News you may have missed #304

  • Interesting history of former German embassy building in DC. When the State Department took the building over in 1945, officials found $3 million in American currency that was reportedly designated for espionage payments.
  • Number of Dubai killing suspects at 27. Another person has been added to the list of suspects in the January killing of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, bringing the number of identified suspects to 27. Some say the number will exceed 30 before too long.
  • Robert Baer on Dubai assassination. Stepped-up surveillance technology may be tipping the scales in the cat-and-mouse game between spies and their targets. Former CIA operative Robert Baer on the Mossad’s recent Dubai hit and the current state of spycraft.

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News you may have missed #303

  • Don’t share telecoms data with US, Hezbollah warns Lebanon. Hezbollah has warned the Lebanese government against sharing telecommunications information with the United States. Apparently the US embassy in Beirut sent out a request for “very detailed information on the mobile phone service providers in Lebanon — the stations, the antennas, technical information”. The request probably pertained to Hezbollah’s privately-owned telecommunications network in the country.
  • Using intelligence from the al-Mabhouh hit. “While the 22-hour period depicted in the Dubai police surveillance video showcased the tactical capabilities of the various teams, it hardly tells the whole story. In order to pinpoint the location of al-Mabhouh on the day of his killing, the organization responsible for this operation would have had to have tracked al-Mabhouh for months, if not years”.

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Al-Mabhouh was drugged, not electrocuted

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Members of an Israeli assassination squad, who killed a senior Hamas official last month in Dubai, drugged him with a strong anesthetic before suffocating him to death, according to a new police report. Initial accounts of the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found dead in his luxury hotel room in the United Arab Emirates in the morning January 20, 2010, stated that he had been severely electrocuted, and then poisoned, before he was suffocated to death. But, according to Dubai Police deputy commander, Major General Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina, new forensic test reports suggest that, at the time of his death, the Palestinian official was under the influence of succinylcholine, a powerful muscle-relaxant and sedative, which is often dispensed to patients in emergency hospital wards, because of its rapid onset. Read more of this post

Australia investigates more alleged Israeli spies

ASIO Headquarters in Canberra

ASIO HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is among a number of Western intelligence agencies investigating at least three dual Australian-Israeli citizens, who are suspected of being Israeli spies. Citing “two Australian intelligence sources”, the Sydney Morning Herald said that the investigation into the three suspects began last year and is not connected to the January 19 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. At least three of the 26-member Mossad hit squad that killed al-Mabhouh used forged Australian passports to enter and exit the United Arab Emirates. Read more of this post

Israeli agents tried to obtain Australian passports in 2004

Ali Kazak

Ali Kazak

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Yesterday’s revelation, that three members of the Mossad hit squad that assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January, used Australian passports, has shocked Australian public opinion. In reality, however, the Australian government had been warned in as early as 2004 that Israeli agents were trying to obtain Australian passports for use in international espionage operations. In March of that year, Ali Kazak, who was the Head of the General Palestinian Delegation to Australia and New Zealand, publicly revealed that Israeli Mossad agents had approached members of the Middle Eastern community in both countries, seeking to purchase usable passports. He even said that one Mossad agent active in Sydney had managed to acquire as many as 25 Australian passports before returning to Israel. Read more of this post

Ireland seeks Israeli spy who assembled forged passport data

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As the number of suspects involved in the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh rose to 26 yesterday, Irish government sources said they suspect an Israeli agent in Dublin of orchestrating the acquisition of several Irish passports used in the assassination. Six of the 26 identified members of the Israeli hit squad who killed al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January used forged Irish travel documents to enter the United Arab Emirates from a variety of international locations. There are rumors in Dublin that at least three more forged Irish passports, which were utilized in the assassination operation, will soon be added to the growing list. According to Ireland’s Independent newspaper, the unnamed Dublin-based Israeli spy collected and collated most of the misleading information that was used to apply for the passports, under the names of real, living Irish citizens, all of whom have now been traced by Irish authorities. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #296

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News you may have missed #295

  • US spies want super-sensitive human lie detectors. IARPA, the research unit of the US intelligence community is soliciting proposals for a five-year, three-phased overhaul of current deception-detection technology, which will include research on what is called “pre-conscious human assessment of trustworthiness”.
  • UK may purchase IP monitoring system from CIA-linked company. A security startup with close links to the CIA is touting a system to the UK government that monitors every IP address on the internet for malware, as part of its declared aim of improving cyber war capabilities. The firm has built a massive database of security breaches across the globe and is currently monitoring about 250 million compromised machines.
  • No Americans on CIA’s assassination list. The Washington Post has corrected an earlier report, flagged by intelNews earlier this month, which claimed that the US President has authorized the CIA to kill Americans abroad. According to new information, there are no Americans currently on the CIA hit list, but there are four on the list of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). It is worth noting that JSOC, which some say is gradually taking over the CIA’s paramilitary mission, lacks the CIA’s mandatory Congressional oversight and has a history of being run directly out of the White House.

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News you may have missed #0292 (al-Mabhouh assassination edition #3)

  • Former Mossad spy says Israel killed al-Mabhouh. Victor Ostrovsky, who worked for the Mossad in the 1980s, says the assassination of Hamas official Mahmound al-Mabhouh last month in Dubai has all the earmarks of a Mossad operation, and was likely sanctioned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • UK denies knowledge of Hamas murder plot. The British Foreign Office has denied a news report that the British intelligence service was told in advance that Israeli agents planned to assassinate senior Hamas militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, using British passports.
  • Anglo-Israeli intelligence co-operation is now in jeopardy. Britain has cut its ties with Mossad in the past –after its London station chief carelessly mislaid a sackful of forged British passports– and will do so again unless Israel can provide a credible defense of its actions, says The Daily Telegraph‘s Con Coughlin.

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Mossad has long history of assassination operations

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The recent assassination of Hamas military official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh has sparked a public debate about the history of the Kidon (formerly known as Caesarea), Mossad’s elite assassination unit. Several participants in this debate frequently mention the infamous Black September killings of the 1970s (operation BAYONET), which exterminated almost every original member of the Palestinian group that perpetrated the massacre of the Israeli athletes in the 1972 summer Olympic Games in Munich. In reality, however, these operations were not conducted by the Kidon, but by a separate unit outside Mossad’s operational structure, created specifically for this purpose. The same applies to other extrajudicial assassinations of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, which are usually perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0291 (al-Mabhouh assassination edition #2)

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Dubai CCTV footage reveals spy craft details

CCTV footage of two Kidon assassination squad members in Dubai

CCTV footage

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The closed-circuit television footage from the January 19 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh reveals –among other things– interesting details of spy craft in action. Prominently featured is the use of fake wigs, beards and other facial hair, which the Mossad assassination team members employed in order to disguise themselves. Spies, therefore, really do use fake beards, moustaches, glasses, as well as other props in ground operations, known as ‘light disguise’ in espionage lingo. The obvious reason for such props is disguising the visual identity of the operative from potential witnesses. But there are other reasons too, such as evading facial recognition systems, which tend to rely on cheekbone and jaw-line coordinates. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0290 (al-Mabhouh assassination edition #1)

  • Al-Mabhouh assassination done by amateurs, says ex-Mossad agent. Rami Igra, a former high-ranking Mossad official said that Israel could not have been involved in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, because it was so unprofessionally carried out.
  • Fatah spies also involved in al-Mabhouh assassination. IntelNews pointed out a few days ago that at least two Palestinians were possibly connected with the plot to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Three have now been formally indicted, one of whom, Ahmad Hasnin, is a Fatah intelligence operative.
  • US link to al-Mabhouh assassination? Authorities in the United Arab Emirates are probing five US-issued credit-card accounts, which officials say were used by five of the 11 suspects in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The credit cards, issued by a US-based financial institution, were used to buy travel-related items, such as plane tickets, connected to the alleged assassination operation.

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Answers to questions about al-Mabhouh’s assassination

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The intelNews email inbox is literally bulging with messages about the recent assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the co-founder of Hamas’ military wing, who was found dead in Dubai last month. Here are brief answers to a selection of readers’ questions. Q. Is there any doubt that Mossad was behind the assassination? A. Almost none. By no means was Israel al-Mabhouh’s sole enemy. In fact, his killing caused little distress among Fatah’s leadership, and at least two Palestinians are believed to have assisted in the assassination. Nevertheless, the operation has all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored action, something particularly evident in the sophisticated travel documentation forgery involved. Moreover, the tactics of the hit squad, its composition, as well as its methods, point almost directly to the Mossad.  Q. Were those passports real, or not? If not, who are the people in the photos? The eleven known members of the hit squad utilized British, Irish, German, and one French (the squad leader) passports. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0284

  • Real IRA faction killed MI5 informant, says Irish police. The Gardai have concluded that a Real IRA faction executed Denis Donaldson, a former Sinn Fein official who turned informer for MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Last year, the Real IRA took responsibility for the 2007 killing.
  • NATO spy station up for sale. A Canadian NATO spy station in Nova Scotia that operated between 1983 and 2006 is for sale for US$1.4 million. It appears that the site’s current owner, who doesn’t want to be identified, bought it from the Canadian Defense Department after the base was closed down.
  • Analysis on the Binyam Mohamed disclosures and UK-US spy cooperation. This analysis, by Michael Clarke, director of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, is probably the best synopsis of the meaning of the recent court order to disclose Binyam Mohamed’s torture records, which has complicated US-UK spy relations.

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