Book claims CIA framed Bulgaria over assassination attempt on Pope

April 25, 2011 by Leave a comment

John Paul II

John Paul II

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new book claims that the United States Central Intelligence Agency concocted a link between the Bulgarian intelligence services and the 1981 failed assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II. Entitled Kill the Pope: The Truth About the Assassination Attempt on Pope John Paul II, the book is authored by Italian investigative journalist Marco Insaldo and Turkish researcher Yasemin Taksin. Both say that Kill the Pope is the result of a twenty-year study into the incident. Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a 9mm handgun fired by Turkish citizen Mehmet Ali Ağca, while riding in the back of an open-roof car at the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square. Although Ağca’s motives are shrouded in mystery, many intelligence historians believe that he was operating as an agent for the Bulgarian secret services. It has been speculated that the Soviet KGB instructed Bulgarian intelligence to use Ağca and another Turk, Oral Çelik, to kill the Polish-born Pope, because he had strong ties with Poland’s dissident Solidarność (Solidarity) movement. But Insaldo and Taksin insist that there is no evidence to connect the Bulgarian government to the assassination operation, and that Ağca operated under the command of Turkey’s Grey Wolves, a nationalist, anti-Western paramilitary group, which consists of both secular and Islamist factions. Read more of this post

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Comment: Russian Espionage Steals 2010 Limelight

December 24, 2010 by 4 Comments

GRU emblem

GRU emblem

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As the first decade of the 21st century is coming to an end, few would dispute that Israeli and American spy agencies have been among the most talked-about intelligence organizations of 2010. The reasons for this are equally undeniable: the United States tops the list because of its political prominence, which inevitably attracts media attention; Israel tops it because of the sheer ferocity of its espionage output throughout the Middle East. And yet there is nothing new about this, since neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor the Mossad are exactly novices when it comes to high-profile media exposures. The same cannot be said with respect to Russian intelligence agencies, which went through a period of prolonged hibernation following the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the year that is about to end demonstrates that the stagnant interlude in Russian espionage may well be in its closing stages.

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Bulgarian spy services intercept PM assassination plot

November 8, 2010 by Leave a comment

Boyko Borisov

Boyko Borisov

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister of Bulgaria has been intercepted in its planning stage by the country’s intelligence services, according to information published yesterday in the Bulgarian press. The Sofia-based 24 Chasa daily alleges that Bulgarian intelligence agents were able to intercept telephone conversations leading to a meeting of conspirators, which took place four months ago. The meeting, held at the luxury King George Palace Hotel in downtown Athens, Greece, was reportedly attended by several Bulgarian “participants [who] came onboard yachts, accompanied by numerous bodyguards”. The meeting centered on plans to fund an operation to “eliminate” Bulgarian Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, of Bulgaria’s conservative GERB party, who has led the country since the summer of 2009. According to 24 Chasa, participants at the meeting pledged the sum of €400,000 to fund the assassination of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, a country that has been a member of the European Union since 2007. Read more of this post

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Killer submerged British spy’s body in ‘chemical substance’

September 6, 2010 by 3 Comments

Gareth Williams

Gareth Williams

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Investigators are still in the dark about vital clues behind last month’s killing of a British intelligence employee in his London apartment. Detectives say they are still unsure about the exact cause of death of Dr. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old mathematician employed by General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British government’s communications security and surveillance agency. It has been determined that Williams, who for the past year had been temporarily transferred to MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency, was not stabbed or shot, and is unlikely to have been strangled by his murderer(s). There are, however, increasing signs that the GCHQ scientist’s murder was carried out in a professional manner, possibly by a member of a rival intelligence agency. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Russian-Czech spy scandals show new direction in Russian espionage

August 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

ÚZSI seal

ÚZSI seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last July saw the resignations of three Czech Generals, including the head of the president’s military office and the country’s representative to NATO, following revelations that one of their senior staffers had a relationship with a Russian spy.  Intelligence observers have become accustomed to frequent reports of Russian-Czech spy scandals in recent years. But, according to reports from Prague, recent Russian intelligence activity in the Czech Republic may indicate a change of direction by Moscow. Some say that Russia’s new espionage doctrine focuses less on military intelligence in the post-US-missile-shield strategic environment, and more on political and economic espionage. To be sure, Russia’s intelligence presence in the Czech capital remains substantial: Czech counterintelligence sources estimate that at least 60 –that is, one in three– Russian diplomats in Prague are engaged in intelligence-related activities. But the intensity of Russian espionage in Prague is not unique. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #409

August 7, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Probe unearths secrets of Bulgaria’s assassination bureau. Previously unknown details on Service 7, Bulgaria’s Cold War-era assassination bureau, have been unearthed by one of Bulgaria’s leading newspapers, following a probe into 5,000 pages of declassified archives from the country’s former communist intelligence service, the First Directorate of the Committee on State Security.
  • US Pentagon bars troops from reading WikiLeaks. Any citizen, any foreign spy, any member of the Taliban, and any terrorist can go to the WikiLeaks web site, and download detailed information. Members of that same military, however, are now banned from looking at those internal military documents, because “doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks”.
  • Analysis: Chasing Wikileaks. “[W]hatever the imperfections of WikiLeaks as a startup, its emergence points to a real shortcoming within our intelligence community. Secrets can be kept by deterrence –that is, by hunting down the people who leak them […]. But there are other methods: keep far fewer secrets, manage them better –and, perhaps, along the way, become a bit more like WikiLeaks. An official government Web site that would make the implementation of FOIA quicker and more uniform, comprehensive, and accessible”.

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News you may have missed #377

June 23, 2010 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #353

May 18, 2010 by 2 Comments

  • Name of British Mossad agent handed to Interpol. Dubai police have identified another suspect in the January murder of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He is reportedly a 62-year-old British citizen, who is believed to be currently hiding in western Africa.
  • Russia jails man for spying for the US. Gennady Sipachyov, a Russian whose age and profession have been kept secret by Moscow, has been sentenced to a four-year sentence for allegedly emailing secret military maps identifying classified Russian military infrastructure to the US Pentagon in 2008. Earlier this month, a Russian court rejected an appeal by another alleged US spy, Igor Sutyagin.
  • Bulgarian government wants to copy CIA. Bulgaria’s Defense Minister, Anyu Angelov, has proposed the merging of intelligence services to create a mega-structure of the CIA type. Meanwhile, a panel investigating Bulgaria’s communist-era police files has exposed two of the country’s former counterintelligence heads as former communist state security agents.

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Italy busts arms smuggling network, arrests Iranian intelligence agents

March 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

Hamid Nejad Masoumi

Masoumi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Italian authorities have announced the arrest of two Iranians and five Italians on suspicion of smuggling European-made weapons and explosives to Iran. Italian police said the Iranians involved in the operation, which breached an international embargo on Iran, are “believed to be members of the Iranian secret services”. They are Ali Damirchiloo, 55 (occupation unknown), and Hamid Nejad Masoumi, 51, an accredited journalist and Iranian state television correspondent, who has lived in Italy since 1995. Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for two more Iranians, Hamir Bakhtiyari Reza and Bakhtiyari Homayoun, who are also believed to be intelligence agents and are thought to have managed to escape to Iran. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #293

February 22, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • US DHS monitors websites. According to a document released by the US Department of Homeland Security, Cryptome, Wired‘s Danger Room blog, and WikiLeaks, are among websites the DHS systematically monitors “in order to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture”. IntelNews wants to take this opportunity to say ‘hi’ to members of the DHS lurking around.
  • Russian spy lived in Dayton, stole secrets. Iowa-born and -bred communist and US Army engineer, George Koval, was a master at blending in. And, as it turns out, he was also a master spy for the Soviet Union. He did just that while working on the Manhattan Project in Dayton for six months in 1945.
  • Niger army suspends constitution. No word yet in Niger about the elections promised by the military coup plotters who appear to have staged a successful coup. For those who may not know, in international politics, Niger means uranium –lots of it. It’s also worth asking what ten agents of Bulgaria’s counterterrorism unit were doing in Niger on the day of the coup.

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News you may have missed #0163

November 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • South Korean ex-spy master dies. Lee Hu-rak, who has died at age 85, headed the Korea Central Intelligence Agency, a predecessor of today’s National Intelligence Service, from 1970-1973. He was best known for brokering the signing of a historic 1972 peace document with North Korea, after an unprecedented secret trip to Pyongyang, during which he met North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
  • Spy like us. How a mild-mannered Baltimore antique dealer became one of the FBI’s best undercover agents.
  • Bulgaria quits plans to disband State National Security Agency. Bulgaria’s government has made clear it does not plan to suspend, but just to “streamline”, the operations of the scandal-prone State National Security Agency DANS.

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News you may have missed #0118

September 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Second spy operation against media revealed in Bulgaria. A few months ago, Bulgarian public opinion was shocked by revelations about Operation GALLERY (a.k.a. Operation GALERIA), a project by Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS) aimed to intimidate the country’s press. Now a second domestic spying program has been discovered by the appropriately named Bulgarian Parliamentary Committee for Controlling DANS.
  • US military cannot analyze surveillance footage influx. The heaps of intelligence footage gathered by US military spy drones and surveillance cameras are already more than analysts can handle. So DARPA, the US military’s research arm, is looking for a software program that will automate the analysis process.

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News you may have missed #0095

September 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • New revelations about Bulgarian domestic spying case. It appears that Operation GALLERY (a.k.a. Operation GALERIA), by the Bulgarian State Agency for National Security (DANS), was primarily aimed at the Bulgarian tabloid newspaper Weekend and journalist Dimitar Zlatkov. Journalist Ognyan Stefanov, who was nearly beaten to death after authoring an article implicating DANS officials in illicit trafficking activities (see previous intelNews coverage), appears to have been simply collateral damage.
  • Taliban use CIA-supplied mines against US-led forces in Afghanistan. Evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban itself suggest that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the US to the jihadi movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
  • Massive domestic spying revealed in Russia. From January to June this year, Russian intelligence agents surreptitiously opened 115,000 letters, listened in on 64,000 personal phone conversations, and broke into 11,000 private homes according to information from Russia’s Supreme Court.

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News you may have missed #0077

August 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US Army documents reveal Mexican military’s role in massacre. Newly declassified documents from the US Defense Intelligence Agency describe the Mexican Army’s role in backing paramilitary groups in Chiapas at the time of the Acteal massacre. The massacre involved the killing of 45 people attending a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic indigenous townspeople, including a number of children and pregnant women, who were members of the pacifist group Las Abejas (“The Bees”).
  • Tamils in the UK continue fundraising despite spy fears. Members of the Tamil community in Oxford, England, have vowed to continue fundraising despite fears that the Sri Lankan government is spying on them.
  • Major purge at Bulgarian intelligence agency. More key officials of Bulgaria’s State National Security Agency (DANS) have submitted their resignations after its director, Petko Sertov, was recently replaced. Sertov was allegedly axed because Bulgaria’s “American partners were said to have lost faith” in him.

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News you may have missed #0060

August 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Ex-FBI translator tests US Justice Department again. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has spent seven years trying to get a court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents had penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. This weekend she’s going to try again.
  • Bulgaria appoints new National Security Agency director. Tsvetelin Yovchev is the new head of the State National Security Agency (DANS). The Agency’s previous director, Petko Sertov, recently handed his resignation, allegedly after Bulgaria’s “American partners were said to have lost faith” in him. He will now serve as Bulgaria’s general consul in Thessaloniki, northern Greece.
  • US paper sees power struggle inside Iranian intelligence. The Washington Times claims the recent firing of intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, two other Ali Khamenei loyalists and nearly 20 other high-ranking officials, has weakened Khamenei’s hold over the Iranian intelligence ministry and has strengthened the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

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