that “weapon proliferation out of Libya is potentially one of the largest we have ever documented —2003 Iraq pales in comparison— and so the risks are equally much more significant”.
►►The bewildering dance between Gaddafi and MI6. A well-researched article in The Independent newspaper, written by one of Britain’s most esteemed diplomatic correspondents, Gordon Corera. He argues that Britain and the Gaddafi regime “were not always the enemies they are now”.

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Why Are Armed Groups Storming Foreign Embassies in Tripoli?

August 25, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments

New Libyan flag

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is perhaps understandable that fighters of the National Transitional Council, Libya’s rebel umbrella group, have stormed locations in Tripoli that are associated with the regime of deposed Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Strategic sites such as Bab al-Aziziya, Gaddafi’s compound, government ministries, or even houses belonging to Gaddafi’s large and powerful family, may be deemed legitimate targets. But why are the rebels also selectively attacking foreign embassies in the Libyan capital? According to Yonhap, South Korea’s state-run news agency, the South Korean embassy in Tripoli was “attacked […] by an armed gang” of about 30 people late on Tuesday. The report, which could not be immediately confirmed by the Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cited anonymous sources, who said that embassy staff were “threatened at gunpoint”. At roughly the same period, another group of “armed persons” stormed the building of the Bulgarian embassy, according to the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which said that it had yet to clarify “the circumstances around the incident”. On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that armed groups had “assaulted and totally looted” the Venezuelan embassy. A few hours later, the Venezuelan Ambassador to Libya, Afif Tajeldine, clarified that the attack took place at his official residence, which is located about 9 miles from the Venezuelan embassy. He told El Universal that armed groups broke into the ambassadorial residence and “searched the house asking for me”. They then “ransacked the house completely” and “left nothing in the house”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #576 (Europe edition)

August 24, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

GCHQ

►►Inside Britain’s signals intelligence agency. This account of the work of Britain’s General Communications Headquarters is a bit basic, but it’s not every day that the GCHQ grants access to a journalist to its Cheltenham base.
►►Czech telecoms to share data with intel services. The Czech Interior Ministry has placed a clause in the planned amendment to the electronic communications law, under which operators of communication networks will have to provide data on cell phones and the Internet to the civilian and military counterintelligence.
►►Dutch F-16 pilot suspected of espionage. A Dutch former F-16 pilot suspected of espionage, identified only as Chris V., had more state secrets in his possession than he previously admitted to, according to public prosecutors in The Hague. The pilot was arrested last April and stands accused of leaking state secrets to a colonel from Belarus.

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Western companies help Bahrain spy on democracy activists

August 24, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments

NSN Logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
While Western governments preach to the world about the benefits of democracy, Western companies supply some of the most detestable dictatorial regimes with surveillance technologies for use against pro-democracy activists. One example in point is the repressive government of Bahrain, which, according to Amnesty International, is responsible for some of the most extensive human rights violations anywhere in the Middle East. Bahrain is the kind of place where even medical professionals who treat people wounded by police or soldiers in demonstrations are charged with “incitement”. Despite the fervor of the pro-democracy movement that has risen as part of the Arab Spring, the oil-rich royal clique that rules the nation has managed a series of debilitating hits against the reformists. The success of the crackdown is largely due the use of sophisticated telecommunications surveillance systems that allow Bahraini authorities to spy on cell phones and social networking platforms used by members of the pro-democracy opposition. Who supplied the Bahraini dictators with this equipment? Step forward German engineering conglomerate Siemens AG, and Finnish multinational Nokia. An article published this week in Bloomberg’s Markets magazine, fingers the German company as the primary supplier of telecommunications surveillance systems to the Bahraini royals. The latter rely on contracts with Nokia’s Trovicor GmbH subsidiary to maintain the sophisticated software and hardware. Bloomberg says it was notified of the Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) partnership by two unnamed insiders, “whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations and the sale and maintenance contracts”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #575

August 23, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

IARPA logo

►►Inquest into death of MI6 spy to go ahead. The inquest into the bizarre death of MI6 and GCHQ officer Gareth Williams will go ahead before Christmas without a jury, according to London-based newspaper The Express. The paper says that “12 spy chiefs will attend [the inquest] to explain the background to the case”.
►►Colombia’s ex-president denies role in spy scandal. Alvaro Uribe has denied, during a 3½-hour appearance before a Colombian congressional committee, that he ordered the country’s domestic intelligence agency to spy on judges, journalists and political foes. More than 20 agents of the DAS intelligence agency have been imprisoned for alleged roles in the spying. Two more have pleaded guilty in exchange for reduced sentences.
►►US spy research firm eyes stock market. IARPA, the US intelligence community’s research arm, plans to introduce a new program to develop tools to help analysts “quickly and accurately assess petabytes of complex anonymized financial data”. According to a conference presentation, the program would help spies “analyze massive amounts of data to spot indicators of market behavior, find relationships between seemingly unrelated transactions across hundreds of global markets, and provide insight into specific events and general financial trends”.

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Western spies, security contractors, won Libyan war for rebels

August 23, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis 4 Comments

Libya

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As I write these lines, celebratory gunfire is being heard all across Tripoli and the rebel National Transitional Council is appointing civilians to replace the crumbling administration of longtime Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. But a handful of news outlets discreetly remind us that the rebels’ claim to victory rests on vital covert assistance provided by several Western intelligence services. British daily The Independent notes that the victorious rebels were assisted on all levels by “an army of [British] diplomats, spooks, military advisers and former members of the special forces”, all of whom allowed “London to influence events in Libya beyond the activities of warplanes and naval vessels”. Early indications of Britain’s substantial covert involvement in the Libyan civil war emerged in March, when a secret operation involving a team of 20 Special Air Service (SAS) personnel was disrupted by a group of Libyan rebels, who thought the foreigners were employed by the Libyan government. Eight captured SAS members were soon released by the red-faced rebels, but not before the botched operation had made headlines all over the world. That experience prompted British intelligence planners to rethink their methodology. Eventually, notes The Independent, the British government decided to prompt the rebel National Transitional Council to use British funds to hire teams of former special forces operatives working for private security firms. This, according to the paper, accounts for the “small groups of […] Caucasian males, many with British accents [and] equipped with sunglasses, 4×4 vehicles and locally acquired weaponry, who [were] seen regularly by reporters in the vanguard of the rebels’ haphazard journey […] towards Tripoli”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #574

August 22, 2011 by Ian Allen 2 Comments

CIA documents

►►~~CIA told Kennedy Cuba invasion was ‘unachievable’~~. [Never mind. It turns out that the original article on Foreign Policy has been corrected to state that the meeting was not with Kennedy after all — see reader’s comment below]. More revelations from the newly declassified CIA Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. According to the multi-volume history (pictured), a CIA team told President-Elect John F. Kennedy during a meeting in 1960 that toppling the Cuban government of Fidel Castro would not be feasible, considering the small invasion force that Kennedy insisted upon for the Bay of Pigs operation, in order to maintain plausible deniability.
►►NATO bombs home of Libyan intel chief. A compound in Tripoli destroyed overnight by NATO air strikes was the home of Abdullah Al-Senussi, former head of Libyan intelligence. This information allegedly comes from al-Senussi’s neighbor, oil engineer Omar Masood, who said he has lived across the street for 35 years. Meanwhile, several news outlets report that Abdel Salam Ahmed Jalloud, prime minister of Libya between 1972 and 1977, has defected to Italy.
►►Palestinian attacks took Israeli intel by surprise. The triple attacks, attributed by Israel to a Palestinian splinter group from the Gaza Strip, took Israel’s intelligence and security services by surprise, judging by the ensuing confusion and inaccuracy of initial reports. Between 15 and 20 Arab gunmen, some wearing Egyptian army fatigues, are believed to have taken part in the operation.

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Was plane carrying UN Secretary General shot down in 1961?

August 22, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments

Hammarskjöld

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On September 17, 1961, a Douglas DC-6 transport aircraft carrying United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld crashed in the British-administered territory of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). The crash killed everyone onboard, except one passenger, who died hours later. Three successive investigations into the crash, conducted by the Rhodesian Board of Investigation, the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry, and the United Nations Commission of Investigation, viewed “pilot error” as the most likely cause of the tragedy. Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker with Sweden’s International Development Cooperation Agency, who is stationed in Burkina Faso, has spent three years researching Hammarskjöld’s death. He has produced a report with his findings, in which he cites interviews with several witnesses of the crash, who are still living. He says that, according to the evidence he has amassed, he has “no doubt” Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane was “shot down by an unidentified second plane”. In an article published in British quality broadsheet The Guardian, Björkdahl also claims that the only survivor of the downed DC-6, American sergeant Harold Julian, who was a member of the UN Secretary General’s security detail, was abandoned to die of his injuries at a makeshift hospital in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Björkdahl’s claim is based on his interview with colonial medical practitioner Mark Lowenthal, who tried to treat Julian in the hours following the airplane’s crash. Moreover, Björkdahl alleges that British colonial authorities in Northern Rhodesia were eager to cover up the details of the incident, and went out of their way to intimidate local villagers who witnessed the crash, and to downplay witness testimony suggesting that the Douglas DC-6 may have been shot down. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #573 (analysis edition)

August 21, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Clair E. George

►►New report details gaps in US spy collaboration. Nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, US intelligence agencies are still struggling to strengthen the information sharing networks that broke down in 2001, according to the latest report by the US Congressional Research Service. Among other things, the 33-page report (pdf) points out that “agencies that obtain highly sensitive information are reluctant to share it throughout the intelligence community out of a determination to protect their sources”.
►►CIA Iran-Contra figure Clair George dies. Clair E. George, a consummate spymaster who was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, has died. George was known for operating in what spies call the “night soil circuit” –the less desirable posts of the world. He worked in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. He was the CIA’s station chief in Beirut when civil war erupted there in 1975. He then volunteered to replace the CIA’s Athens station chief, who had just been assassinated by November 17 Revolutionary Organization.
►►Here’s why CIA ‘mind control’ lawsuit was thrown out. A very good and succinct analysis of why a federal lawsuit against the CIA by the Vietnam Veterans of America, for allegedly subjecting US military personnel to chemical, biological and mind control experiments, was thrown out of court earlier this month. It includes the CIA’s court filing in a pdf link, here.

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News you may have missed #572

August 20, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

David Wise

►►New Zealand spy service now welcomes online tip-offs. Ten years ago, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) introduced a free telephone number that people could ring if they suspected any suspicious intelligence activity. Now the spy service has entered the 21st century by changing its website so the public can provide details online.
►►Book claims Coco Chanel spied for Nazis. Frankly, who gives a damn? Is anyone surprised to hear that yet another member of French high society was pro-Nazi in the lead-up to World War II? It is disappointing to see how many news outlets are going over-the-top with this story, while mostly ignoring the truly important historical revelation of the last few days, namely the declassification of the CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
►►David Wise on Sino-American spy wars. Longtime investigative journalist David Wise, who focuses on the intelligence community, talks to Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman about his new book Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China.

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News you may have missed #571 [updated]

August 19, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Markus Wolf

►►East German spymaster’s widow loses pension battle. Andrea Wolf, The widow of Markus Wolf, the shadowy spymaster of communist East Germany, lost a court battle on Monday to reclaim his honorary pension. Dubbed “The Man Without a Face” because Western intelligence services long lacked even a photograph of him, Wolf directed the General Intelligence Administration, the foreign intelligence division of East Germany’s Stasi. He died in 2006, at the age of 83.
►►Dominica government officials deny spying accusations. Dominican officials have strongly denied accusations that the government of the former British colony, through the National Joint Intelligence Committee (NJIC), has been spying on the activities and actions of political activists over the last few months. According to the allegations, in one case, in April 2009, a member of the Dominica Police Force was sent to Brooklyn, New York, to spy on a conference on the political situation in Dominica, on orders from the country’s Prime Minister. But Dominica’s Police Commissioner, Cyril Carrette, denied the existence of NJIC, and called the accusations unfounded.
►►British spy agency called in to crack BlackBerry encryption. The British intelligence service, MI5, has been drafted in to assist its sister service, GCHQ, in cracking the BlackBerry encryption code, in order to find those responsible for Read more of this post

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Former Finnish diplomat reveals she worked for the CIA

August 19, 2011 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments

Linkoaho

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Finnish diplomat in Cold-War East Germany has revealed how she was recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Marja-Liisa Linkoaho spoke to the Sunday edition of Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, and admitted that she worked for American intelligence. She did so despite representing Finland, which was notably pro-Soviet during the presidency of ‘neutralist’ Finnish statesman Urho Kekkonen. She told the paper that, in 1961, at age 27, she became an assistant at the Finnish trade mission in East Germany, which at the time served as Finland’s de facto embassy in the communist country. The trade mission was headed by Consul General Olavi Wanne, and was centrally located on Mauerstrasse, within walking distance from the border between East and West Berlin. In August of 1961, less than three months after Linkoaho moved to East Germany, the country’s government, under Walter Ulbricht, took the decision to begin the construction of the Berlin Wall. However, as a foreign diplomat, Linkoaho was able to travel freely between East and West Germany despite the construction in Berlin of the heavily policed partition barrier. Several months later, Linkoaho borrowed a sum of money by one of her Finnish co-workers at the trade commission, which she used to purchase a German-made Volkswagen Beetle, from an American car dealership in West Berlin. However, shortly after she returned to East Berlin with her new car, it was stolen. Interestingly, Linkoaho said that, soon after the theft of her car, she was contacted by the CIA and asked to work for them as an agent, in return for money and a new car. The Finnish former diplomat told the Helsingin Sanomat that she had been contacted by the CIA “a few times before”, but had politely declined the Agency’s offers for work. This time, however, she needed the money, and the car, so she took up the offer. Read more of this post