Russia jails man for passing military secrets to US Pentagon

October 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

Iskander missile

Iskander missile

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A Serb national was given an eight-year sentence by a Russian court earlier today, for allegedly passing classified information on Russian defense projects to an agent of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Agents with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, arrested the 61-year-old man, named Aleksandar Georgijevic, at a Moscow airport in 2007, as he was reportedly trying to leave Russia. They accused him of giving secret documents to Farid Rafi, whom the Russians claim was “working in the interests of the intelligence agency of the US defense ministry”. Georgijevic’s trial took place behind closed doors. But Russian media report that he began collecting classified information in as early as 1998, focusing primarily on the Russian military’s R-500 supersonic cruise missile, as well as the Iskander, Blokada and Khrizantema-C  tactical missiles. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0145

October 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Alleged Norwegian spies appeal Congo sentence. Two Norwegian citizens arrested last May in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on spying charges have begun an appeal against their sentence. The DRC has ordered Norway to pay $60 million in reparations for the spying incident, but Oslo says the two men had no ties to the Norwegian government.
  • Mother of Israeli-handled spy sues government. The mother of Muhamad Said Sabr, an Egyptian nuclear engineer convicted in 2007 of spying for Israel, has filed a damage suit against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ambassador to Egypt Shalom Cohen. She claims mental damage as a result of her son’s being recruited by the Mossad.
  • Pakistan defends spy agencies after week of carnage. Pakistan defended its intelligence agencies Tuesday after a bloody week which saw 125 people killed in a wave of attacks blamed on Taliban militants. Interior Minister Rehman Malik alleged the country’s spy services “foiled at least a hundred attacks before they were carried out”. But local media have reported that the threat to army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi was known in advance by police.

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Russia accuses Georgian intelligence of aiding Islamists

October 15, 2009 by 1 Comment

A.V. Bortnikov

A.V. Bortnikov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has accused Georgian intelligence and security services of aiding anti-Moscow militants in Russia’s southern republics. Speaking before Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee on Tuesday, Alexander V. Bortnikov said that the FSB’s counterintelligence department had seized a number of “audio reports” from Islamist militants active in the Russian Caucasus, which allegedly show that a number of “al-Qaeda emissaries” mediate between militants in Russia and “Georgian special services”. The latter, said Bortnikov, train militants from Chechnya, Dagestan and North Caucasus, and supply them with funds, weapons and explosives. But the Washington-based Radio Free Europe has quoted David Bakradze, the speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, as denying Bortnikov’s “groundless” allegations. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0144

October 15, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Cuban Five convict’s sentence cut to 22 years. As intelNews reported on October 12, Antonio Guerrero, a member of the Cuban Five spy ring, has had his life sentence cut to 22 years, following a successful appeal. Given the time he has already served since his 1998 arrest, and benefits for good behavior, Guerrero could be released in seven years. The Cuban Five were sentenced in 2001 for spying on the US for Cuba.
  • Was British MP a Czech agent during Cold War? A recently published book on MI5’s history by Cambridge historian Dr. Christopher Andrew has reignited rumors that Labour Party parliamentarian John Stonehouse worked as an agent for the Czech StB intelligence agency in the 1960s.
  • West German spies collected East German jokes during Cold War. West German spies diligently recorded popular East German jokes about communism during the Cold War, in an attempt to gain insights into the public mood, according to recently released intelligence files.

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News you may have missed #0143

October 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Documents shed light on secret US-Japan nuclear deal. The George Washington University’s National Security Archive has published a number of declassified US government documents, as well as interviews with and memoirs of diplomats, which appear to confirm the existence of a rumored secret nuclear agreement between Washington and Tokyo. Both sides have for years denied the existence of the agreement, which is said to allow US military vessels and aircraft carrying nuclear weapons to enter Japanese territorial waters, as long as Japan is protected by the US nuclear umbrella.
  • Man killed by Houston Police was not our agent, says CIA. Roland Vincent Carnaby, who was shot dead by police on a Houston highway at the end of a high-speed chase in 2008, was not an undercover CIA operative, Langley has said. It also said that it holds no files or other materials relating Carnaby. But Carnaby’s widow’s lawyer, Randall Kallinena, insists the deceased did “a whole lot of counterintelligence work at the highest level where it was helpful to the United States”.

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Senator says Obama employs Bush tactics on spy secrecy

October 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Democratic senator has alleged that the Obama Administration is copying the Bush Administration’s tactics by “stonewalling and road blocking” Congress on intelligence issues. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), the only Senator to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act during its first vote, said during a nomination hearing on Tuesday that he suspects the White House is still withholding information from Congressional intelligence panel members. Feingold voiced the allegation during the nomination hearing in Congress of David Gompert, incoming deputy director of national intelligence, who will serve under director of national intelligence Dennis C. Blair. In recent months, Senator Feingold has emerged as one of the most vocal Democratic critics of the Obama administration’s policies on intelligence and security. Read more of this post

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Mussolini was paid by Britain’s MI5, archives reveal

October 14, 2009 by 1 Comment

Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Cambridge professor has unearthed archived documents showing that money from MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence and security agency, helped Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini lunch his political career. Dr. Peter Martland, Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, said MI5’s Rome station, which at the time was staffed by 100 British intelligence officers, paid Mussolini £100 a week (around £6,000 or $9,600 a week in today’s money) starting “from the autumn of 1917 [and] for at least a year”. The payments, which were authorized by MI5’s director in Rome, Sir Samuel Hoare (later Lord Templewood), were aimed to assist Mussolini’ newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, propagandize in favor of Italy’s continued fighting in World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, of which Britain was also a member. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0142

October 14, 2009 by 2 Comments

  • Egypt assisting Yemen in alleged Iranian spy infiltration. Egypt has allegedly provided Yemen with information on Iran’s intelligence activities targeting it and other Arab and African states in the region, according to Egyptian daily Akhbar Al-Youm. Meanwhile, the appeals of two Yemeni nationals convicted last October of spying for Iran are to be heard Monday in Yemeni capital Sana’a. Yemen, a major intelligence center in the Arab world, is probably the most underreported front in Washington’s so-called “war on terrorism”.
  • New book examines Operation GREENUP. A new book, They Dared Return, by Patrick K. O’Donnell, examines the operations of five German Jews, who returned to WWII Germany for Operation GREENUP, an espionage project funded by the German Operational Group of the US Office of Strategic Services –forerunner of the CIA.

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US wont’ share al-Qaeda intelligence, say Pakistani spies

October 13, 2009 by 1 Comment

Quetta, Pakistan

Quetta, Pakistan

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A number of senior Pakistani security officials have accused US spy agencies of systematically withholding from their Pakistani counterparts actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda and Taliban activities in Pakistan. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the officials complained to The Washington Times that the last time the CIA shared actionable intelligence on al-Qaeda with the government of Pakistan was in 2007. They also said that recent public assertions by US officials that senior al-Qaeda leaders are hiding in Quetta, Pakistan, have not been followed with corresponding actionable intelligence by US spy agencies. The allegations shed further light on the increasingly severed intelligence relationship between Washington and Islamabad, which began shortly before the 2008 ousting of American-supported Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0141

October 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Irish leader used British-supplied bugs to spy on opponents: book

October 13, 2009 by 2 Comments

Charles Haughey

Charles Haughey

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Charles Haughey, Ireland’s Taoiseach (head of government) in the late 1970s, and on two instances in the 1980s, used audio surveillance devices supplied by a British security officer to spy on his domestic political opponents. This allegation is made by George Clarke, a former officer in the Special Branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the name of the British police force in Northern Ireland until 2001), in his book Border Crossing, which was published last week. In it, Clarke says he purchased the devices at a specialist store in London, in 1979, and later lent them to an intelligence officer in the Garda, the police of the Republic of Ireland, for use in spy operations against the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Several months later, however, when Clarke requested that the devices be returned to him, he was told that they were in the possession of Charles Haughey, and that he was so fond of them that he simply refused to give them back. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0140

October 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • CIA Intellipedia gurus get Homeland Security Medal. Don Burke and Sean Dennehy, the CIA agents behind Intellipedia, have been awarded a medal for “promoting and expanding information-sharing in the Intelligence Community”. As intelNews noted last August, Intellipedia, the intelligence community’s version of Wikipedia, has grown markedly since its formal launch in 2006. It now averages more than 15,000 edits per day and is home to 900,000 pages and 100,000 user accounts.
  • Cuban Five resentencing delayed. A US federal judge has accepted requests from the lawyers of Antonio Guerrero, a member of the Cuban Five spy ring, to delay their resentencing, after the US government refused to turn over any national security damage assessments in the case. Washington accuses the Five of spying on the US for Cuba. But an appeals court ruled earlier this year that the sentences they received (ranging from 19 years to life) were too long. It appears that Guerrero’s sentence will be reduced from life to 20 years behind bars.
  • Was Christopher Columbus a spy? An independent researcher is raising eyebrows by suggesting that Columbus was a Portuguese spy who knew exactly what he was doing when he supposedly “got lost” in the Atlantic in 1492.

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Analysis: Major spy overhaul underway in South Africa

October 12, 2009 by 1 Comment

Moe Shaik

Moe Shaik

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In July, Laurie Nathan, a former member of South Africa’s ministerial Review Commission on Intelligence, warned that a steadily declining culture of accountability in South Africa’s spy services was threatening the country’s constitutional order. Last week, based on the Commission’s findings and policy suggestions, the country’s minster for state security, Siyabonga Cwele, announced a “major restructuring” of South Africa’s security services. Already, the first generation of pro-ANC intelligence agents, who staffed the post-apartheid South African intelligence apparatus, is on its way out. The departures of Manana Manzini, who until recently directed the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Loyiso Jafta, of the National Communications Centre, and Taki Netshitenzhe of the Electronic Communications Security, were accentuated by the retirement of ANC “superspy” Hilton Tim Dennis, who headed for many years the NIA’s Counter Espionage unit. Read more of this post

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Clinton’s mysterious comment raises eyebrows in New Zealand

October 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A comment by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton following a meeting with a senior New Zealand government official has raised questions by intelligence observers in the pacific nation. Speaking last Friday after an official meeting in Washington with her New Zealand counterpart, minister of foreign affairs Murray McCully, Clinton said the US “very much” values its diplomatic partnership with New Zealand. She then proceeded to say “[w]e are resuming our intelligence-sharing cooperation, which we think is very significant”. This latter comment struck many intelligence observers in Wellington as odd, and for a good reason: nobody was under the impression that the US-NZ intelligence cooperation had been disrupted. The mystery deepened when New Zealand prime minister John Key refused to explain Hillary Clinton’s remark when asked, saying simply “I just don’t comment on issues of national security”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0139

October 12, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Pakistan tells US diplomat to be quiet. Perturbed by the recent remarks of US Deputy Chief of Mission in Islamabad, Gerald Feierstein, that top al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are presently hiding in Quetta, Pakistan has summoned the US diplomat and demanded that he stops discussing intelligence issues in media. The move follows a closed-door meeting last week between the director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Ahmed Shuja Pasha, and CIA director Leon Panetta.
  • Analysis: HUMINT worries al-Qaeda more than drone assassinations. The CIA-operated drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan get all the headlines. But what’s really worrying al Qaeda are the agents in their midst, says Adam Rawnsley of Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog.
  • Chinese spymaster complains about US news leak. It has emerged that Major General Yang Hui, China’s most senior military intelligence official, recently made a secret visit to the US and complained to the Pentagon over the US press leak on the Chinese submarine that secretly shadowed the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier in 2006. He said senior Chinese leaders suspect the Pentagon deliberately disclosed the encounter as part of an effort to send a “tough” message to China’s military.

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