News you may have missed #536 (US edition)

July 13, 2011 by 4 Comments

James Risen

James Risen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►US federal agencies sitting on decade-old FOIA requests. In the United States, as Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are growing, a new study has found that eight government agencies are sitting on requests filed over ten years ago. According to the Knight Open Government Survey, conducted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the single oldest request is now 20 years old. FOIA requires agencies to process and respond to a request within 20 business days. ►►US journalist seeks to avoid testifying at CIA agent’s trial. A sizeable percentage of FOIA requests are filed by journalists, who are also on the receiving ends of most intelligence-related ‘leaks’ in the United States. One of those journalists, James Risen, of The New York Times, has been subpoenaed by the Obama administration to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling. Sterling is a former CIA employee, who has been arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation MERLIN to Risen. MERLIN was a botched US effort to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon, in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program. Times lawyers argue that the First Amendment should shield Risen from having to testify at Sterling’s trial. ►►US intel research agency works on 3-D holographs. Also in the United States, IARPA, the US intelligence community’s technical research wing, has announced that it is working on a system that lets intelligence analysts collaborate with each other using “interactive 3-D holographic displays”. Through this system, IARPA hopes that intelligence personnel could take simultaneous virtual strolls through real-life target locations, help plan raids, etc.

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Georgia charges photojournalists with spying for Russia

July 13, 2011 by Leave a comment

Irakli Gedenidze

Irakli Gedenidze

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Three well-known Georgian photojournalists have been arrested and charged with conducting espionage on behalf of the Russian Federation. They include Irakli Gedenidze, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s personal photographer, as well as Giorgi Abdaladze, who works for Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The leader of the alleged spy ring is Zurab Kurtsikidze, who works for Frankfurt-based European Pressphoto Agency. All three were arrested in early morning raids last Thursday, during which their homes and offices were searched by Georgian counterintelligence officers. A Georgian government statement issued the following day stated that the searches uncovered confidential information about the daily itinerary of Mr Saakashvili, as well as a classified diagram of the Presidential office. According to the statement, the classified documents were secretly accessed and photographed by Gedenidze and Abdaladze, who then passed them on to Kurtsikidze. He in turn turned them over to the GRU, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry. Along with the statement, Georgian government prosecutors released surveillance recordings of telephone exchanges between the three photographers, in which they are heard discussing payment arrangements in return for classified documents surrendered to the Russians. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #535

July 13, 2011 by 1 Comment

Stella Rimington

Stella Rimington

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last Monday’s Daily Telegraph carried a lengthy interview with Dame Stella Rimintgon, who headed MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, from 1992 to 1995. The interviewer notes that Rimington’s answers are often “so long you forget what you asked in the first place”, and when it comes to questions on MI5, she appears “practiced in the use of abstract generalities. I suspect is intentional”, she adds. No kidding. On July 10, the same newspaper revealed that, in the 1980s, an internationally renowned cancer researcher used his post at Britain’s Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories to steal samples and equipment on behalf of Eastern Bloc intelligence services. Jiri Bartek was working for the StB, Czechoslovakia’s secret intelligence service, says the paper. The paper notes that the revelation, which is based on declassified documents from the time, shows that Bartek (codename ‘Raki’), was probably “only one of dozens of Czech spies who used scientific positions in the West as cover for espionage”. Meanwhile, in South Africa, the country’s troubled National Intelligence Agency (NIA) has been hit an embarrassing revelation. It appears that Andre Vorster, a NIA specialist technical adviser at the agency’s Pretoria headquarters, claimed to have two doctorate degrees, both of which are fake. He also tried to swindle a leading British charity foundation by claiming to be acting on behalf of South African President Jacob Zuma. Vorster’s duties at the NIA included countersurveillance and the safeguarding of South African embassies and key installations around the world.

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Israel used Facebook to stop European pro-Palestine activists

July 12, 2011 by Leave a comment

Facebook

Facebook

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli intelligence services managed to stop dozens of European pro-Palestine activists from flying to Israel, by gathering open-source intelligence about them on social media sites, such as Facebook. According to Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, intelligence gathered on Facebook formed the basis of a blacklist containing over 300 names of European activists, who had signed up on an open-access Facebook page of a group planning nonviolent actions in Israel this summer. Israeli intelligence agencies forwarded the names on the lists to European airline carriers, asking them not to allow the activists onboard their flights, as they were not going to be allowed into the country. This action prompted airline carriers to prevent over 200 activists from boarding scheduled flights to Israel. Israeli security officers detained over 310 other activists, who arrived in Israel on several European flights last week. Of those, almost 70 were denied entry to the country, while more detentions are expected to take place later this week, according to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad. Read more of this post

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US summons Syrian ambassador for spying on protesters

July 11, 2011 by 1 Comment

Imad Moustapha

Imad Moustapha

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
American government officials acknowledged late last week that they warned Syria’s ambassador to Washington to stop his diplomats from spying on anti-government activists operating in the United States. The State Department said that Eric Boswell, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, summoned the ambassador of the Syrian Arab Republic, Imad Moustapha, and conveyed “a number of […] concerns with […] reported actions of certain Syrian embassy staff in the United States”. The concerns center on what appear to be confirmed sightings of Syrian diplomats conducting technical surveillance against Syrian and American citizens participating in demonstrations and other legal political activities in several US cities. There are also reports that intelligence gathered by Syrian diplomats in the United States is used by the Syrian security services in Syria to intimidate family members of Syrian and Syrian-American dissidents who are active in the United States. According to The Washington Times, the State Department was first alerted to the alleged political surveillance by the activists themselves, who began noticing in June the presence of suspected Syrian government informants in their Washington gatherings. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #534

July 9, 2011 by Leave a comment

MI6 HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
According to extracts from the diary of Alastair Campbell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s communications director from 2000 to 2003, officials from the MI6 intelligence agency told Blair that France and Germany aimed to “exploit his feud” with then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Gotta love European unity. In Kuwait, meanwhile, the oil state’s Al-Shahed daily quotes “knowledgeable sources”, who claim that “a lot of spy networks exploit the Kuwaiti environment” and use the country as a transit point to spy on neighboring countries. Hopefully the Kuwaitis will not emulate authorities in Dubai, which in March of last year called on all foreign spies “to leave the region within a week. If not”, they warned, “we will cross that bridge when we come to it”. In the nearby state of Israel, public opinion is still divided about former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s criticism of the Netanyahu government. As Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg notes, Dagan has “called into question the wisdom –and, privately, even the sanity– of any Israeli leader who contemplates a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities”. But why is he doing it, and could it backfire?

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News you may have missed #533

July 8, 2011 by Leave a comment

María del Pilar Hurtado

María Hurtado

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The government of Colombia will –finally– officially request from Panama the extradition of Maria Pilar Hurtado, former director of Colombia’s disgraced DAS intelligence agency, who was granted political asylum in the Central American country last year. The Colombian government has been contemplating this move for some time, as the investigation into illegal activities by the DAS is progressing extremely slowly. In Iran, the government says that it plans to try dozens of American intelligence officials in absentia. The announcement has raised the possibility that Tehran may out US spies which the Iranians claim attempted to recruit locals as part of a sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation. One former CIA operative, Glenn Carle, voluntarily came out a few years ago, following retirement, and made news headlines last month, in connection with alleged CIA spying on American academic Juan Cole. Carle, who worked for the CIA for 23 years, in Africa, the Balkans and Latin America, among other locales, has written a book. It focuses on a several-month period he spent questioning a suspected leader of al-Qaeda. The interrogations took place in two countries, which he says he is not permitted to name.

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News you may have missed #532

July 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

Viru Hotel

Viru Hotel

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new exhibition in Tallinn, called The Viru Hotel and the KGB, showcases the Soviet KGB operations in the Estonian capital’s most prestigious Soviet-era hotel. According to the curators, the 23rd floor of the hotel served as the KGB’s operational center in the city. The exhibition focuses specifically on KGB bugging technology during the last stages of the Cold War. Speaking of the Cold War, The Oak Ridger hosts an interesting interview with Francis Gary Powers Jr., son of the CIA pilot who was shot down over the USSR and later captured by the Soviets in 1960. Powers insists his father “never divulged America’s secrets” during his two-year imprisonment in Moscow. Interestingly, declassified documents from that time show that the CIA doubted Powers’ plane had been shot down by the Soviets, and believed the pilot had willingly defected to the USSR. In Canada, meanwhile, a new report to parliament by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS), claims that cyber-spying is fastest growing form of espionage in the country. The report also states that, as a matter of policy, CSIS views some private-sector cyberattacks as a national security issue.

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Security minister, ex-spy directors arrested in Hungary

July 6, 2011 by 1 Comment

Gyorgy Szilvasy

Gyorgy Szilvasy

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
One former government minister and two former directors of Hungary’s domestic intelligence service have been arrested on suspicion on espionage, according to reports. On June 28, Hungarian police arrested Lajos Galambos, who was Director of Hungary’s National Security Office (NBH) from 2004 to 2007. Three days later, on July 1, police forces arrested Sandor Laborc, who succeeded Galambos as NBH director, and Gyorgy Szilvasy (pictured), who was minister in charge of overseeing the civilian security services from 2007 to 2009. All three served in key government positions during the socialist government of former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany. Despite repeated media request, government prosecutors have refused to disclose the precise nature of the charges against the three officials, except to say that they are suspected of having committed “crimes against the state”. One Hungarian daily, Tabloid Blikk, suggested that the arrests are linked to the Egymasert Public Foundation, headed by wanted fugitive Robert Jakubinyi.  Egymasert was found last year to have been used to facilitate money laundering and the illegal sale of shares. But other reports interpret the high-level arrests as a form of political payback for the so-called ‘UD Zrt affair’, also known as ‘the Hungarian Watergate’, which rocked Hungarian public opinion in 2008. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #531 (US edition)

July 5, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • US spy agencies looking into cloud computing. In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the US intelligence community, recently sunk money into a cloud-based storage company called Cleversafe. The CIA has emerged as one of the US government’s strongest advocates of cloud computing, but some US intel insiders are not so hot on the idea.
  • Obama administration drops most CIA torture probes. So, this is how one of the darkest chapters in US counterterrorism ends: with practically every instance of suspected CIA torture dodging criminal scrutiny. Wired’s Danger Room blog calls it “one of the greatest gifts the Justice Department could have given the CIA as David Petraeus takes over the agency”.
  • US report shows increase in authorized wiretaps. US federal and state applications for orders authorizing or approving the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications increased 34 percent in 2010, compared to the number reported in 2009.

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Radio station names hundreds of Zimbabwe secret agents

July 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

Happton Bonyongwe

Bonyongwe

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Zimbabwean opposition radio station has begun disclosing the names of hundreds of Zimbabwe intelligence operatives, in what experts say could potentially decimate Zimbabwean intelligence collection activities around the world. On June 30, SW Radio Africa, which is based in London, United Kingdom, aired the names of 83 officers of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), and promised to air over 400 more in the coming weeks. The revelation is based on a 2001 document, which was leaked to the station by an unnamed CIO insider. In a statement, SW Radio Africa station manager Gerry Jackson dismissed national security concerns, arguing that the CIO “is not used to protect national security and to safeguard Zimbabweans”, but rather as “the brains behind the regime” of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his political grouping, ZANU PF. Jackson also cited a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, which found that the CIO is among the country’s most serious perpetrators of widespread human rights abuses. The station said that it decided to publish the names “in the interests of transparency and accountability and in the hope that by exposing these names […] some of the perpetrators of violence [will] think twice before they commit further human rights abuses”. Among the names included in the initial list of 83 persons is that of Hamad Adam, who is listed as a “political councilor” in the embassy of Zimbabwe in Berlin, Germany, as well as Paul Chikawa, who is a staffer in the country’s consulate in Hong Cong. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #530

July 4, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Another spy ring reportedly busted in Kuwait. Kuwait has allegedly busted another spy ring, working for the intelligence services “of an Arab country [that] is currently embroiled in political turmoil”, reports Al-Jaridah daily. The paper also said that information gathered by the spy ring was sent to a liaison officer in the embassy of that country. Last April, two Iranians and a Kuwaiti national, all serving in Kuwait’s army, were sentenced to death for belonging to an Iranian spy ring.
  • How defectors come in from the cold. Interesting historical account of how defectors adjust to their new lives, from the BBC’s News Magazine. Sadly, much of the article is about –you guessed it– the Cambridge Five, which the British seem unable to get over, half a century later.
  • UK report says hackers should fight cyber spies. Britain faces losing its position at the leading edge of technology unless new ideas are developed to fight cyber attacks, including recruiting computer hackers to help fight organized cyber crime and espionage by foreign powers. This is the conclusion of a new report by the University College London’s Institute for Security and Resilience Studies.

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News you may have missed #529 (analysis edition)

July 3, 2011 by 1 Comment

  • Analysis: US Senate backs Petraeus for CIA chief. The US Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved General David Petraeus’s nomination to head the CIA. But, asks, The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus, which Petraeus will arrive at the CIA? The officer or the gentleman?
  • Analysis: US spies can’t stop buying face microchips from China. US military officials have known since 2005 that they have a quality control problem with the microchips they’ve been buying from China. Already, thousands of fake Chinese microchips are crashing American military networks. Last week, the US government finally announced that they want to find a way to spot “trojan horse” chips. What took them so long?
  • Analysis: Has the CIA penetrated Hezbollah? Hezbollah’s admission that it has seized three spies in its ranks, two supposedly recruited by the CIA, is a serious blow to the Iranian-backed movement’s prestige soon after it took control of Lebanon’s government for the first time. On the other hand, it is worth noting that, in recent years, the Lebanese Shiite group has proven near-impenetrable to both the CIA and the Mossad.

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News you may have missed #528

July 2, 2011 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #527

July 1, 2011 by 2 Comments

  • Has Microsoft broken Skype’s encryption? The US Congress has finally discovered Skype. But the timing may be bad, since there are rumors that Microsoft has found a way to break the encryption behind Skype communications, rendering all Skype calls potentially open to surveillance by governments. The company (Microsoft) has even filed a related patent application. Communications interception experts have been trying for some time to achieve this.
  • Ex-CIA agent loses legal battle over ‘unauthorized’ book. A former CIA deep-cover operative, who goes by the pseudonym ‘Ishmael Jones’, may have to financially compensate the Agency for publishing a book without the CIA’s approval, after a US judge ruled against him. Jones maintains that the CIA is bullying him because of his public criticism of its practices.
  • Family of accused Australian spy seeks support. The family of Australian-Jordanian citizen Eyad Abuarga, who has been charged with being a technical spy for Hamas, have called on the Australian government to do more to help him, with less than a month before he is due to face trial in Israel.

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