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Analysis: Understanding WikiLeaks

January 6, 2011 by intelNews 8 Comments

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
The WikiLeaks cablegate revelations appear to be subsiding in the new year, and so is the public debate about their meaning and consequences. And yet, as calmer moods prevail, now is the appropriate time to probe the WikiLeaks phenomenon. To do so constructively, it is necessary to move beyond a mere political assessment of WikiLeaks. The question of whether the website, its founder, and its hundreds of volunteers, are criminals, heroes, terrorists, or dissidents, cannot even begin to be answered until WikiLeaks is understood, first and foremost. By ‘understood’, I don’t mean empathize. I mean comprehending WikiLeaks as an ideological paradigm, a technological vehicle reflective of the personal philosophies of its members, but also representative of a much wider sociotechnical trend. Click here to read my analysis brief published today by the Research Institute for European and American Studies.

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News you may have missed #465

January 5, 2011 by intelNews Leave a comment

Germany denies secret spy collaboration with the US. Germany’s aerospace center denied Monday that it is working with the US on a $270 million high-tech secret spy program, insisting that its plans for a high-resolution optical satellite have purely scientific and security uses. The denial was in response to US State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and revealed by Norwegian daily Aftenposten.
Was Iranian nuclear defector tortured? Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who returned to Tehran in July after what he called a “kidnapping” by the CIA, has been held in detention by Iranian authorities for two months and tortured so badly he was hospitalized, according to a dissident Iranian web site.
WikiLeaks reveals France leads industrial spying in Europe. France is the country that conducts the most industrial espionage on other European countries, even ahead of China and Russia, according to leaked US diplomatic cables, reported in a translation by Agence France Presse of Norwegian daily Aftenposten‘s reporting.

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US denies Ivory Coast coup claim

January 4, 2011 by intelNews Leave a comment

Emile Guirieoulou

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The United States has emphatically rejected assertions by officials in the Ivory Coast that it is plotting to overthrow the government of the West African country. For weeks now, Washington has been echoing calls by the United Nations, the African Union and the European Union for Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo to stand down, after losing in the November 28 national elections. But Gbagbo’s government, which controls most of the military, rejects the alleged election victory of his political rival Alassane Ouattara, and refuses to hand over power. On December 29, the Ivory Coast’s Minister of the Interior, Emile Guirieoulou, told a press conference that the United States had dispatched at least ten German “mercenaries” to its embassy in Abidjan, as part of a multinational Western plot to overthrow Laurent Gbagbo. He told journalists that the German mercenaries were onboard a US-operated flight from Algiers to Bouake, Ivory Coast’s second-largest city. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #464 (Mossad edition)

January 3, 2011 by intelNews 4 Comments

Mossad may apologize for use of UK passports. There are unconfirmed reports that Tamir Pardo, the newly installed Director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, is “drafting an apology to London” for the use of forged British passports by a Mossad hit squad that killed Hamas senior official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh a year ago in Dubai.
NZ halted Mossad probe to safeguard secrets. New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was hesitant to publicly prosecute Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, two Israeli Mossad spies arrested in New Zealand in March of 2004, fearing that the court case would expose counterintelligence methods. This according to the latest leaked US embassy cables released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
Did Israel abduct and kill Iranian ex-deputy defense minister? Iran has asked the United Nations to help probe the reported death of Iran’s deputy defense minister, General Ali-Reza Asgari, allegedly in an Israeli jail. But Politico‘s Laura Rozen quotes well-informed Iranian-American activist Pooya Dayanim, who says Asgari was never in Israel.

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2010: The year that was in espionage

December 31, 2010 by intelNews 4 Comments

ABC Australia

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
I was interviewed yesterday by Australian National Radio’s Julian Morrow on the major espionage stories of 2010. Fortunately or unfortunately, there has been no shortage of spy-related news this past year, and one is forced to be selective in reviewing the subject. In the interview I spoke about Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the senior Hamas official who was assassinated on January 19 in Dubai by agents of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. I also spent some time recalling the intelligence aspects and diplomatic fallout of last May’s Israeli Navy attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which killed nine and injured over 100 international activists. Julian then asked me to speak briefly about last June’s Stuxnet virus, which attacked computers in Iran’s state-of-the-art uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and the nuclear reactor facility in Bushehr. We closed the interview by discussing the arrest last summer of eleven Russian illegals in the eastern United States. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Joseph Fitsanakis, year in review

News you may have missed #463

December 30, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Iranian spy minister admits hacking emails. Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi has publicly admitted that the Iranian government has hacked into the emails of Iranian opposition members. He claimed the hacking, conducted by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, revealed messages exchanged between “foreigners and their elements inside Iran”.
Details on CIA officer killed in Afghanistan. An interesting article in The Washingtonian offers an interesting background story on Jennifer Matthews, a CIA officer who was killed nearly a year ago in Afghanistan in a suicide bombing by Taliban double-agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.
China jails South Korean alleged spy. China is getting tougher with South Korean spies caught on Chinese soil collecting intelligence on North Korea, and has jailed one of them for more than a year, despite pleas from Seoul, according to news reports.

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Israel sabotaged Egypt’s Internet, says alleged Mossad spy

December 29, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Undersea cable

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israeli sabotage was behind the nationwide crippling of Egypt’s Internet in 2008, according to an alleged Mossad agent. The accused agent, Abdel Razeq Hussein Hassan, is an Egyptian businessman who was arrested earlier this year by Egyptian counterintelligence and is accused of working for the Israeli spy agency. Two of his alleged Israeli handlers, Joseph Daymour and Idid Moushay, are reportedly on the run and are wanted by the Egyptian government. Hassan is due to go on trial next month, but transcripts of his interrogation records have been leaked to Egyptian media. In one instance, Hassan appears to tell his police interrogators that a team of Mossad operatives deliberately cut two undersea cables about 5 miles off the north Egyptian port city of Alexandria, disrupting the country’s Internet service for several days. Read more of this post

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Germany launches probe into poisoning of ex-KGB colonel

December 28, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

KGB seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An official government probe into the alleged poisoning of a Russian former KGB colonel and his wife has been launched in Berlin, German officials have announced. Regular intelNews visitors will recall the recent case of Viktor Kalashnikov, a former colonel and authority on military matters for the Soviet KGB, who was taken in critical condition to a Berlin hospital along with his wife, Marina. The two were found to have over ten times the highest permissible level of mercury in their blood, which, according to medical experts, points to a deliberate poisoning attempt. The case intrigued German officials, since the Kalashnikovs, who moved to Germany last September, are known in Russia as vocal critics of the Putin-Medvedev administration. The two have co-authored scathing critiques accusing Moscow of manipulating the separatist Chechen movement in order to create “a national security state” in Russia. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #462

December 27, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

CIA secrets could surface in Swiss nuclear case. A seven-year effort by the CIA to hide its relationship with the Tinners, a Swiss family who once acted as moles inside the world’s most successful atomic black market, hit a turning point on Thursday when a Swiss magistrate recommended charging the men with trafficking in technology and information for making nuclear arms.
Pakistan spy chief to ignore US summons. The Pakistani government has announced that hat there is “no possibility” that Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, would obey a summons requesting his appearance before a court in the United States relating to the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.
Australia told to prioritize spy recruitment. Carl Ungerer, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has advised the Australian intelligence agencies to “look at ways to improve information gathering from human sources”, as they undergo a period of reform.

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Comment: Russian Espionage Steals 2010 Limelight

December 24, 2010 by intelNews 4 Comments

GRU emblem

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As the first decade of the 21^st century is coming to an end, few would dispute that Israeli and American spy agencies have been among the most talked-about intelligence organizations of 2010. The reasons for this are equally undeniable: the United States tops the list because of its political prominence, which inevitably attracts media attention; Israel tops it because of the sheer ferocity of its espionage output throughout the Middle East. And yet there is nothing new about this, since neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor the Mossad are exactly novices when it comes to high-profile media exposures. The same cannot be said with respect to Russian intelligence agencies, which went through a period of prolonged hibernation following the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the year that is about to end demonstrates that the stagnant interlude in Russian espionage may well be in its closing stages.

News you may have missed #461

December 23, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

London expels Russian diplomat for spying. Britain’s troubled relations with Moscow suffered another blow on Tuesday, when London announced the expulsion of an unnamed Russian diplomat in London following “clear evidence” of spying. The request was communicated to the Kremlin on December 10, and was reportedly countered by Russia with a tit-for-tat expulsion of a British diplomat from the country.
Syria saw Israel behind aide’s assassination, leaked cables show. Syria suspected Israel of carrying out the murder of Brigadier General Mohammed Sleiman, a top security aide of President Bashar al-Assad, who was assassinated by a sniper in August of 2008, according to US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks. The killing empowered hardliners in Syria and put an end to moves by President al-Assad for rapprochement between Damascus and Tel Aviv, according to the cables.
Israel to publicly press for release of spy held in US. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to officially and publicly appeal to US President Barack Obama in the coming days for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American serving a life term in a US jail for spying on the US for Israel.

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WikiLeaks revelations keep coming, but few pay attention

December 22, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Most Western news outlets are now focusing almost exclusively on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Few are paying attention to the details of Assange’s rape allegations in Sweden, which have sparked an interesting —though limited— debate about possible links between Assange’s accusers and American intelligence. Even fewer are paying attention to the actual US diplomatic cable revelations by WikiLeaks, which keep appearing daily, mostly in British quality broadsheet The Guardian (The New York Times has largely lost interest at this point). One such revelation, published on Monday, concerns allegations by the Director of the Shabat, also known as Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service), that Palestinian group Fatah asked Israel to attack rival Palestinian group Hamas, in 2007. The leaked cable claims Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin told US diplomats that Fatah, the secular Palestinian nationalist faction that controls the West Bank, was “demoralized” and “desperate” to halt the rapid rise of Islamic Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Diskin further told US officials that Fatah understood it could only survive with Israeli support, and had thus directly “asked us [Israel] to attack Hamas”. Perhaps more importantly, the leaked cable appears to confirm intense speculation among some intelligence observers that Fatah is “actively gathering information on behalf of Israeli intelligence”. Read more of this post

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Israel silent on alleged Mossad spy ring uncovered in Egypt [updated]

December 21, 2010 by intelNews 6 Comments

Mossad seal

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israeli government officials have refused comment on charges announced yesterday against an alleged Mossad spy ring in neighboring Egypt. Less than a week after the discovery of what appear to be Israeli surveillance devices hidden in the mountains around Lebanese capital Beirut, two Israelis have been charged with espionage by the Egyptian government and are reportedly on the run. (Update: the names of the two Israelis, as reported on their arrest warrants, are Joseph Daymour and Idid Moushay). A third member of the alleged ring, Egyptian businessman Tareq Abdel Razeq Hussein Hassan, 37, will be facing similar charges in court soon, according to Egypt’s State Prosecutor Hisham Badawi. According to Badawi, Hassan set up an import-export business in Egypt to act as a front company, under instructions by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, after he met with Mossad officers in Thailand in 2007. He then allegedly used his company regional business activities as an alibi in order to travel to Syria and Lebanon and establish close contacts with telecommunications personnel throughout the region, in exchange for money from the Israelis. Read more of this post

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Mystery ‘spy devices’ found in Lebanon mountains

December 20, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Spy device

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A statement issued by the Lebanese armed forces last week details the discovery of at least two mysterious spy devices located in mountain ranges around the Lebanese capital Beirut. The discovery, which was apparently made early last week, concerns two allegedly Israeli-made electronic devices hidden under two fake boulders. According to the statement, the two devices were found carefully concealed in the mountain of Sannine, directly north of Beirut, and Barouk, which is adjacent to the city’s southern suburbs. There were also reports last Wednesday of a loud explosion in Sidon, a port in southern Lebanon, which some news media said was an operation by unknown assailants to destroy a third surveillance device before it was discovered by the Lebanese security forces. The two devices captured by the Lebanese forces consist of surveillance cameras, electronic transmitters, as well as satellite signal reception systems. One of them was even connected to a third fake boulder, containing long-lasting batteries, which powered the device. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #460

December 17, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Deported Russian spy gets Rosneft oil job. Andrei Bezrukov, who lived in the United States under the assumed name Donald Howard Heathfield, and was deported to Russia following his arrest by the FBI last summer, has started a new career. According Russian daily Kommersant, he is now an advisor at state-owned Rosneft, which Russia’s largest oil company.
WikiLeaks defectors to launch OpenLeaks alternative. Hacktivist Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who left whistleblower site WikiLeaks after disagreements with its founder, says he plans to launch OpenLeaks in the coming months as an alternative to the high-profile website.
Former spies see benefits in WikiLeaks disclosures. The Obama administration “is on the wrong side of history” in trying to silence whistleblower site WikiLeaks, according to a group of former analysts, intelligence officers and diplomats, which include retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.