New book on Canada’s mysterious Agent 235

April 21, 2010 by 2 Comments

Johann Heinrich Amadeus de Graaf

De Graaf

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new book published by the Pennsylvania State University Press sheds new light into the life and work of mysterious Agent 235, Canada’s mysterious mid-20th-century spy known as ‘Johnny’. In Johnny: A Spy’s Life, R.S. Rose and Gordon Scott present the outcome of 14 years of research on ‘Johnny’, whose real name was Johann Heinrich Amadeus de Graaf. De Graaf was born in Germany in 1894, but later moved to Britain, and at the start of World War II worked as an informant for MI6. Although he conducted some of his operations in Germany, most of them took place in the UK, where he unmasked a number of native pro-Nazi sympathizers and agents of the Gestapo. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #334

April 21, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Analysis: Split up the CIA, says veteran officer. A 15-year CIA veteran, who goes by the pseudonym Ishmael Jones, reveals in a new book that the Agency now has only “a handful” of non-official-cover officers, i.e. spies not affiliated with a US diplomatic mission abroad. In The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, Jones argues the CIA should be broken up and its pieces absorbed by other US intelligence agencies.
  • Turkey appoints new intelligence director. It is expected that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) will soon be headed by Dr. Hakan Fidan, who will replace Emre Taner. MİT’s reputation has recently been severely hit by the involvement of some of its personnel in the notorious Ergenekon affair.

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Interview with alleged CIA spy in Iran

April 9, 2010 by Leave a comment

A Time to Betray

A Time to Betray

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
US government-owned Radio Liberty has aired an interview with an Iranian defector who claims to have worked as a CIA agent in the 1980s and early 1990s. The defector, who goes by the pseudonym Reza Kahlili (codename ‘Wally’), has authored what appears to be a CIA-sanctioned book, entitled A Time to Betray, in which he says he was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC is a sizable branch of the Iranian military that is ideologically committed to the defense of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Kahlili, who now lives in California, says he concluded his studies in the US and returned to Iran shortly after the Revolution. But he quickly became disillusioned with the Islamic regime, and in 1981 met with the CIA in the United States and offered them his services. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #310

March 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Analysis: Outsourcing Intelligence. David Ignatius points out that the latest rogue operation of the US Defense Department, revealed last weekend by The New York Times, points to the increasing irrelevance of the CIA in the so-called “global war on terrorism”: “by using contractors who operate ‘outside the wire’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the [US] military has gotten information that is sometimes better than what the CIA is offering”, says Ignatius.
  • White House threatens veto on intelligence bill. The White House has renewed its threat to veto the fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill over a provision that would force the administration to widen the circle of US lawmakers who are informed about covert operations and other sensitive activities.
  • CIA’s Kiriakou authors new book. John Kiriakou, who spent 14 years working for the CIA, and has made headlines in the past for defending the practice of waterboarding in interrogations, while recognizing it is torture, has a new book out, entitled The Reluctant Spy.

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North Korean defector emerges in Austria after 15 years

March 10, 2010 by Leave a comment

Kim Jong Ryul

Kim Jong Ryul

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A defector, who was once a member of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s political protection team, has suddenly emerged in Austria, 15 years after faking his own death. Kim Jong Ryul is an East German-trained engineer who returned to North Korea in 1970 to work for Kim Il Sung, whose government tasked him with translating nuclear documents and making secret trips to the West. However, on October 18, 1994, while on a government-sponsored trip to Bratislava, Slovakia, he disappeared without trace. The North Korean government presumed he had been killed. But Kim had actually entered Austria, where he lived for 15 years as a defector. On Thursday, he gave a press conference in Vienna to promote a book about his life, written by journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi, who based it on over 80 hours of interviews with Kim. Read more of this post

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UK special forces chief trying to prevent book publication

February 15, 2010 by 1 Comment

SAS seal

SAS seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The director of Britain’s Special Forces is actively trying to stop the publication of a new book that sheds unprecedented light on the elite combat group’s operations in Iraq. The official, whose name cannot be revealed for security reasons, has said that the book, authored by BBC journalist Mark Urban, will negatively impact the operational effectiveness of the Special Air Service (SAS) and other UK Special Forces units. The official’s objections have come to overshadow a compromise struck earlier this month between Mr. Urban’s publishers and the UK Ministry of Defence. Following four months of negotiations, the Ministry reportedly decided that the book “would not compromise the operational effectiveness of the SAS”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0286

February 14, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • More on CIA spies working for corporations. Author Eamon Javers provides more information about his new book, in which he examines the increasing phenomenon of CIA agents working for private corporations on the side.
  • Rio Tinto spy controversy thickens. Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto says it is “extremely worried” about four of its staff, who were arrested last July by Chinese authorities and have now been formally charged with espionage.
  • Court keeps White House spy emails secret. Two weeks ago, US President Barack Obama declared in his State of the Union address that “it’s time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress”. This does not appear to apply to telecommunication industry lobbyists, who campaigned in favor of facilitating warrantless communications interception through the National Security Agency’s STELLAR WIND program.

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News you may have missed #0281

February 9, 2010 by 5 Comments

  • US intel director confirms CIA can kill US citizens abroad. It’s official; speaking before the House Intelligence Committee, US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged that President Obama is continuing a Bush-era policy authorizing the killing of US citizens if they are considered “a terrorist threat to the United States”.
  • Funny sign at CIA gift shop. Actual notice displayed at a CIA gift store inside the Agency’s Langley, VA, headquarters: “Don’t forget! If you are undercover, you cannot charge! It will blow your cover”. Good point.
  • Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars out in paperback. IntelNews has received the new paperback edition of Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars: 100 Years of British Intelligence. Joseph Fitsanakis reviewed the hardback edition last May.

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News you may have missed #0236

December 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Airline bomb plotter’s father warned CIA about his son. Dr. Umaru AbdulMutallab, the father of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect, visited the US embassy in Nigeria in November, where he told a CIA agent that he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen.
  • New book details Stasi spying on Günter Grass. A new book, entitled Guenter Grass im Visier: Die Stasi-Akte (Günter Grass in the Crosshairs: The Stasi Files), is to be published in March in Germany. Among other things, it will detail spying operations against the Nobel Prize-winning author by the East German secret police, the Stasi.
  • Former Albanian spymaster claiming benefits in Britain. Ilir Kumbaro, Albania’s former spymaster, is wanted by authorities for having kidnapped and tortured three men in his homeland. But after falling out with officials there, he fled to Britain in 1996, where he has lived for 13 years using the alias Shaqa Shatri.

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News you may have missed #0215

December 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Ex-MI5 officer cannot publish memoirs, court decides. A former MI5 officer, known only as “A.”, cannot publish his memoirs, which consist of a 300-page manuscript, a panel of British judges has decided. Interestingly, “A.” has said he intends to remain anonymous.
  • Turkey denies Israel use of its airspace to spy on Iran. If Israel were to violate Turkish airspace in order to conduct reconnaissance operations on Iran, Ankara’s reaction would resemble an “earthquake”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said in an interview.

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Real-life story behind Indian spy novel revealed

December 8, 2009 by 8 Comments

Mission to Pakistan by Maloy Krishna Dhar

Book cover

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A few years ago, Maloy Krishna Dhar, a longtime veteran of India’s Central Intelligence Bureau (CIB), wrote Mission to Pakistan, a spy novel about the ongoing intelligence war between nuclear powers India and Pakistan. Since 2002, when the novel was published, Dhar has maintained that the exploits of his protagonist, an undercover Indian spy leading a double life inside the Pakistani armed forces, were based on the true story of an unnamed CIB agent who was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It now appears that the real-life story behind the book is that of Ravindra Kaushik, an accredited CIB agent who moved to Pakistan from Dubai, converted to Islam, married a Pakistani woman, and joined the country’s Army under the cover name “Nabi Ahmed”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0201

December 1, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New book claims historic IRA commander was British spy. John Turi has authored England’s Greatest Spy, a new book, which claims that Éamon de Valera, who founded Irish republican party Fianna Fáil and later became the first President of the Irish Republic, secretly became a British intelligence officer in 1916. Tim Pat Coogan, one of de Valera’s most prominent biographers, reviews the book.
  • Japan launches spy satellite targetting North Korea. Japan’s H-2A No. 16 rocket, which was launched on Saturday, carries an advanced space satellite that will spy on North Korean military and other sites. The satellite is said to carry the most advanced high-resolution imaging equipment of all of Japan’s intelligence-gathering satellites.
  • US Secret Service 9/11 text messages disclosed. Hundreds of thousands of lines of transcribed pager messages exchanged between US civilian and military users on 9/11 were anonymously published on the Internet on Wednesday. They include messages exchanged between US Secret Service agents.

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News you may have missed #0199

November 30, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Author insists Sir Hollis was Soviet agent. Last month, Professor Christopher Andrew, author of the recently published In Defense of the Realm, an authorized history of MI5, dismissed allegations that Sir Roger Hollis, former head of MI5, had been a KGB agent. But intelligence author Chapman Pincher insists that “Hollis ha[d] been so deeply suspected of being a Soviet spy […] that he had been recalled from retirement for interrogation” in London.
  • ACLU supports lawsuit against FBI by alleged informant. The American Civil Liberties Union has joined Craig Monteilh, who says he was an undercover FBI informant, in a lawsuit demanding sealed court records identifying him as a spy be made public.

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News you may have missed #0172

November 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

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CIA trickery and deception manual revealed in new book

November 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

CIA manual

CIA manual

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A CIA manual of surreptitious behavioral and signaling tricks, which was recently discovered by researchers, has been declassified and published in a new book. In The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, espionage historian H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, former director of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, have reproduced the entire manual, which was supposed to have been destroyed by the Agency. Remarkably, the manual’s main author was John Mulholland, a professional magician and editor for 23 years of The Sphinx, America’s authoritative magazine for magicians. In 1953, Mulholland left the stage and The Sphinx to work full time for the CIA, which he did for several years. Read more of this post

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