News you may have missed #480 (CIA edition)

  • Cuban-American exile leader funded ex-CIA agent on trial. Oscar De Rojas, the bookkeeper for New Jersey business mogul Arnoldo Monzon, who was once a director of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation, testified Thursday that he wired as much as $9,600 in 1997 to Ramon Medina, one of the aliases used by Luis Posada Carriles, an ex-CIA operative currently on trial for perjury and immigration fraud.
  • Ex-CIA station chief sentenced for sexual abuse. Former senior CIA officer Andrew Warren has been sentenced by a US court to more than five years in prison for sexually abusing a woman in Algeria, while he was the CIA station chief in that country.
  • Analysis: What should the CIA be doing in Libya? US President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he had “instructed […] all those who are involved in international affairs to examine a full range of options” on Libya, which presumably includes the CIA and other special operations assets. But what should the CIA be doing in Libya, if anything at all?

News you may have missed #363

  • Who killed ex-Mossad agent Ashraf Marwan? Dr. Marwan, son-in-law of the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who spied for Israel after 1969, fell to his death from the balcony of his London home in June 2007. British investigators have now announced a new inquiry into the circumstances of his death.
  • Ex-CIA agent accused of rape says he was set up. Andrew M. Warren, the CIA’s former Algiers station chief, who is accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women at his official residence, says the Algerian government set him up in a honey trap.
  • US Senate candidate admits false military intel award. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Navy reservist who was elected to Congress in 2001, and is currently a Republican candidate for Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, has admitted to falsely claiming he received the US Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award in 2000.

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News you may have missed #341

  • Russian court rejects ‘spy’ scientist’s appeal. A Russian court has rejected an appeal for the release of academic Igor Sutyagin, former division head in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, who is serving a 15-year sentence for allegedly passing state secrets to foreign officials.
  • Ex-CIA agent’s arrest in VA was eventful, say sources. We reported earlier this week that Andrew M. Warren, the CIA’s Algiers station chief, who is accused of having drugged and raped two Algerian women at his official residence, was arrested at a Norfolk, Virginia motel, after he failed to show up for a court hearing. It now appears that Warren “had a gun in his waistband […] and officers used a taser to subdue him”.
  • Documents show CIA thought Gary Powers had defected. Declassified documents show the CIA did not believe that Gary Powers, who piloted the U2 spy plane shot down over Russia in 1960, causing the U2 incident, had been shot down. Instead, the agency spread the rumor that Powers “baled out and spent his first night as a defector in a Sverdlovsk nightclub”!

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News you may have missed #339 (arrest edition!)

  • US couple arrested for spying for Cuba cooperating, say authorities. Admitted spies Walter and Gwendolyn Myers have met with US federal officials “50 to 60 times” to divulge details of their three decades of spying for Cuba, Justice Department officials said Tuesday. The couple pleaded guilty in November to working for the government of Caribbean island.
  • Indian diplomat arrested for spying for Pakistan. Madhuri Gupta, a second secretary at the Indian high commission in Islamabad, Pakistan, has been arrested and accused of passing on secrets to Pakistan’s ISI spy agency. Indian officials believe she may be part of a wider spy ring.
  • Former CIA station chief arrested in Virginia. Andrew M. Warren, the CIA’s Algiers station chief, who is accused of having drugged and raped two Algerian women at his official residence, has been arrested at a Norfolk, Virginia motel, after he failed to show up for a court hearing last week. It is unclear why he skipped the hearing and why he was staying at the motel in his hometown.

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News you may have missed #0049

  • Return to court for ex-CIA station chief accused of rape. Andrew M. Warren has been free on bail since February of 2009, when he was unceremoniously recalled to the US from the CIA’s Algiers station. He is accused of having drugged and raped two Algerian women at his official residence. On Tuesday he was back at a federal courtroom in Washington for a status hearing.
  • Swedish spy threat at Cold War levels, claims report. A study by the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), says spying on Sweden by “several countries, including those in our immediate surroundings” is “at the same level […] as during the Cold War”.
  • Former CIA station chief doubts Daniel Boyd story. Milt Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, doubts that Boyd, who was arrested along with seven others in North Carolina on domestic terrorism charges, ever saw action in Afghanistan, as stated by his prosecutors.

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