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Comment: Are Clinton’s Cyberattack Protests Hypocritical?

January 27, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Hillary Clinton

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS* | intelNews.org |
The Chinese have accused the US government of hypocrisy in criticizing Beijing for its alleged role in organized hacking attacks, which recently drove Google to abandon its operations in China. Speaking last Thursday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued that “[c]ountries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation”. But a subsequent editorial in government-owned The People’s Daily essentially said that China is not the only country that engages in cyberwarfare; the US does it too. Is this true? Most likely, yes. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, computer hacking, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, cyberwar, Cyprus, economic espionage, former Yugoslavia, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Joseph Fitsanakis, NSA, Russia, Slobodan Milosevic, United States

News you may have missed #0269

January 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

LeT planning paraglide attacks in India? Indian intelligence officials suspect that the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks, is planning another audacious strike on the country, this time from the air, using suicide bombers flying paragliders. The group is thought to have purchased 50 paragliding kits from Europe for this purpose.
Trial of double agent begins in Spain. The trial has begun in Spain of Roberto Flórez García, a former employee of Spain’s National Intelligence Center (CNI), who was arrested in September for giving classified documents to Russian intelligence, via Petr Melnikov, political attaché at the Russian Embassy in Madrid.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2008 Mumbai attacks, double agents, espionage, India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, lawsuits, Madrid (Spain), News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, Petr Melnikov, Roberto Flórez García, Russia, Russian embassy in Spain, Spain

Uproar as UK government classifies details of weapon expert’s death

January 26, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Dr. David Kelly

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Public speculation over the alleged suicide of UK biological weapons expert Dr. David Kelly is bound to increase, after a senior state official secretly ordered that details of his death be kept secret for 70 years. Dr. Kelly, a British Ministry of Defense scientist, who had been employed by the United Nations as a weapons inspector, caused a major stir by becoming one of the sources of a 2003 BBC report disputing the British government’s claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons at 45 minutes’ notice. He was later called to appear before a Parliamentary committee investigating the government’s claims about Iraq’s purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’. But on July 18, 2003, four days after appearing before the committee, Dr. Kelly’s was found dead at a wooded area near his home. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with BBC, biological weapons, British Houses of Parliament, David Kelly, government secrecy, intelligence classification, Iraq War, Iraq weapons of mass destruction, Lord Hutton, News, scientific intelligence, suicides, suspicious deaths, UK, UK Ministry of Defence

Canada’s ambassador in Iran was ‘CIA asset’ in 1970s

January 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ken Taylor

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Canada’s former ambassador to Iran has admitted that he and the embassy’s head of security secretly worked for the CIA in the late 1970s. Ambassador Ken Taylor and Canadian fellow-diplomat Jim Edward became the CIA’s “most valuable asset[s]” in Iran, following the November 4, 1979, seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by student groups allied to the Islamic Revolution. The revelation was made public last weekend in a new book entitled Our Man in Tehran, by Trent University historian Robert Wright, which examines intelligence aspects of the Iranian Revolution. In it, Dr. Wright says that ambassador Taylor became “the de facto CIA station chief” in the Iranian capital, after he and Edward accepted an American request to do so, which was communicated personally to Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark by US President Jimmy Carter. Until he left the country, on January 27, 1980, Taylor and Edward provided the US with “aggressive intelligence” and an operations base for CIA agents, authorized the CIA’s use of false Canadian travel documents, and helped the Agency plan an “armed incursion” into Iran. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 1979 Iranian Revolution, Canada, Canadian embassy in Iran, CIA, diplomacy, Iran, Jim Edward, Jimmy Carter, Joe Clark, Ken Taylor, News, Robert Wright, travel documentation, United States, US embassy in Iran, Wesley Wark

News you may have missed #0268

January 25, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Lithuanian foreign minister resigns over CIA black sites. After Lithuania’s intelligence director, Povilas Malakauskas, who resigned last month following the revelation that two CIA black sites operated in Vilnius between 2004 and 2005, the country’s foreign minister, Vygaudas Usackas, has said he will step down in connection with the case.
UK prime minister urges co-operation between spy agencies. It is not just US intelligence agencies that seem to have trouble cooperating with each other. Britain’s leader Gordon Brown says MI5, MI6 and GCHQ need “to be able seamlessly to track and disrupt terrorist activity and movements, whether within the UK or beyond”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, GCHQ, Gordon Brown, intelligence cooperation, Lithuania, MI5, MI6, News, news you may have missed, Povilas Malakauskas, resignations, secret prisons, UK, United States, Vilnius (Lithuania), Vygaudas Usackas

Analysis: NASA Spy’s Israel Ties Deeper Than Initially Thought

January 25, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

S.D. Nozette

By I. ALLEN and J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
New court documents show that Stewart David Nozette, an American scientist arrested for attempted espionage during an FBI sting last October, had deeper ties to Israel than initially believed. Nozette, a former employee of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was arrested for attempting to share classified US government data with an undercover FBI officer posing as a handler of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. At the time of Nozette’s arrest, the US Justice Department argued for keeping him in jail, as he “might flee to Israel if not confined”. Interestingly, however, US officials said at the time that Israel had no role in Nozette’s attempted espionage, and the FBI’s own indictment admitted that the Bureau “does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under US laws in this case”. But is this so? We examine the increasing complexities in the Stewart Nozette espionage case, as well as its significance for US-Israeli relations. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with espionage, FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, FBI National Security Branch, Ian Allen, informants, Israel, Israel Aerospace Industries, Jonathan Jay Pollard, Joseph Fitsanakis, lawsuits, Mossad, NASA, Stewart David Nozette, United States

News you may have missed #0267

January 25, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

US Pentagon outsources kidnap rescue missions. In the US military, few missions are considered more important than rescuing missing or kidnapped troops. So it’s more than a little odd that US forces in Iraq have decided to outsource that operation to Blackbird Technologies Inc., a private company, for $11.3 million a year.
US to give spy drones to Pakistan. The United States will provide a dozen unarmed Shadow aerial spy drones to Pakistan for the first time. As we have reported before, the Pakistanis are trying to build their own drones, but the process is taking much longer than initially planned.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with abductions, Blackbird Technologies, intelligence outsourcing, News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, rescue operations, Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle, United States

FBI wiretaps broke the law thousands of times from 2002 to 2006

January 25, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

FBI memos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Considering the extent of illegal domestic telephone surveillance practiced by US intelligence agencies after 9/11, the disclosure of yet another wiretap scandal can hardly surprise anyone. But the latest revelation by The Washington Post points to an alarming collusion between FBI agents, their supervisors, as well as telephone industry employees, all of whom consciously disregarded even the severely lax standards of the USA PATRIOT Act. The paper says it acquired several internal FBI memos (.pdf), through “a government employee outside the FBI, who gained access to them”. These memos appear to show widespread abuse of more than 2,000 US telephone call records (but not content, it appears), which FBI agents obtained between 2002 and 2006, by presenting telephone companies with fake National Security Letters (NSLs). The NSLs claimed the records were required for emergency counterterrorism investigations. But in reality these investigations bore no connection to terrorism, and the NSLs were never followed up with actual subpoenas, as they were supposed to. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with civil liberties, communications interception, FBI, National Security Letters, News, telephone surveillance, telephony industry, United States, US Electronic Communications Privacy Act, USA PATRIOT Act, Valerie Caproni, warrantless communications interception, whistleblowing

News you may have missed #0266

January 24, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Convicted US Pentagon official’s mom introduced him to Chinese spy. Retired US Air Force officer James W. Fondren Jr., who was convicted in September of selling classified US government information to China, was apparently introduced to his Chinese spy handler, Tai Shen Kuo, by his mom.
CIA contractor flying surveillance missions over Haiti. Evergreen International Aviation, a controversial Oregon-based CIA contractor, is flying at least one ScanEagle surveillance drone over Haiti, supposedly on disaster recovery duty.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with airborne surveillance, China, CIA, espionage, Evergreen International Aviation, Haiti, intelligence outsourcing, James Wilbur Fondren Jr, News, news you may have missed, ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle, Tai Shen Kuo, United States, US Air Force, US DoD

Analysis: The meaning of China’s cyber-attack on Google

January 24, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Google

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Google’s recent decision to close down its venture business in China, after its operations there repeatedly came under cyber-attack, has received plenty of media attention. But most non-experts find it difficult to understand why these cyber-attacks were important enough to cause Google to abandon what is admittedly one of the world’s most lucrative online user markets. An excellent analysis in The New York Times explains the significance and meaning of the cyber-attacks. It turns out that, traditionally, cyber-rogues have been interested in detecting or building back doors (known as Trojan Horses) in commercial software, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Word, in order to replicate them, and make money selling pirate copies. But the types of attacks that caused Google’s flight from China were different. The instigators of these attacks, which were very sophisticated, seemed to want to gain access to widely used Google applications so that they could spy on their users. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Adobe, Analysis, China, corporate espionage, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, Google

News you may have missed #0265

January 23, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Plans for motion picture on life of famous Israeli spy. A US production company plans to make a feature motion picture about the life of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who operated in Damascus in the 1960s until he was executed in 1965. Cohen is known as the greatest Israeli spy of all time. He penetrated Syria’s power hubs and rose through the ranks to become part of the country’s ruling establishment.
CIA report ‘a declaration of war’, says Venezuela. President Hugo Chávez said on Wednesday that the latest entry for Venezuela in the CIA World Factbook represents a declaration of war on his country. The CIA publication describes Chávez’s government as an administration that “purports to alleviate social ills while at the same time attacking globalization and undermining regional stability”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, CIA World Factbook, Eli Cohen, espionage, Hugo Chávez, Israel, motion pictures, News, news you may have missed, Syria, United States, Venezuela

Venezuela silent as Colombia expels two alleged spies

January 23, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Valledupar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On Tuesday, the Colombian government announced the expulsion of two alleged Venezuelan intelligence agents, reportedly for conducting espionage operations on Colombian soil. The two, Jose Vicente Marquez and Diego Jose Palomino, were nabbed by counterintelligence agents of Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (DAS) in the northwest city of Valledupar, just a few miles from the Colombian-Venezuelan border. The two were reportedly found in possession of video footage of homes and vehicles, as well as “other types of material”, which so far remains unspecified. DAS director, Felipe Muñoz, said the two alleged agents appeared to be illegals –i.e. not affiliated with the Venezuelan embassy in Bogotá– having entered the country clandestinely on January 12, via Paraguachon, on the northernmost tip of the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Colombia, DAS (Colombia), Diego Jose Palomino, espionage, Felipe Muñoz, illegal residents, Jose Vicente Marquez, Latin America, News, Paraguachon (Colombia), Valledupar (Colombia), Venezuela, Venezuelan embassy in Colombia, Venezuelan Ministry of External Relations

News you may have missed #0264

January 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

India jails two Pakistanis on spying charges. India has jailed Adil Anjum Nazir Ahmed and Abdul Shakur Hafiz, claiming they spied on behalf of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. The two were arrested in Lucknow in 2006.
US Pentagon re-examines PsyOp doctrine. The field of Psychological Operations (PsyOps) is among the oldest of military disciplines, but a new US Department of Defense report on the subject shows that the DoD continues to wrestle with basic definitional issues.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abdul Shakur Hafiz, Adil Anjum Nazir Ahmed, espionage, India, ISI, Lucknow (India), News, news you may have missed, Pakistan, psyops, United States, US DoD

Analysis: US spy turf-war flares up on Capitol Hill

January 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Wednesday’s testimony by US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, received plenty of media coverage. But few have examined the ongoing public hearings by three separate Senate committees on the Christmas Day bomb plot in light of the turf battles taking place between US intelligence agencies. An excellent article by Politico’s Kassie Hunt does just that, by pointing out that the hearing proceedings should be viewed in light of the “three-way turf war among Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter”. Capitol Hill lawmakers appear to be aware of this: Hunt’s article quotes Peter King, the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s senior Republican member, who warns that US intelligence agencies will use the public hearings to place blame about the Christmas Day bomber fiasco on each other. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, CIA, Dennis Cutler Blair, DNI, intelligence oversight, Leon Panetta, Michael Leiter, Peter King, turf wars, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, United States, US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, US National Counterterrorism Center, US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

News you may have missed #0263

January 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Up to 30,000 Chinese spies in Germany, say newspapers. According to German media, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution says that up to “thirty thousand Chinese residents residing in Germany are spies”, and that “60 percent of industrial spies residing in Germany are Chinese”.
Israeli agencies see Turkey moving toward radicalization. Israel’s chief intelligence official, General Amos Yadlin, has told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Turkey’s recent diplomatic moves are indicative of its shift toward radical Islam.