News you may have missed #688

March 2, 2012 by 3 Comments

U-2 surveillance aircraftBy IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
►►Analysis: StratFor email leaks offer frightening view of government intelligence. As promised in December, WikiLeaks has begun to release a stash of emails related to the modus operandi of the private intelligence sector, using Texas-based StratFor as a case study. The CIA has long used private intelligence firms for ‘black ops’, allowing for plausible deniability in the event that an operation goes pear-shaped and public accountability threatens. But these emails suggest that there’s now far more to the incompetence of America’s intelligence services than meets the eye.
►►US still using U-2 to spy on North Korea. For more than 35 years, the U-2 has been one of Washington’s most reliable windows into military movements inside North Korea. Unlike satellites, U-2s can be redirected at short notice to loiter over target areas. Last month, the US Air Force postponed at least until 2020 any plans to replace them with costlier, unmanned Global Hawks. Now, as the world watches for signs of instability during North Korea’s transition to a new leadership, the U-2 operations are as important ―or more so― than ever.
►►Thin line separates cyberspies from cybercriminals. New research appears to raise questions over the conventional wisdom that pure nation-state cyberspies rarely dabble in traditional financial cybercrime. Dell SecureWorks Wednesday shared details of a complex study it conducted of two families of espionage malware that have infected government ministry computers in Vietnam, Brunei, Myanmar, Europe, and at an embassy in China.

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News you may have missed #687

February 28, 2012 by 3 Comments

Hans BlixBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Analysis: Is Obama abusing the US Espionage Act? Prosecutors may still attempt to indict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, though their case will likely depend on exactly how he received his information. But, WikiLeaks aside, the Obama administration has made increasing use of the act to clamp down on whistleblowers.
►►Ex-head admits IAEA does work with spies (shock, horror). The International Atomic Energy Agency, which acts as the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations has been closely cooperating with the world’s spy agencies, including on Iran and Syria, for years, according to its former director. Hans Blix told RT that the IAEA’s cooperation with the world’s intelligences started following the Iraqi crisis of the 1990s. “Of course, intelligence can always try to fool everybody”, he said. “Half of the information may be true, half of it may be disinformation, and therefore they have to examine it critically”.
►►Afghanistan arrests diplomat on spying charges. Afghanistan’s State Intelligence Agency (KHAD) on Monday said that a senior foreign ministry diplomat and three other government officials had been arrested over charges of spying for Iran and Pakistan. The men were detained “on charges of spying for neighboring regions” and “the arrests were made with concrete evidence”, KHAD’s spokesman, Lutfullah Mashal, said. An unnamed source in the same agency also claimed that the deputy head of KHAD’s Asia desk and two government employees had been arrested in a similar incident in the eastern Afghan province Nangarhar a month before.

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News you may have missed #686

February 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

Folkert Arie van KoutrikBy IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
►►WikiLeaks to publish 5 million StratFor emails. In its latest high-profile data dump, WikiLeaks is to reveal five million internal and external emails from StratFor today. In a press release late Sunday, Wikileaks said the emails “show StratFor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods”, and reveal “how StratFor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world”.
►►Analysis: Blurred line between espionage and truth under Obama. “There is plenty of authorized leaking going on, but this particular boat leaks from the top. Leaks from the decks below, especially ones that might embarrass the administration, have been dealt with very differently […]. And it’s worth pointing out that the administration’s emphasis on secrecy comes and goes depending on the news. Reporters were immediately and endlessly briefed on the “secret” operation that successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every time there is a successful mission”.
►►Nazis had spy in MI5 but failed to use him. Dutchman Folkert Arie van Koutrik was the first German agent to ever infiltrate MI5 when he was employed by them in 1940, just a month before Anthony Blunt, who was later exposed as a Soviet spy. Koutrik had already worked for Abwehr, the German secret service, before the war as a double agent with MI6 in Europe and exposed some of the UK’s top agents. But, incredibly, after he moved to the UK and joined MI5 all contact appears to have broken off.

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News you may have missed #685

February 24, 2012 by Leave a comment

Aleksandr Z. AnkvabBy IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
►►Abkhazia President survives assassination attempt. Unidentified assassins tried on Wednesday to kill Aleksandr Z. Ankvab, the president of Abkhazia, a Russian-backed rebel enclave of Georgia. The assailants used automatic rifles, grenade launchers and a powerful roadside bomb in an attack that raised fresh questions about Moscow’s ability to preserve order there.
►►Groups object to CIA declassification charges. Open government advocates are protesting a recently adopted CIA policy that allows the agency to charge up to $72 an hour to review requests to declassify secret records. The effect “will be to price the public out of submitting” requests for “mandatory declassification review,” the American Library Association, Sunlight Foundation and more than 30 other organizations said in a letter Thursday to CIA Director David Petraeus.
►►Analysis: Fallout from Syrian colonel’s abduction in Turkey. The smokescreen surrounding the abduction of Syrian Col. Hussein Harmush, who defected to Turkey in June 2011 before being handed over to the Syrian secret service in September 2011, has begun to clear in recent weeks following a judicial probe. Claims that Turkey’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), was involved in handing Harmush over to Syria were finally confirmed on February 2 when the Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a written statement saying one MİT agent had been arrested for questioning and further MİT officials had been called to testify as “suspects” in the scandalous repatriation case.

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Analysis: The How and Why of Modern Assassinations

February 20, 2012 by 5 Comments

Bomb blast site in New Delhi, IndiaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Reports on the discovery last week of a synchronized plan to attack Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia, and Thailand, are still unfolding. At least four people —including the wife of an Israeli diplomat— were injured in New Delhi, when a bomb ripped through a van belonging to the Israeli embassy there. Another bomb was defused by Georgian counterterrorist forces after it was found fastened under an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in Tbilisi. And in Bangkok, two Iranian nationals were arrested after a bomb they were manufacturing exploded prematurely in a rented house in the Thai capital. In an interview I gave this past weekend to The Journal, one of Ireland’s most popular newsmagazines, I noted that the use of targeted assassinations as a means of achieving broader political goals is, of course, not new. But there are definite trends that we have been able to see developing during the past decade or so. For starters, even though the methods of assassination vary greatly, there are common trends one can point out, particularly in the organizational infrastructure of state-sponsored assassination operations. There is, to be precise, an increasing complexity in the way these operations are planned prior to their execution by specialized hit teams. I told The Journal’s interviewer, Susan Ryan, that the increasing sophistication of these types of operations can be appreciated by comparing older examples with case studies that are more recent. Take, for instance, the Black September killings, conducted by Israeli intelligence in response to the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Read more of this post

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Research: Spies increasingly using Facebook, Twitter to gather data

February 13, 2012 by 5 Comments

Spying on social networkingBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
During the past four years, this blog has reported several incidents pointing to the increasing frequency with which spy agencies of various countries are utilizing social networking media as sources of tactical intelligence. But are we at a point where we can speak of a trend? In other words, is the rapid rise of social networking creating the conditions for the emergence of a new domain in tactical intelligence collection? This past week saw the publication of a new research paper (.pdf), which I co-authored with Micah-Sage Bolden, entitled “Social Networking as a Paradigm Shift in Tactical Intelligence Collection”. In it, we argue that recent case studies point to social networking as the new cutting edge in open-source tactical intelligence collection. We explain that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a host of other social networking platforms are increasingly viewed by intelligence agencies as invaluable channels of information acquisition. We base our findings on three recent case studies, which we believe highlight the intelligence function of social networking. The first case study comes out of the Arab Spring, which, according to one report, “prompted the US government to begin developing guidelines for culling intelligence from social media networks”. We also examine NATO’s operations during the 2011 Libyan civil war (Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR), when Western military forces systematically resorted to social networking media to gather actionable intelligence, by utilizing open sources like Twitter to pinpoint targets for attack. Finally, we examine the sabotage by Israeli security services of the 2011 “Welcome to Palestine Air Flotilla” initiative, a campaign organized by several European groups aiming to draw worldwide attention to the travel restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities on the Occupied Territories. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Why is Israel so chatty about a possible strike on Iran?

January 31, 2012 by 1 Comment

Ronen Bergman By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This past Sunday, Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman published an extensive cover story in The New York Times Magazine, titled simply: “Will Israel Attack Iran?”. He answers his question in the affirmative, saying that “after speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012”. Bergman, who a year ago wrote an excellent, well-informed account of the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination, sees a “small and ever-diminishing” window of opportunity to stop the looming war.  But he says that few in Israel believe that the United States administration of President Barack Obama is willing or able to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran. Instead, the predominant sentiment in the Jewish state is that “only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves”, he writes. But the intense discussion about a possible Israeli attack on Iran begs a critical question, which is asked by Laura Rozen, Senior Foreign Affairs Reporter for Yahoo News. She asks, why are Israeli leaders so chatty on the topic? One would think that, by being so vocal about their intentions, they risk losing a major strategic advantage that Israel’s military has relied on in the past: namely the element of surprise. In her search for an answer, she did what good reporters usually do: she actually picked up the phone and called Bergman in Israel. A condensed version of their interesting discussion is provided here. In it, she queries the Israeli intelligence expert about the widespread view that, if Israeli planes were indeed preparing to strike Iran, Tel Aviv would be very discrete about it. Bergman’s response is somewhat convincing; he says that most Israeli statements on the subject are “not meant for Israeli ears” —though they often reverberate inside Israel. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #670: Analysis edition

January 23, 2012 by Leave a comment

Michael ChertoffBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Some argue US DHS should change intelligence mission. A decade after Congress created the Department of Homeland Security, the Aspen Homeland Security Group, which is co-chaired by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff (pictured), says it is time for the agency to shift its focus from foreign threats to working with local governments and the private sector. Aspen pushes for even more intelligence outsourcing —no surprises there.
►►Not-so-covert Iran war buys West time but raises tension. “Ten out of 10. They hit the target and nobody got caught”, former US intelligence officer Robert Ayers told Reuters of the January 11 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan. “What makes these things so impressive is they gather a lot of information and do their ‘on the ground’ homework, which can take months”. Sidney Alford, a British explosives expert, says the hit was technically “professional. It worked and it worked very well”.
►►Inside Mossad’s war on Tehran. “In the five attacks on nuclear scientists, the hit squad has used a motorbike every time. The motorcyclist is ubiquitous in the capital’s traffic jams, often wearing a surgical mask for protection against the heavy pollution and able to move close to the target between the lines of stationary cars without attracting attention”.

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News you may have missed #664

January 11, 2012 by Leave a comment

Hakan FidanBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Iran nuclear defector’s family spared deportation from Canada. Family members of a top defector who worked for Iran’s nuclear energy program have been temporarily spared deportation from Canada, after claiming they will be tortured by Iran’s secret police. The defector, his daughter and mother, have not been identified in media reports. The names of their lawyers were not made public either.
►►Turkish spy services to be “among world’s largest”. Turkey commemorates the 85th anniversary of its National Intelligence Organization, known as MİT. The agency’s undersecretary, Hakan Fidan (pictured), told Turkish media that within the next two to three years, they aim to become one of the largest intelligence services in the world, and that they are “synthesizing the CIA-FBI model”.
►►Analysis: New rules for CIA drones in Pakistan. The current pause in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan (55 days and counting) is now the longest during Barack Obama’s presidency. The break in drone strikes was enforced by Islamabad after NATO killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November. The break coincided with a major policy reappraisal by Washington, and it has given Islamabad room to refocus on its own strategic needs. In the coming weeks CIA drone attacks are expected to resume in Pakistan. But according to leaks and hints, there are likely to be far fewer strikes, and far fewer casualties.

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News you may have missed #660

January 5, 2012 by Leave a comment

Margaret ThatcherBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Taiwan President accused of spying on political opponents. Taiwan’s opposition challenger for the presidency, Tsai Ing-wen, has accused intelligence services under the control of incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou of tracking her campaign events for political advantage. The allegations – unproven and denied by Ma – conjure up memories of Taiwan’s one-party past when Ma’s party, the Nationalists, used their total control of the state apparatus to persecute opponents.
►►Analysis: Has Israeli-Australian spy relationship been restored? Intelligence sharing between Israel and Australia was halted this time last year, when a Mossad hit squad with forged Australian passports assassinated senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in in Dubai. But Australian newspaper The Age reports that “the flow of top secret intelligence between the two countries has now been restored”, in a move apparently initiated by the Australian side.
►►Thatcher threatened to ban BBC program on MI5 and MI6. The Conservative government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher threatened to “veto” a BBC investigative program about British intelligence services MI5 and MI6, because it would reveal details about how they operated and question their public accountability. In a letter marked “top secret and personal”, cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, recommended that Margaret Thatcher consider invoking the rarely used power, saying that “the government has the power to ban any program”. Thatcher wrote on the note: “I would be prepared to use the veto”.

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News you may have missed #659

January 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

China and PakistanBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►China wants military bases in Pakistan. An Indian intelligence report leaked in the country’s press appears to reveal that China and Pakistan are in secret negotiations to allow Beijing to build military bases on Pakistani soil. The report states that “China’s desire for a military presence in Pakistan has been discussed by the political and military leadership of that country in the recent months. China’s deepening strategic penetration of Pakistan and joint plans to set up […] oil pipelines/rail/roads as well as naval and military bases are a matter of concern”.
►►Turkey ‘almost shot down’ Israeli spy drone. An Israeli drone flying over Turkey was nearly intercepted by Turkish aerial defense forces, an Istanbul-based media outlet reported on Tuesday. According to the report, “by the time the order [to shoot down the Israeli drone] was given, [it] had already left the area”. A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces refused to comment on the Turkish report.
►►Analysis: Global apparatus for drone killing emerges under Obama. “The Obama administration’s counterterrorism accomplishments are most apparent in what it has been able to dismantle, including CIA prisons and entire tiers of al-Qaeda’s leadership. But what the administration has assembled, hidden from public view, may be equally consequential”. Excellent analysis by Greg Miller, who argues that “the rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military”.

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Analysis: The strange world of cyberspy vendor conferences

December 27, 2011 by 5 Comments

ISS WorldBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is common knowledge among intelligence observers that espionage activity around the world is on the increase, having in some cases surpassed Cold-War levels. The main facilitator of this phenomenon is technological, namely the ease of access to classified information afforded by relatively safe cyberespionage techniques. In our 21st-century, therefore, the spy v. spy game takes place largely online. Ironically, however, many of the government agencies engaged in offensive cyberintelligence operations against each other buy the required software and hardware from the same vendors. The latter are private companies, headquartered in Milan, London, Johannesburg, Montreal, and other cities around the world, which periodically participate in industry trade shows. These gatherings are eerie, secretive meetings, frequented by international spies representing various governments, and are strictly closed to outsiders. Vernon Silver, of Bloomberg, which has done an admirable job lately tracking the operations of these secretive vendors, has penned a fascinating exposé of one such bizarre trade show, called ISS World. Known informally as ‘Wiretappers Ball’, ISS (short for Intelligence Support Systems) World convenes several times a year in various cities around the world. One recent show, which took place in Malaysia, hosted nearly 1,000 attendees from 56 countries, writes Silver: “unlike trade shows, this one had no social events [and] no corporate-sponsored cocktail parties”. Instead, merchants of communications interception technologies offered demonstrations to agents of various governments, of what is called “offensive IT intelligence”. These demonstrations, conducted by appointment only in darkened conference rooms, center on technologies that can hack cell phones, break into email accounts, unscramble encrypted Skype calls, and surreptitiously access targeted web cams. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #644 (Pakistan edition)

December 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

Afghan-Pakistani Border

AfPak border

►►US built its own secret Pakistani spy service. Deep within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), America’s most reliable ally has been the spy service’s division known as the T Wing. It was created largely from scratch in 2006 and 2007, after the Americans mostly gave up trying to work with the ISI’s uncooperative leadership. US officials say their hope was that the T Wing might help to offset the pernicious influence of the ISI’s S Wing, the division in charge of managing the Pakistani government’s relationship with Islamic extremist groups such as the Kashmiri separatist Lashkar-e-Taiba and Afghanistan’s Taliban.
►►Pakistan ‘permanently’ shuts down resupply routes to Afghanistan. NATO recently literally shot itself in the foot, imperiling the resupply of International Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan, by shooting up two Pakistani border posts in a “hot pursuit’ raid. Given that roughly 100 fuel tanker trucks along with 200 other trucks loaded with NATO supplies cross into Afghanistan each day from Pakistan, Pakistan’s closure of the border has ominous long-term consequences for the logistical resupply of ISAF forces, even as Pentagon officials downplay the issue and scramble for alternative resupply routes.
►►Analysis: The fiction of Pakistan as a US ally. Sixty percent of the supplies used by US forces in Afghanistan transit Pakistan. The logistical requirements of the American army in the Afghan theater are staggering. Leaving aside food, ammunition and a million other necessities, the US military in Afghanistan consumes 300,000 barrels of oil a day. Every drop of that oil has to be trucked in country. NATO so far keeps stressing that there is no immediate threat to continued operations, but that will be true for only so long. Wars consume mountains of supplies, and without fuel, food and bullets soldiers will not fight for long.

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News you may have missed #643 (Israel edition)

December 6, 2011 by Leave a comment

Mosab Hassan Yousef

Yousef/Joseph

►►Hezbollah uncovers more Israeli spy devices. Lebanese media reported on Friday that two people were wounded in a blast that occurred in the south of the country, between the towns of Srifa and Deir Kifa. According to some of the reports, the blast targeted espionage devices which were destroyed by Israel after being exposed by Hezbollah. This is not the first time such devices have been discovered in Lebanon: see here and here for previous such incidents.
►►PLO subpoenas Palestinian who spied for Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization served Mosab Hassan Yousef, who says he is a former spy for Israeli domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, with a subpoena in the United States last month. The Palestinian group says it wants his notes and details of his spy work for the Israeli government.
►►Analysis: The complex relationship between the Mossad and Israeli media. “Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s crusade this week against an Israeli strike on Iran took on a new dimension with his several media interviews. His campaign also reflects the Mossad’s attitude toward journalists, something along the lines of respect them, suspect them and use them. The degree shifts from one Mossad head to the next”. An enlightening analysis by veteran Israeli intelligence correspondent Yossi Melman.

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Analysis: India’s spies keep tabs on political opponents, not terrorism

December 5, 2011 by 1 Comment

IB seal

IB seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
She is America’s rising ally in South Asia and is widely regarded as the world’s largest democracy. But India’s political system is highly chaotic and often repressive. This is aptly reflected in the operations of the Intelligence Bureau, India’s foremost domestic intelligence agency. One would think that the IB has its hands full with India’s countless domestic security concerns, which include increasingly popular and active Maoist insurgents, as well as mounting religious and political tensions in the predominantly Muslim states of Jammu and Kashmir, located in the country’s north. But one of India’s most respected English-language newspapers, The Hindu, cites “highly placed intelligence sources” who allege that most of the IB’s intelligence collection activities are targeted against the Indian government’s political opponents, not terrorism. According to the unnamed sources, “less than a third of the IB’s estimated 25,000-strong manpower [sic] is dedicated to what might be described as national security tasks”. Conversely, over two-thirds of the organization’s staff is reportedly tasked with “providing the government raw information and assessments on its increasingly bleak political prospects”, claims the paper. Examples of political policing by the IB include monitoring public meetings led by Rahul Gandhi, parliamentarian and leader of the National Congress, which is India’s main political opposition group. Another target of the IB’s alleged political policing campaign is anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare, who has become internationally known for spearheading popular protests against government sleaze in New Delhi and elsewhere. According to The Hindu, intelligence on political figures is collected by the IB’s state-of-the-art communications interception systems, which were purchased from Western hardware manufacturers following the sophisticated 2009 Mumbai Attacks by the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Read more of this post

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