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News you may have missed #443

October 25, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

First budget cuts in a decade for UK spy agencies. Spending on Britain’s intelligence agencies is set to fall by 7%, for the first time in more than a decade. This is be expected to force MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to cap staff numbers, merge some of their operations, and scrap plans to modernize some of their buildings. Looks like even more British spies will be moving to Australia.
South Koreans arrested for trying to defect to North. Three South Koreans, including a medical doctor, are being investigated after allegedly trying to defect to North Korea from China. It is extremely unusual for South Koreans or other nationals to attempt to defect to the North.
Plame calls Fair Game movie ‘accurate portrayal’. CIA agent Valerie Plame has said the movie Fair Game, based on her book, is a “really good, accurate portrayal of what we went through, both personally and in the political maelstrom that we live through”. The Bush administration was accused of blowing Plame’s cover as retaliation after her diplomat husband openly challenged the reasoning behind the Iraq War.

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Iran admits some of its nuclear scientists spied for the West

October 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ali Akbar Salehi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A top-level Iranian government official has admitted that some scientists and technicians in Iran’s nuclear energy program were successfully lured into spying for Israeli and Western intelligence agencies in the past. The disclosure, which was characterized as “stunning” by the Associated Press, marked the first-ever open admission by the Iranian government that the country’s nuclear energy program has been penetrated by foreign spies. It was made last weekend by Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Vice President and Director of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization. According to the Iranian government-controlled Fars News Agency, Vice President Salehi told an audience that individual scientists and technicians working in Iran’s nuclear program had used their access to classified relevant information to benefit from “foreign purchases and commercial affairs”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #442

October 21, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Israeli lobby intensifies Pollard release effort. As convicted spy Jonathan Pollard approaches 25 years behind bars, Israelis and others are renewing efforts to secure freedom for the former US Navy intelligence analyst, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for relaying military documents to Israel.
No compromise in WikiLeaks expose, concludes Pentagon. Much ado about nothing. The US Pentagon has concluded that no US intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs by the WikiLeaks website. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks is preparing to publish more revelations.
Niger ex-spy chief arrested. Seini Chekaraou, head of counterintelligence at the uranium-rich nation of Niger, has been arrested along with four senior members of the West African country’s ruling junta, allegedly on suspicion that they were “attempt[ing] to destabilize the [military] regime” that took power in the country last February.

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CIA sues former officer for publishing unauthorized book

October 21, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

The Human Factor

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The US Central Intelligence Agency has announced a lawsuit against a former officer who authored a book without the Agency’s prior approval. The book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (published in 2008), was written by a former CIA deep cover operative going by the pseudonym Ishmael Jones. Jones first submitted the book’s manuscript, which offers a highly unsympathetic account of the CIA, to the Agency’s review board. However, when it became clear that the board’s decision would have been unfavorable, he published the book without approval, thus breaking what the CIA claims is his legal obligation to abide by the review board’s decisions. The CIA filed a lawsuit against Jones in July, but only announced it this week. It seeks access to the financial proceeds of The Human Factor, as well as to prohibit further exposés from Jones. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #441

October 20, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

US officials admit terrorist suspect was DEA informant. US government officials have told The Washington Post what the world’s media has been saying for almost a year, namely that Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, who was arrested by the FBI in October for plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper, was working as a Drug Enforcement Administration informant while training with Islamist insurgents in Pakistan.
Ex-CIA officer decries Israeli policies. Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer at the CIA, has said in an interview that Israel’s policies in Palestine “are manifestly evil”.
Bomber who killed seven at CIA base was not vetted. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian al-Qaeda sympathiser who killed himself and seven CIA agents at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan in January had not been properly vetted, the CIA has said.

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British citizen among Mossad assassins intrigues investigators

October 20, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Lockwood

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Only a handful of the 33 members of an Israeli assassination squad, who killed a senior Hamas member in Dubai last January, carried non-fraudulent passports. Most of the assassins, who in all probability worked for Kidon, an elite assassination unit within Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, used forged British, Irish, German, Australian, and other passports. Dubai officials investigating the murder of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh have identified at least one British citizen among non-fraudulent passport holders in the Mossad assassination team: he is 62-year-old Christopher Lockwood (photo), who helped facilitate al-Mabhouh’s assassination by transporting some of the Mossad members around Dubai “in a [rented] white minivan with tinted windows”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #440 (USA edition)

October 19, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

US DNI scraps Intelligence Science Board. The newly appointed US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has disbanded an advisory panel set up after 9/11, and tasked with providing him with scientific advice, ranging from nuclear physics to forensics to the psychology of interrogation. There are rumors that Clappers intends to disband another 19 advisory boards, believing them to be inefficient.
Analysis: Uses and misuses of intelligence in four US wars. Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman assesses the success of the CIA’s intelligence analysis by measuring the Agency’s performance before and during four controversial wars: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
US Army awards medal to 95-year-old ex-OSS agent. George Vujnovich, a former agent of the US Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, is to be awarded the US Army’s Bronze Star for helping rescue 512 American airmen in the former Yugoslavia during World War II.

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CIA sued for allegedly discriminating against covert officer

October 19, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who served the Agency in a covert capacity, has sued his former employer claiming he was discriminated against because he is married to an Asian woman. According to the lawsuit, filed recently at a San Francisco court, covert CIA employee Walter Roule claims the his CIA supervisor favored junior officers with Caucasian wives for overseas postings, thus giving them more opportunities for promotion. Roule also claims that his supervisor threatened the careers of other CIA officers of Asian background, or with Asian partners, if they supported Roule’s discrimination complaint. In his court filing, the former covert CIA officer alleges that the discriminatory behavior started in 2006, when he was covertly posted in “the Northern District of California in a hybrid position”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #439

October 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Book critical of Russian FSB published. In a new book entitled The New Nobility, Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan claim that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is less repressive but ultimately more dangerous than its predecessor, the Soviet KGB.
Senior-most North Korean defector dies. Hwang Jang-yop, the theoretician behind North Korea’s Songun and Juche state doctrines, who defected to South Korea in 1997, has died at his home in Seoul, aged 87. Last April, South Korea charged two North Korean government agents with attempting to assassinate Hwang.
‘Low morale’ leads MI6 spies to apply for Australian jobs. More than 50 spies at Britain’s MI6 have allegedly responded to a recruitment drive by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). According to insiders, there has been growing uncertainty among MI6’s 2,600 staff over looming budget cuts and inquiries into alleged complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects.

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Israel may have helped FBI nab American Jewish informant

October 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Akamai logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The government of Israel may have tipped off US federal agents about the activities of an American Jew, who was arrested by the FBI earlier this month for sharing confidential information with an undercover FBI agent. Elliot Doxer, a 42-year-old finance department employee of Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies, is charged with providing inside company information to a Bureau agent posing as an Israeli spy. According to court papers, the FBI counterintelligence operation against Doxer began after he emailed Israel’s consulate in Boston, in 2006, identifying himself as a Jewish American “offering the little [information] I may have […] to help our homeland and our war against our enemies”. A year later, an FBI counterintelligence team posing as Israeli Mossad operatives contacted Doxer and offered to satisfy his request for $3,000 in return for inside information on Akamai, a company whose role in the architecture of Internet’s worldwide infrastructure is instrumental. But how did the FBI know about Doxer’s attempt to contact the Israeli consulate in Boston? Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #438 (Stuxnet edition)

October 5, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Stuxnet cyber superweapon moves to China. The Stuxnet computer virus, dubbed the world’s “first cyber superweapon” by experts, and which may have been designed to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, has found a new target: China. The computer worm has infecting millions of computers around the country, Chinese state media reported this week.
Stuxnet worm heralds new era of global cyberwar. The Stuxnet worm, which Iran admits has affected 30,000 of its computers, was a sophisticated attack almost certainly orchestrated by a state. It also appears that intelligence operatives were used to deliver the worm to its goal.
Israeli cyber unit allegedly responsible for Iran computer worm. Some experts claim that Unit 8200, an elite Israeli military group responsible for cyberwarfare, has been accused of creating a virus that has crippled Iran’s computer systems and stopped work at its newest nuclear power station.

[Research credit to Arthur Sbygniew]

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Iran announces arrests of alleged nuclear spies

October 4, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Heidar Moslehi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Iranian government has announced the arrest of an unspecified number of alleged nuclear spies, reportedly in connection with a sophisticated virus that infected computers used in Iran’s nuclear energy program. The arrests were publicized on Sunday by Heidar Moslehi, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence, who said those arrested had helped facilitate the spread of the so-called Stuxnet virus last June. The malicious program, which appears to have been designed to sabotage sensitive hardware components found specifically in nuclear centrifuges, has infected at least 100,000 computer systems worldwide, most of which are located in Iran. Speaking to Iranian media, Moslehi accused Israel and the United States of trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear energy program, but noted that Iran’s intelligence services have resumed “complete supervision of cyberspace” and will successfully prevent “any leak or destruction” of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear research and development program by outside forces. But elsewhere in Tehran, Hamid Alipour, an Iranian government Senior Information and Technology official, admitted that technical experts are still working on containing the virus, which appears to be mutating. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #437

October 1, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Huge demand for spy balloons in Afghan war. The hottest US weapon in Afghanistan lacks a lethal capability, floats thousands of feet in the air and doesn’t carry troops. It’s a spy balloon. Similar contraptions have been making appearances at the Lebanese-Israeli border.
One, two, many WikiLeaks. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a defector from the WikiLeaks website has said he has decided to jump ship and is thinking of creating a competitor site to Julian Assange’s whistleblower platform.
Is publication of classified info a criminal act? When WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of classified US military records concerning the war in Afghanistan last July, did it commit a criminal act under US law? A US Congressional Research Service report argues that it did not.

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News you may have missed #436

September 30, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Iran crosses into Iraq to hit bombing suspects. Iranian forces crossed into neighboring Iraq and killed 30 Kurdish fighters from a group it says was involved in last week’s bombing of a military parade, Iran’s state TV reported Sunday. The group in Iran is a wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and sometimes operates inside friendly territory in Iraqi Kurdistan.
German trial of Libyan spies starts in Berlin. Two Libyans, identified only as 42-year-old ‘Adel Ab’ and 46-year-old ‘Adel Al’, have gone on trial in Berlin, accused of gathering information on Libyan opposition members living in Germany. Prosecutors say the spying was “on a personal level” and “there was no technical eavesdropping involved”.
Nine years after 9/11, US intel sharing still hobbled. More than nine years after 9/11, America’s intelligence-sharing system continues to be impeded by legal and technical difficulties. The newly created National Counterterrorism Center

(NCTC) is a good case in point.

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Experts see nation-state behind sophisticated computer virus attack

September 29, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Ahmadinejad

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Computer forensics specialists are split as to the purpose and initial target of a sophisticated computer virus that infected computers used in the Iranian government’s nuclear energy program. The virus, named Stuxnet, was discovered in Iran in June by a Belarusian computer security firm doing business in the Islamic Republic. It has since infected at least 100,000 computer systems in countries such as Brazil, India, Russia and the United States. But the primary target of the virus appears to have been the Iranian nuclear energy program, specifically computers located at the Islamic Republic’s nuclear reactor facility in Bushehr and the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Several commentators, including Wired magazine, dispute the existence of any evidence pointing to a clear target inside Iran. But Israeli media maintain that computers at Natanz were the primary target of Stuxnet, and that subsequent infections at computer labs at Bushehr were in fact an unintended side effect. Read more of this post