Book review of “Agent of the Iron Cross” a masterful historical account by Bill Mills

March 21, 2024 by 2 Comments

Agent of the Iron CrossFEW THINGS ARE AS valuable in the field of intelligence studies as delving into historical case work. Indeed, the study of intelligence history is indispensable for anyone wishing to engage in the contemporary setting of this often esoteric -yet critical- field. As an academic specializing in intelligence, I find Bill Mills’ Agent of the Iron Cross: The Race to Capture German Saboteur-Assassin Lothar Witzke during World War I, to shed invaluable light on clandestine operations that unfolded on American soil during the tumult of World War I. Mills masterfully chronicles the gripping saga of Lothar Witzke, a German saboteur-assassin, and his audacious exploits on American soil.

Mills’ captivating narrative unfolds against the backdrop of a world engulfed in conflict, where espionage becomes a weapon of choice for a host of warring factions. Witzke’s ambitious mission, orchestrated by German intelligence, epitomizes the high-stakes game of espionage during wartime. It is replete with a host of master spy characters, the inevitable double agents, and even ingenious sabotage devices. Although this book is not a novel, Mills intricately weaves together in a novel-like manner the threads of intrigue, offering readers a riveting account of Witzke’s daring escapades and the shadowy world of espionage that defined that relatively unexplored era in the history of intelligence.

What sets Agent of the Iron Cross apart is Mills’ ability to contextualize Witzke’s actions within the broader canvas of the historical context it which they unfolded. Through vivid prose and meticulous detail, Mills unravels the layers of deception and intrigue that characterized Imperial Germany’s covert operations on American soil. From the near-sinking of the commissioned ocean liner SS Minnesota to the clandestine explosion on Black Tom Island, Mills paints a vivid portrait of a world teetering on the brink of chaos. Standard accounts of that era underplay the role of intelligence, so it is refreshing for a professor specializing in intelligence to read Mills’ detail-oriented narrative.

At its core, Agent of the Iron Cross is a testament to the enduring allure of espionage and its profound impact on statecraft and the course of history. Mills’ narrative prowess and exhaustive research offer readers a glimpse into a little-known chapter of World War I history, underscoring the complexities of intelligence work and its far-reaching consequences. By delving into historical case studies such as this one, Mills provides invaluable insights into the nature of espionage, its challenges, and its enduring relevance in our ever-evolving world.

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Russian intelligence planned to assassinate SVR defector living in the United States

June 21, 2023 by 1 Comment

Aleksandr PoteyevTHE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICES planned to assassinate a Russian former intelligence officer, who had defected to the United States and was living in an apartment complex in Florida, according to a new report. The alleged assassination plan is discussed in the forthcoming book Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (Simon and Schuster), authored by Harvard University academic Calder Walton.

According to Dr. Walton, Russian intelligence targeted Aleksandr Poteyev, who served as Deputy Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from 2000 until 2010. Poteyev was reportedly in charge of the SVR’s Directorate “S”, which oversees the work of illegals —a term that refers to SVR operations officers who work in without official cover around the world. It is believed that Poteyev began working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1999, as an agent-in-place.

By 2010, when he openly defected to the United States, Poteyev had provided the CIA with information that led to the high-profile arrest of 10 Russian illegals by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Some believe that the SVR defector was also responsible for the arrests of Russian spies in Germany and Holland. In 2011, a Russian court tried Poteyev in absentia and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Poteyev remains at large and is believed to be living in the United States under the protection of the CIA’s National Resettlement Operations Center.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that it had independently confirmed Dr. Walton’s claims, with the help of “three former senior American officials who spoke” to the paper “on the condition of anonymity”. According to The Times, a 2016 report by the Moscow-based Interfax news agency, which claimed that Poteyev had died in the United States, was part of a deliberate disinformation operation by the SVR, which was aimed at enticing the defector to emerge from his hideout.

When that attempt failed, the SVR allegedly recruited a Mexican scientist who lived in Singapore, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, to travel to Miami, Florida, in 2020, in order to locate Poteyev. But Fuentes attracted the attention of the authorities while driving around in Miami and was subsequently detained by US Customs and Border Protection agents as he was trying to board a flight to Mexico City. Fuentes then provided details of his mission to the FBI. The Bureau eventually determined that the goal of the SVR had been to assassinate Poteyev.

According to The New York Times, the realization that the SVR had planned to carry out an assassination operation on American soil “spiraled into a tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia”, which included cascading sanctions and diplomatic expulsions on both sides. The paper reports that, in April 2021, the White House ordered the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats from the United States, including the SVR’s chief of station, who had two years left on his Washington, DC, tour. The Kremlin responded by expelling an equal number of American diplomats from Russia, including the CIA station chief in Moscow.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 June 2023 | Permalink

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New book claims former Irish head of government was Provisional IRA informant

December 9, 2021 by Leave a comment

Charlie HaugheyA NEW BOOK BY a veteran Irish journalist claims that the late Taoiseach (prime minister and head of the government of Ireland) Charlie Haughey was in effect an informer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the 1960s and 1970s. Written by Kevin O’Connor, the longtime political correspondent of The Sunday Independent, the book also claims that Haughey maintained regular contact with the leadership of the IRA throughout the 1970s.

From the mid-1960s and until his retirement in the early 1990s, Haughey was a towering —and controversial— figure in Irish politics. He was first elected to the Dáil Éireann (Ireland’s parliament) in 1957 with Fianna Fáil, one of Ireland’s two major centrist political parties. Throughout his career, he served as Taoiseach from 1979 to 1981, for a short period in 1982, and from 1987 until his retirement in 1992. He also held scores of ministerial appointments in the 1970s and 1980s.

Haughey’s political career almost ended in 1970, when the so-called ‘arms crisis’ nearly brought down the Irish government. It was sparked by allegations that leading members of the Irish government were involved in a conspiracy to smuggle weapons to British-held Northern Ireland, in an effort to support the activities of the IRA. During the ensuing investigation, Haughey was found to have met with Cathal Goulding, who as chief of staff for the IRA. Consequently, Haughey was among several cabinet ministers who were either fired or voluntarily resigned in the aftermath of the arms crisis.

During the lengthy trial that followed the explosive allegations, Haughey claimed that his meeting with Goulding was nothing more than an unplanned encounter. He was eventually found not guilty. But many were doubtful about his innocence, and there were numerous claims that the Irish government —even the Taoiseach at the time— were fully aware and supportive of the conspiracy.

Now a new book by O’Connor, titled Political Betrayal: How Charlie Haughey Acquired €70 Million, claims that Haughey was closer to the IRA than even his staunchest critics realized. The allegations are based on what the author says are documents from the archives of the Special Branch Unit of the Garda Síochána, the police service of Ireland. The documents allegedly reveal that Haughey was routinely sharing classified information to the IRA, including warnings about government spies that operated within the organization.

In one instance, Haughey allegedly reached out to the IRA for assurances that they would not harm famous English artists who were living in Ireland at the time. Several artists moved there in the 1970s in order to take advantage of the country’s laws guaranteeing tax-free status for artists. This scheme was the brainchild of Haughey, and he was eager to ensure that it did not backfire. Among the famous artists who had taken advantage of these laws was the English journalist and novelist Frederick Forsyth, author of —among other books— The Day of the Jackal, who was a critic of the IRA. According to O’Connor, Haughey feared that the IRA might harm or kidnap Forsyth. But the militant group assured Haughey that Forsyth would not be harmed.

Haughey eventually left politics in 1992, when the government he was leading at the time was found to have illegally wiretapped the telephone lines of at least three investigative journalists. He never returned to politics. Despite his ungraceful fall from power, Haughey continues to be revered among Fianna Fáil supporters in Ireland today.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 09 December 2021 | Permalink

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Trump transition was ‘far and away’ most difficult in CIA history, internal report claims

November 29, 2021 by 7 Comments

Donald Trump CIA

THE PERIOD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the electoral victory of Donald Trump in 2016 was “far and away the most difficult” transition between administrations in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is the conclusion of a recently declassified CIA analysis of how American presidents-elect are briefed. The term ‘president-elect’ refers to individuals who have won the US presidential election, but have yet to assume the presidency. Presidents-elect are briefed by the CIA during the transition period, which typically lasts about 75 days, from early November until late in January of the following year.

The CIA analysis appears in the most recent edition of Getting to Know the President: Intelligence Briefings of Presidential Candidates and Presidents-Elect, 1952–2016. It is authored by John L. Helgerson, a 38-year veteran of the CIA, who retired in 2009 as the Agency’s Inspector General. The volume contains lessons learned by analysts who briefed presidents-elect in over sixty years. Chapter nine of the book, which contains an assessment of Trump as president-elect, was released [pdf] last week.

The chapter chronicles some of the challenges faced by the CIA in the days immediately after Trump’s electoral victory in 2016. Such challenges included CIA analysts having to wait for over a week for the Trump team to begin communicating them, its members “apparently having not expected to win the election”. Additionally, the Trump transition team had not thought of a way to safeguard printed documents shared with them by the CIA, which necessitated the Agency having to install a safe in the Trump transition team’s headquarters.

Eventually, president-elect Trump began receiving the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), a highly sensitive classified document produced each morning for the eyes of the president, vice president and a limited number of senior administration officials. However, unlike his vice-president elect, Mike Pence, Trump did not read the PDB, and eventually told the CIA he wanted a less text-heavy approach to the document if he was going to read it. The CIA complied with the request, as it tries to adapt its briefing method to the intelligence consumers’ preferred mode. Read more of this post

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Book review of “We Never Expected That” by Avner Barnea

November 25, 2021 by Leave a comment

Barnea We Never Expected ThatIN HIS NEW BOOK, We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books), Dr. Avner Barnea has coined two new terms in the field of strategic surprise. One is diffused surprise and the other is concentrated surprise, two terms that help us to better understand why intelligence failures occur. In a diffused surprise there is difficulty in identifying the intelligence target and therefore the chance of a surprise increases; while in a concentrated surprise the intelligence target is usually a recognized organization. At the same time, the mistake lies in the assessment of the target’s abilities and intentions.

To illustrate the difference between the types of strategic surprises in the two areas, the author analyzes these types of surprises through a discussion of four test cases. Two of them are from the field of national intelligence and two from the field of competitive intelligence. In the field of national intelligence, Barnea analyzes the surprise of the outbreak of the First Intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 1987 and the surprise of the attacks of September 11, 2001. The first Intifada was a strategic surprise for the State of Israel and broke out as a result of a popular uprising. Therefore Barnea defines it as a diffused surprise. The September 11 terror attack is defined by Barnea as a concentrated surprise, since the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, which was known to American intelligence, initiated and carried out the terrorist attack. One of the reasons for the surprise was that the American intelligence agencies did not properly assess al Qaeda’s intentions and capabilities, nor did they share the intelligence information that had accumulated.

In competitive intelligence and the business world, units within an organization share intelligence information. One of the lessons of the September 11 surprise in the United States is that intelligence information needs to be shared between the various intelligence organizations. The test cases that Barnea discusses in the field of competitive intelligence include the process of deterioration of the IBM Corporation that almost led to its demise in 1993. This is a classic case of concentrated surprise. IBM’s board  of directors did not internalize the processes and transformations in the field of computer hardware, while competing companies like Dell, Toshiba, and others were aware of the changing needs of customers in this field and also offered customers appropriate solutions. As a result of this failure of a concentrated surprise, IBM’s revenue fell sharply and the company almost declared bankruptcy. The new CEO of IBM, who took office during the crisis, has since adapted the company to changes in the competitive environment. Read more of this post

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New book details ‘special relationship’ between CIA and Polish intelligence

October 26, 2021 by 2 Comments

CIA

A NEW BOOK BY longtime Washington Post foreign correspondent John Pomfret details what the author describes as “a hugely important intelligence relationship” between the United States Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence community of Poland. In From Warsaw With Love: Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance (Henry Holt and Co., October 2021), Pomfret claims that Polish intelligence has “functioned for decades almost as an adjunct to the [CIA]”.

According to Pomfret, the “special relationship” between the CIA and Polish intelligence began in the spring of 1990, when the first meeting between the two sides was arranged following a CIA official’s impromptu visit to Poland’s embassy in Portugal. Later that year, a team of Polish intelligence officers managed to exfiltrate half a dozen American government workers who had been left behind in Baghdad, as the US was preparing to launch a military operation in Kuwait, aimed at ejecting thousands of Iraqi troops from the tiny oil kingdom.

By the mid-1990s, the relationship between the CIA and Polish intelligence could be described as “special”, says Pomfret. Accordingly, the CIA station in Warsaw hosted “a flood of new joint operations” as its case officers were “working with Polish spies across the globe”. This formed a “blood bond” between the two services, claims Pomfret, with the Poles even allowing American intelligence officers to “roam through the headquarters of the Polish spy agency unescorted”.

Additionally, Polish intelligence handled assets in “some of the world’s most dangerous places”, as well as access to countries where the United States had no intelligence presence —for instance North Korea and Cuba. In the 2000s, CIA commended several Polish intelligence officers for the Legion of Merit, which is the US military’s highest award offered to citizens of foreign countries. Among the Legion of Merit recipients was a team of Polish intelligence officers who successfully collected air samples near nuclear facilities in Iran, according to Pomfret.

The relationship between American and Polish spies was not always smooth. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Poland hosted what was arguably the most important of the CIA’s global network of “black sites”, where terrorism detainees were interrogated, often violently. The CIA kept Polish officials away from the black site, while at the same time promising to keep under wraps the former communist country’s role in the controversial scheme. That promise was not kept, however, as Poland was eventually outed as being among a long list of hosts of CIA black sites, says Pomfret.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 October 2021 | Permalink

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Top Syrian chemical weapons scientist spied for CIA for 14 years, new book claims

February 22, 2021 by 1 Comment

Syrian Scientific Studies and Research CenterTHE TOP SCIENTIST IN Syria’s chemical weapons program, reputed to be among the world’s deadliest, spied for the United States Central Intelligence Agency for 14 years, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Toby Warrick. The claim is included in Warrick’s latest book, Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America’s Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World, which has been published this week by Doubleday.

The scientist, whose name Warrick is withholding from publication, was partly educated in the United States in the 1980s, after receiving an academic scholarship. Upon returning to Syria, he became a senior researcher in Institute 3000, a secret chemical weapons program that was hidden within the Damascus-based Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC). Known mostly by its French name, Centre D’Etudes et de Recherches Scientifiques (CERS), the center coordinated scientific research throughout the country. Camouflaged as a CERS engineering outfit, Institute 3000 maintained over 40 research and storage facilities that manufactured and housed Damascus’ stockpiles of military grade sarin, mustard gas, VX, and other nerve agents.

Citing interviews with “three former US intelligence officials familiar with the case”, and with a Syrian defector who knew the scientist, Warrick claims that the scientist was in his 30s when he reached out to the CIA. It allegedly happened in the mid-1990s, when the scientist was attending a conference in Europe. A number of months later, the scientist, who is simply referred to as “Ayman” in Warrick’s book, was approached in Damascus by a CIA case officer. He soon began sharing classified information with the CIA, which included samples of nerve agents that the Syrians were working on. In return he received regular payments from the US spy agency “in the form of cash transfers to a foreign bank account”, according to Warrick.

But the scientist’s service to the CIA ended abruptly in late 2001, says Warrick, when officers from Syria’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency appeared at his Damascus office and took him away for questioning. It turns out they were there to investigate reports that he had been asking foreign suppliers to CERS for payoffs, in return for recommending them for contracts with the research agency. But the scientist thought his work for the CIA had been betrayed, so he confessed to everything, without realizing that the Mukhabarat had no idea about his espionage. He was executed by firing squad on April 7, 2002 in the Adra Prison, on the northeast outskirts of Damascus, says Warrick.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 22 February 2021 | Permalink

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UAE cyber-hacking program spied on Michelle Obama’s emails, book claims

February 8, 2021 by Leave a comment

Michelle ObamaMICHELLE OBAMA HAD SOME of her personal emails intercepted by a group of American cyber-spies who were working for the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a new book. The book, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, is written by Nicole Perlroth, who covers cybersecurity-related topics for The New York Times. It tackles what the author describes as the global “cyber-weapons arms race” and its impact on international security.

Among the topics discussed in the book is Project RAVEN, a highly intrusive cyber-espionage effort by the government of the UAE. The project was allegedly aimed at neutralizing domestic and international targets, which the UAE monarchy saw as threats to its survival. According to the Reuters news agency, which revealed the existence of Project RAVEN in 2019, its targets included foreign governments, officials of international bodies, as well as suspected terrorists and human rights activists.

As the dispute between the UAE and Qatar deepened, Project RAVEN increasingly targeted the island oil kingdom. In one notable instance, UAE cyber-spies hacked into the email accounts of officials at the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) in an unsuccessful effort to sabotage Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 football World Cup. According to Reuters, the cyber-spies sought to unearth damaging and potentially embarrassing private information about Qatari officials, and leak them in order to damage Qatar’s candidacy for the high-profile sporting competition. According to the news agency, several American former employees of the National Security Agency were involved in Project RAVEN.

Now Perlroth’s book claims that Project RAVEN’s cyber-spies acquired a series of emails exchanged between Moza bint Nasser, wife of Qatar’s then-ruling Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Michelle Obama, when she held the position of America’s First Lady. The emails, which were intercepted in 2015, contained the US first lady’s personal thoughts, information on her security detail, and the travel details of her planned visit to Doha later that year. According to Perlroth, the inclusion of Obama’s emails into Project RAVEN’s targets caused at least one American involved in the effort, a former NSA analyst, to quit and leave the UAE. The Emirati monarchy has not commented on allegations about Project RAVEN.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 08 February 2021 | Permalink

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NSA director claims Bolton’s book would cause ‘irreparable damage’ to US secrets

June 19, 2020 by 3 Comments

Paul NakasoneThe director of America’s largest spy agency claims in a signed affidavit that a forthcoming book by John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, would critically compromise intelligence secrets if published. Bolton served in that capacity from April 2018 until September 2019. His memoir of his time as President Trump’s national security advisor, titled The Room Where It Happened, is scheduled for publication on Tuesday.

But the White House has sued Bolton, claiming that he did not follow the requirements of his pre-publication screening process by government officials. President Trump’s legal team also claims that, if published, the book would damage critical areas of United States national security.

On Wednesday, the White House’s stance on the book was affirmed by the director of the National Security Agency, General Paul M. Nakasone. In a signed affidavit filed in US District Court in Washington, Gen. Nakasone said he had been asked by the legal adviser of the National Security Council to review “a limited portion” of the draft manuscript of Bolton’s book. He added that he had identified “classified information” in that portion of the manuscript, some of which was classified at the Top Secret/Sensitive and Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) level.

According to Gen. Nakasone’s affidavit, “compromise of this information could result in the permanent loss of a valuable SIGINT source and cause irreparable damage to the US SIGINT system”. SIGINT refers to the gathering of intelligence by intercepting communications signals in the form of information exchanged orally between people or mediated via electronic means.

Gen. Nakasone goes on to state that the unauthorized disclosure of the information contained in Bolton’s book could “reasonably […] be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage” to US national security. This includes causing “considerable difficulties in US and allied relations with specific nations”. The NSA director does not detail the precise damage that Bolton’s revelations could cause to US national security, stating only that the information would compromise an intelligence-collection “capability” that “significant manpower and monetary investments have been and continue to be made to enable and maintain”.

Alongside Gen. Nakasone’s affidavit, the Department of Justice submitted an emergency filing on Wednesday, seeking to block the publication of Bolton’s book on national security grounds. Another affidavit was filed on Wednesday by John Ratcliffe, President Trump’s newly appointed Director of National Intelligence.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 19 June 2020 | Permalink

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Russian deep-cover spy speaks to Western media for first time

August 26, 2019 by Leave a comment

Elena Vavilova Andrei BezrukovOne of the ten Russian deep-cover spies who were arrested in the United States in 2010, and swapped with American- and British-handled spies held by Moscow, has spoken to Western media for the first time. Elena Vavilova was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June of 2010 along with her husband, Andrei Bezrukov. In its two decades of operating under deep cover in the US, the married couple used the stolen identities of two dead Canadian citizens, Tracy Foley and Donald Heathfield. Vavilova claimed to be of French-Canadian origin and worked as a real estate agent. The couple never spoke Russian at home and their two sons, Alex and Tim Foley, were unaware of their parents’ secret identities.

Last week, Vavilova, who now works as a private consultant in Moscow, spoke to Shaun Walker, Russia correspondent for British newspaper The Guardian. It was the first face-to-face encounter between a Western news outlet and one of the 10 outed Russian ‘illegals’. The reason for the interview was Vavilova’s upcoming book, A Woman Who Can Keep Secrets (in Russian), which presents a fictionalized account of her career and marriage to Bezrukov. It offers rare insights into the longstanding Russian ‘illegals’ program, which dates back to Soviet times. The book’s two protagonists meet as students in Siberia, where they are eventually recruited by the KGB, and spend several years training in languages and tradecraft. Part of their training includes living in a KGB house modeled after suburban American homes, so that they can get used to domestic life in the West. This account is believed to include true elements of the lives and careers of Vavilova and Bezrukov. The two married in Russia but moved to Canada separately, using fake Canadian identities. They pretended to meet for the first time in Canada, where they ‘dated’ and eventually ‘married’ before moving to the US to begin their espionage work.

Vavilova told Walker that the popular view of the 10 Russian illegals as having achieved little of intelligence value during their time in the US is misguided. “Of course I can’t talk about it”, she said, “but I know what we were doing and it doesn’t matter what others say”. She also said that training for illegals involved learning how to handle guns and using martial arts. But she added that these skills were never used in the field and were mostly good for building self-confidence —especially for missions that took place under cover of night in America, where street crime was far more prevalent than in Russia during the Cold War. Walker said that Vavilova’s English remains perfect, as does her husband’s. Like Vavilova, Bezrukov now works as a consultant and also teaches at a university in Moscow. Vavilova refused to discuss current Russian politics in her interview.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 August 2019 | Permalink

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Spy novel written by Kim Philby’s granddaughter to be published this week

July 15, 2019 by 2 Comments

Charlotte PhilbyA spy novel written by the granddaughter of Kim Philby, the British senior intelligence officer who secretly spied for the Soviet Union, will be published this week. Charlotte Philby, 36, is the London-based daughter of John Philby, who was one of the five children Kim Philby had with his English wife Aileen Furse. While working as a senior member of British intelligence, Harold Adrian Russell Philby, known as ‘Kim’ to his friends, spied for the Soviet NKVD and KGB. His espionage activities lasted from about 1933 until 1963, when he defected to the USSR from his home in Beirut, Lebanon. Philby’s defection sent ripples of shock across Western intelligence and is often seen as one of the most dramatic incidents of the Cold War. He was part of a larger ring of upper-class British spies, known collectively as ‘the Cambridge spies’ because they were recruited by Soviet intelligence during their student days at the University of Cambridge in England.

Following his sensational defection, Philby lived in the Soviet capital until his death in 1988 at the age of 76. His granddaughter gave an interview to British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph, in which she said that her father, John, “never said anything against Kim” and “enjoyed a very good relationship” with him. The family visited Kim Philby in Moscow every year until his death, when Charlotte was five. She told The Telegraph that she remembers these trips, and staying at Kim Philby’s apartment. She said the family would be met at the airport in Moscow “by men in grey suits” who would usher them into a government car and “whiz [them] to the gated apartment block where Kim lived” in downtown Moscow. During those trips, the family would give the double spy supplies of his favorite English foods and magazines. This may surprise some, given that Philby abandoned his second wife, an American, and his five children from his first wife. She had died six years prior to his defection, so the children, including Charlotte Philby’s father, were raised by relatives and family friends.

Charlotte Philby worked as a journalist for The Independent, a London-based British newspaper that ceased print circulation in 2016, and has since been writing as a freelancer. Her first novel, entitled The Most Difficult Thing, features a female protagonist who has to balance her espionage work with her relationship with those closest to her. The author says that Kim Philby’s ghost “hovers over the pages”. She notes that, if her grandfather had any regrets at the end of his life, “they wouldn’t be to do with betraying his country but with the individuals and the family members that he had to dupe and separate from”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 15 July 2019 | Permalink

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North Korean leader’s half-brother worked with CIA before his death, paper claims

June 12, 2019 by 1 Comment

Kim Jong-nam murderKim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, held regular meetings with American intelligence officers before he was assassinated with VX nerve gas at a busy airport terminal in Malaysia. Two women approached Kim Jong-nam as he was waiting to board a plane at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13, 2017. The estranged half-brother of the North Korean leader was about to travel to the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Macau, where he had been living in self-exile since 2007. Soon after his encounter with the two women, Kim collapsed and eventually died from symptoms associated with VX nerve agent inhalation.

But a new book published on Tuesday by a Washington Post reporter, and an article that came out in The Wall Street Journal on the same day, allege that Kim Jong-nam was working with the United States Central Intelligence Agency and was in fact in Malaysia to meet with his American spy hander when he was killed. The Wall Street Journal article said that many details of Kim Jong-nam’s precise relationship with the CIA remain “unclear”. It is doubtful that the late half-brother of the North Korean leader had much of a powerbase in the land of his birth, where few people even knew who he was. So his usefulness in providing the CIA with crucial details about the inner workings of the North Korean regime would have been limited. However, the paper quoted “a person knowledgeable about the matter” as saying that “there was a nexus” between the CIA and Kim. The article also alleges that Kim met with CIA case officers “on multiple occasions”, including during his fateful trip to Malaysia in February of 2017.

In her just-published book The Great Successor, Anna Fifield, a correspondent with The Washington Post, claims that Kim spent a number of days on the island of Langkawi, a well-known resort destination in Malaysia. Security footage at his hotel showed him meeting with “an Asian-looking man [Korean-American, according to The Wall Street Journal] who was reported to be an American intelligence [officer]”. It was one of regular trips Kim took to places like Singapore and Malaysia to meet his spy handlers, according to Fifield, who cites “someone with knowledge of the intelligence”. She adds that, although meeting with this CIA handler may not have necessarily been the sole purpose of Kim’s fateful trip to Malaysia, it was certainly a major reason. Fifield alleges that the backpack Kim was carrying when he was killed at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport was found to contain $120,000 in cash. The Wall Street Journal claims that, in addition to meeting with the CIA, Kim held regular meetings with spy agencies of other countries, including China.

Meanwhile, two South Korean government agencies, the National Intelligence Service and the Ministry of Reunification, said on Tuesday that they were unable to confirm that Kim was indeed an asset of the CIA or any other intelligence agency. They also said that they could not confirm whether Kim had traveled to Malaysia to meet with a CIA case officer at the time of his assassination.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 June 2019 | Permalink

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Pakistan’s ex-spy chief stripped of army pension for writing controversial book

February 25, 2019 by 1 Comment

Asad DurraniThe former director of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency has been stripped of his military pension and associated benefits for co-authoring a controversial book about intelligence with his Indian counterpart. Lieutenant General Asad Durrani (ret.) served as director-general of Pakistan’s Directorate for Military Intelligence between 1988 and 1989. From 1990 to 1992 he was director of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, which is arguably Pakistan’s most powerful government institution. Durrani, 78, has been severely criticized in some Pakistani nationalist circles for co-authoring a book entitled The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace, with his Indian counterpart, A.S. Daulat. Daulat, 79, headed India’s Research and Analysis Wing from 1999 to 2000.

The book was edited by the widely respected Indian journalist Aditya Sinha. It contains details about Pakistan’s systematic efforts to foment armed unrest in the heavily Muslim Indian state of Kashmir, for instance by funding and training a host of Islamist paramilitary organizations that operate in the disputed region. The book also claims that the Pakistani government was aware of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden in 2011, and that it worked closely with the United States to kill the co-founder of al-Qaeda. Islamabad has consistently denied allegations that it knew of bin Laden’s hideout in the city of Abbottabad, and that it gave permission to US Special Forces troops to raid his compound.

Last Friday, Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor announced that a military court had found Durrani guilty of having violated the military code of conduct of the Pakistan Armed Forces. Consequently, he said, the retired general would be stripped of his Army pension and all associated benefits. The military court had conferred behind closed doors, said Ghafoor, adding that he was unable to provide further details on the case. Meanwhile, the Islamabad High Court announced on Thursday that it rejected a plea by Durrani’s lawyers to have his name removed from Pakistan’s Exit Control List. The list contains names of individuals who are prohibited from leaving Pakistan for reasons relating to corruption, economic crime, as well as terrorism and drug-related activity, among other violations. Durrani was placed on that list in March of last year, shortly after his controversial book was published in India.

During the same press briefing on Friday, Ghafoor also said that two Pakistani military officers had been placed in custody facing espionage charges. The Pakistan Army spokesman gave no information about the officers’ names or the countries for which they allegedly spied for.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 25 February 2019 | Permalink

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Book alleges 1980s British Labour Party leader was Soviet agent

September 21, 2018 by 1 Comment

Michael FootThe leadership of the Labour Party in Britain has reacted with disdain after a new book by a leading author and columnist claimed that Michael Foot, who led the Party in the early 1980s was paid agent of the Soviet KGB. Foot, a staunch and vocal representative of the postwar British left, was a member of parliament for over 40 years, eventually serving as leader of the House of Commons. He rose to the post of deputy leader of the Labour Party and in 1980 succeeded Jim Callahan as head of the Party. But he stepped down in 1983 in the aftermath of Labour’s largest electoral defeat in over half a century.

Two years later, in 1985, Oleg Gordievsky, a colonel in the Soviet KGB, defected to Britain and disclosed that he had been a double spy for the British from 1974 until his defection. In 1995, Gordievsky chronicled his years as a KGB officer and his espionage for Britain in a memoir, entitled Next Stop Execution. The book was abridged and serialized in the London-based Times newspaper. In it, Gordievsky claimed that Foot had been a Soviet “agent of influence” and was codenamed “Agent BOOT” by the KGB. Foot proceeded to sue The Times for libel, after the paper published a leading article headlined “KGB: Michael Foot was our agent”. The Labour Party politician won the lawsuit and was awarded financial restitution from the paper.

This past week, however, the allegations about Foot’s connections with Soviet intelligence resurfaced with the publication of The Spy and the Traitor, a new book chronicling the life and exploits of Gordievsky. In the book, Times columnist and author Ben Macintyre alleges that Gordievsky’s 1995 allegations about Foot were accurate and that Gordievsky passed them on to British intelligence before openly defecting to Britain. According to Macintyre, Gordievsky briefed Baron Armstrong of Ilminster, a senior civil servant and cabinet secretary to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Lord Armstrong, a well-connected veteran of British politics, in turn communicated the information to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in the summer of 1982, says Macintyre. The Times columnist alleges that MI6 received specific information from Lord Armstrong, according to which Foot had been in contact with the KGB for years and that he had been paid the equivalent of £37,000 ($49,000) in today’s money for his services. The spy agency eventually determined that Foot may not himself have been conscious that the Soviets were using him as an agent of influence. But MI6 officials viewed Gordievsky’s allegations significant enough to justify a warning given to Queen Elizabeth II, in case the Labour Party won the 1983 general election and Foot became Britain’s prime minister.

The latest allegations prompted a barrage of strong condemnations from current and former officials of the Labour Party. Its current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who like Foot also comes from the left of the Party, denounced Macintyre for “smearing a dead man, who successfully defended himself [against the same allegations] when he was alive”. Labour’s deputy leader, John McDonnell, criticized The Times for “debasing [the] standards of journalism in this country. They used to be called the gutter press. Now they inhabit the sewers”, he said. Neil Kinnock, who succeeded Foot in the leadership of the Labour Party in 1983, said Macintyre’s allegations were “filthy” and described Foot as a “passionate and continual critic of the Soviet Union”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 September 2018 | Permalink

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Pro-Soviet radicals planned to kill Gorbachev in East Germany, book claims

September 11, 2018 by Leave a comment

Mikhail GorbachevA group of German radicals planned to assassinate Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in East Germany in 1989, thus triggering a Soviet military invasion of the country, according to a new book written by a former British spy. The book is entitled Pilgrim Spy: My Secret War Against Putin, the KGB and the Stasi (Hodder & Stoughton publishers) and is written by “Tom Shore”, the nom de guerre of a former officer in the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). The book chronicles the work of its author, who claims that in 1989 he was sent by MI6 to operate inside communist East Germany without an official cover. That means that he was not a member of the British diplomatic community in East Germany and thus had no diplomatic immunity while engaging in espionage. His mission was to uncover details of what MI6 thought was a Soviet military operation against the West that would be launched from East Germany.

In his book, Shore says that he did not collect any actionable intelligence on the suspected Soviet military operation. He did, however, manage to develop sources from within the growing reform movement in East Germany. The leaders of that movement later spearheaded the widespread popular uprising that led to the collapse of the German Democratic Republic and its eventual unification with West Germany. While finding his way around the pro-democracy movement, Shore says that he discovered a number of self-described activists who had been planted there by the East German government or the Soviet secret services. Among them, he says, were members of the so-called Red Army Faction (RAF). Known also as the Baader Meinhoff Gang or the Baader-Meinhof Group, the RAF was a pro-Soviet guerrilla group that operated in several Western European countries, including Germany, Belgium and Holland. Its members participated in dozens of violent actions from 1971 to 1993, in which over 30 people were killed. Among other attacks, the group tried to kill the supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and launched a sniper attack on the US embassy in Bonn. The group is known to have received material, logistical and operational support from a host of Eastern Bloc countries, including East Germany, Poland and Yugoslavia.

According to Shore, the RAF members who had infiltrated the East German reform movement were planning to assassinate Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev during his official visit to East Germany on October 7, 1989. The visit was planned to coincide with the 40th anniversary celebrations of the formation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949, following the collapse of the Third Reich. Shore says he discovered that the assassination plot had been sponsored by hardline members of the Soviet Politburo, the communist country’s highest policy-making body, and by senior officials of the KGB. The plan involved an all-out military takeover of East Germany by Warsaw Pact troops, similar to that of Czechoslovakia in 1968. But Shore claims that he was able to prevent the RAF’s plan with the assistance of members of the East German reform movement. He says, however, that at least two of the RAF members who planned to kill Gorbachev remain on the run to this day. The RAF was officially dissolved in 1998, when its leaders sent an official communiqué to the Reuters news agency announcing the immediate cessation of all RAF activities. However, three former RAF members remain at large. They are Ernst-Volker Staub, Burkhard Garweg and Daniela Klette, all of them German citizens, who are believed to be behind a series of bank robberies in Italy, Spain and France in recent years.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 September 2018 | Permalink

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