News you may have missed #735

May 22, 2012 by Leave a comment

Blast site in Deir Ezzor, SyriaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Pakistan imposes new restrictions on CIA operatives. The government of Pakistan has issued a set of new rules and regulations for officials, ambassadors and contractors of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to Pakistani news reports, Pakistan and the US finalized these new rules in the course of 13 meetings between representatives of both countries. Under the new rules, CIA officers deployed in Pakistan “must prove their identity” to Pakistani counterintelligence officials. Some officials, including former Pakistani ambassador to the United States Sherry Rehman, are already talking of a “new beginning for US-Pakistani relations”.
►►Car bomb strikes near Syrian intelligence agency. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed reports on Saturday of an explosion in the Ghazi Ayyash neighborhood of the eastern Syrian city Deir al-Zour. The site of the blast, which killed at least seven people and injured 100 others, was close to the city branches of the Military Intelligence Directorate and Air Force Intelligence, the London-based activist group reported. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
►►China denies US cyberespionage claims. The Chinese government has hit back at a US Pentagon report that said it is carrying out aggressive cyber-spying as part of a military build-up. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said “China’s justified and normal military development” had been unjustly criticized in the annual report, which was released on Friday. The development of China’s “limited” military force was only geared towards safeguarding its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, said the spokesman.

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News you may have missed #724

May 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

Shakil AfridiBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Aid group denies link to US intelligence in Pakistan. Aid group Save the Children denied accusations it has ties to US intelligence agencies in Pakistan. The organization’s denial came shortly after Dr. Shakil Afridi, a doctor the CIA recruited to help in the search for Osama bin Laden, told Pakistani interrogators that Save the Children played a role in his becoming involved with the CIA. Following Afridi’s interrogation, the Pakistani government banned some Save the Children members from leaving the country and aid supplies –including medical supplies– have been blocked by customs.
►►Is MI6 double spy’s case linked with Gareth Williams’ death? In 2010, British authorities jailed for a year MI6 employee Daniel Houghton, after he was caught trying to sell classified documents to MI5 spooks posing as foreign agents. According to newspaper The Daily Mirror, British police are now “probing a possible link between the Houghton’s case and the death of MI6 employee Gareth Williams, who was found dead in his London apartment in 2010. According to the paper, police detectives “want assurances from MI6 that Williams’ details [and] identity were not compromised” by Houghton.
►►Fears of spying hinder US license for China Mobile. China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile provider, applied in October for a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide service between China and the United States and to build facilities on American soil. But officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department’s National Security Division are concerned that the move would give the company access to physical infrastructure and Internet traffic that might allow China to spy more easily on the US government and steal intellectual property from American companies. This is according to The Los Angeles Times, which cites “people familiar with the process who declined to be identified because the deliberations are secret”. US officials and lawmakers have expressed similar concerns about a Chinese telecommunications hardware manufacturer Huawei Technologies, which is alleged to have contacts with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of State Security.

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Comment: Britain denies murdered businessman was MI6 spy

April 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

Neil HeywoodBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Britain has officially denied allegations that a British businessman, who was found dead in China last November, was an intelligence operative. Neil Heywood, a financial consultant and fluent Chinese speaker, who had lived in China for over a decade, was found dead on November 14, 2011, in his room at the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel in Chongqing. Widespread speculation that Heywood may have been a spy for MI6, Britain’s external intelligence service, eventually prompted the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee to ask Britain’s Foreign Secretary to clarify whether Haywood was a spy. The Committee wanted to know whether the late businessman had ever supplied intelligence “on a formal or informal basis” to Britain’s embassy in Beijing or its consulate in the city of Chongqing. Responding yesterday to the Committee’s query, British Foreign Secretary William Hague noted that “it is long established government policy neither to confirm nor deny speculation of this sort”. However, he added, the interest in this case made it “exceptionally appropriate” for him to “confirm that Mr Heywood was not an employee of the British government in any capacity”. In response to the second part of the Committee’s question, on whether the British expat shared information with British diplomatic officials, Mr Hague said that Heywood “was only an occasional contact of the embassy, attending some meetings in connection with his business”. He added that Heywood “was not known” to the British consulate-general in Chongqing. In its report on the story, British quality broadsheet The Guardian noted that Mr Hague’s response “did not fully answer the committee’s question”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #717

April 23, 2012 by 2 Comments

Lieutenant General Michael FlynnBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►CIA wants more drone strikes in Yemen. The CIA is seeking permission to launch more airborne drone strikes in Yemen, even when there is a risk the victims might not always be terrorists, The Washington Post reports. The paper quotes an unnamed Obama administration official saying that “there is still a very firm emphasis on being surgical and targeting only those who have a direct interest in attacking the United States”. But critics of the drone program say killings of innocent victims could become more common if the strikes are expanded. The CIA proposal for the “signature strikes” is awaiting a decision by the National Security Council, The Post quotes unnamed US officials as saying.
►►US military intelligence critic to lead spy agency. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who once blasted the work of US military spies in Afghanistan as “only marginally relevant”, has been nominated to take over the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the US Pentagon’s intelligence organization. Flynn was a scathing public critic of military intelligence in Afghanistan, where he served as a top intelligence officer in 2010, saying it failed to provide decision makers with a clear picture of conditions on the ground. Flynn is credited with playing an influential role during his tenure at Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secretive headquarters that oversees elite commandos like the team that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
►►Taiwanese man detained for spying for China. A Taiwanese businessman, identified by his surname Cheng, has been detained for allegedly spying for China. He was allegedly recruited by China when he moved to the southeastern coastal province of Fujian to do business a few years ago, prosecutors said. Cheng is accused of trying to lure a former classmate, who is now a military officer, to meet with Chinese officials abroad for money; but the officer turned him in to Taiwanese authorities.

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UK Foreign Secretary asked if murdered businessman was MI6 spy

April 20, 2012 by 1 Comment

Neil HeywoodBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Foreign Secretary has been officially asked by a parliamentary committee whether Neil Heywood, the British businessman who was found murdered in China last November, was spying for British intelligence. There is no question that Heywood, a financial consultant and fluent Chinese speaker, who had lived in China for over a decade, maintained contacts with intelligence insiders. In the past, he had collaborated with Hakluyt, a business intelligence firm established and staffed by former officers of MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency. British government sources have denied that the murdered businessman had ever been employed by the British state. But Heywood’s background —his schooling at Harrow, his background in international relations, his contacts with senior Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks, and his language skills— have given rise to intense speculation that he may have been an asset for British intelligence. Yesterday British newspaper The Daily Mail cited “a well-placed source” in claiming that Heywood “passed information to MI6 as an agent of influence”. Speculation about Heywood’s alleged contacts with British intelligence is bound to increase following news of an official request on the subject, issued to British Foreign Secretary William Hague, by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. The request, submitted in the form of a letter (.pdf) authored by Committee Chairman Ricahrd Ottaway, urges Hague to address “speculation” about the murdered Englishman’s profession. In the letter, Ottaway asks the Foreign Secretary to clarify whether Haywood had ever supplied intelligence “on a formal or informal basis” to Britain’s embassy in Beijing or its consulate in the city of Chongqing, where Heywood was found dead last November. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #716 (analysis edition)

April 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

Mordechai VanunuBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Kabul attacks show intel failures in Afghanistan. Dozens, possibly hundreds of people would have been involved in training, equipping and then infiltrating into the heart of Kabul the large number of insurgents who were prepared to fight to a certain death in the Afghan capital last Sunday. Yet neither Afghan nor foreign intelligence operatives appeared to have any idea that an unprecedented wave of attacks was about to engulf both Kabul and several other key locations around the country. So it seems that Afghan President Hamid Karzai may have a point when he says that the “infiltration in Kabul and other provinces is an intelligence failure for us and especially for NATO and should be seriously investigated”.
►►Report claims China spies on US space technology. China is stealing US military and civilian space technology in an effort to disrupt US access to intelligence, navigation and communications satellites, according to a report authored by the State and Defense Departments. The report (.pdf) argues China should be excluded from recommendations made to the US government to ease restrictions on exports of communications and remote-sensing satellites and equipment. Chinese officials have denied the report’s allegations, calling it a “Cold War ghost”.
►►The long and sordid history of sex and espionage. Using seduction to extract valuable information is as old as the Old Testament —literally— Whether from conviction or for profit, women —and men— have traded sex for secrets for centuries. The Cold War provided plenty of opportunities for so-called “honey-pot” scandals. Perhaps the most dramatic case of seduction in recent times involved Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu. In 1986 he visited London and provided The Sunday Times with dozens of photographs of Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons program. But Mossad was on his trail and a female agent —Cheryl Ben Tov— befriended him (reportedly bumping into him at a cigarette kiosk in London’s Leicester Square). She lured him to Rome for a weekend, where he was drugged and spirited to Israel.

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News you may have missed #709

April 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

Famagusta portBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►North Korea defector sentenced for assassination plot. The man, only identified by the Seoul Central District Court by his surname, Ahn, was sentenced on Thursday after being found guilty of plotting to kill Park Sang-hak, a leading anti-North Korea activist, last September. When apprehended, Ahn —a former member of the North’s special forces— was carrying a black torch that was actually a gun capable of firing a projectile around 30 feet and a bullet coated with a poisonous chemical. Another weapon that he was carrying was disguised as a fountain pen that could fire a bladed projectile, while a second ballpoint pen concealed a poison-tipped needle.
►►Russian arrested in Cyprus for alleged espionage. Media in the Turkish-controlled part of Cyprus are reporting an alleged “espionage incident” at the port of Famagusta. The incident concerns a crewmember of the Russian cargo ship Natali 1, which is docked there. Police authorities say they arrested the Russian national, identified as Nanec Hikov, after he was caught taking photos of Turkish warships. Photographing or filming in the port area is strictly forbidden by Turkish occupation authorities. The Russian Embassy has been informed and the sailor remains in custody.
►►Mystery deepens over death of UK intel expert in China. Last week, the British Foreign Office confirmed that it had asked China to open a fresh ivestigation into the November 14 death of British businessman and intelligence specialist Neil Heywood . The Foreign Office said other businessmen in Beijing had suggested there may have been foul play. Diplomatic sources suggested that the Foreign Office had acted on information given by Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing, where Heywood died, to the United States consulate in Chengdu, in February.

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News you may have missed #705

April 2, 2012 by Leave a comment

Neil HeywoodBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►UK man found dead in China had links to intel company. It has emerged that Neil Heywood, a British citizen and China expert, who was recently found dead in a hotel room in China, was an adviser to Hakluyt, a corporate intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers. Hakluyt has confirmed that Heywood prepared periodic reports for it, but said he had not been working for the company at the time of his death.
►►Analysis: Iraq war ghosts haunting CIA in tackling Iran. At America’s top spy agency, the ghosts of Iraq are never far away. One CIA analyst who had helped develop some of the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction had a breakdown, months after the Iraq war began; he had participated in the post-invasion hunt there that found the weapons did not exist. When he eventually was given a new assignment assessing Iran’s nuclear program, he confided a fear to colleagues: that the intelligence community might get it wrong again.
►►Interview with African-American CIA official. Starting in the early 1980s, as a standout undergraduate student at Colgate University, Harvard-trained lawyer and master of several languages, Justin Jackson is now the most senior African-American at the CIA. From 1983 to 2010, he served under five presidents and 10 CIA directors. “My job was to collect foreign intelligence from those human sources who were reporting on the plans and intentions of our adversaries. I also conducted covert action as directed by the administration and I ran counterintelligence operations to detect efforts that foreign countries were making against us”, he says.

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News you may have missed #700: analysis edition

March 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

Tal DekelBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Egypt struggles to advance spy satellite program. Since Egyptian technicians lost touch two years ago with an observation satellite they hoped would help carry the country into the “space club”, the country has struggled to make progress in gaining intelligence satellite capabilities, but it remains committed to the program. This is according to Tal Dekel, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security. He said few are aware of the extent of Egypt’s satellite program: “People talk about the Iranians, but no one talks about Egypt’s program, which includes much more than a satellite”.
►►China spying on Taiwan despite thaw. When Taiwanese security personnel detained a suspected spy for China at a top secret military base last month, they may have had a sense of déjà vu. Four suspected spies have been detained in Taiwan during the last fourteen months. The cases show that China is seeking information about systems that are integral to Taiwan’s defenses and built with sensitive US technology. A major breach could make Taiwan more vulnerable to Chinese attack.
►►US intel says water shortages threaten stability. Competition for increasingly scarce water in the next decade will fuel instability in regions such as South Asia and the Middle East that are important to US national security, according to an intelligence report from the US Director of National Intelligence. The report, drafted principally by the Defense Intelligence Agency, reflects a growing emphasis in the US intelligence community on how environmental issues such as water shortages, natural disasters and climate change may affect US security interests.

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News you may have missed #698

March 20, 2012 by 1 Comment

Cecilia LooströmBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Swedish official sent top-secret intel briefing via Hotmail. A high-ranking official at Sweden’s Ministry of Defense sent notes on highly confidential arms trade negotiations with a Saudi Arabian official through a Hotmail email address. The four-page-long email, which details a secret conversation with a Saudi General, was sent in 2008 from assistant Under-Secretary for Defense Cecilia Looström, according to a Swedish newspaper.
►►Russian diplomat won’t deny espionage activity in Canada. Russia’s ambassador to Canada, Georgiy Mamedov, has refused to deny that his country carries out spy activity in Canada. He told a Canadian television reporter that “I am neither denying nor confirming [Russian espionage in Canada]. I would be a fool […] if I would confirm that we are doing as much”. He said Russia conducts intelligence activities in other countries —although he didn’t specify which— but refused to give any details on what activities, if any, are conducted within Canada.
►►New Taiwan spy case raises concerns. A Taiwanese air force captain surnamed Chiang is believed to have passed intelligence to China. Reportedly, Chiang’s uncle, who operates a business in China, helped pass on the information allegedly obtained by Chiang, which is said to have included classified material on Taiwan’s early-warning radar system as well as E-2T/E-2K Hawkeye surveillance aircraft. The case has rocked the Taiwanese military, as it comes a little more than a year after a high-profile spy for China was caught and is now serving a life sentence.

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Spies seen behind fake Facebook profile of senior NATO commander

March 12, 2012 by 6 Comments

James G. StavridisBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A Facebook account bearing the name of a senior commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was set up by Chinese spies to siphon information from unsuspecting Western military officials, according to a British newspaper. The London-based Daily Telegraph said in an article that the fake Facebook account was discovered a year ago by NATO counterintelligence officers. It bore the name of United States Admiral James Stavridis, who serves as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and currently leads the Organization’s mission in Libya. The account was reportedly used to befriend Western military officials, primarily in Britain and other European countries, probably in an attempt to collect personal information found on their personal pages on the popular social networking site. This sort of practice is known as ‘spear phishing’, and consists of messages sent to carefully targeted individuals, seemingly sent from a trusted source. The operation involving Admiral Stavridis appears to have been purposely targeted at high-ranking Western officials, a technique sometimes known as ‘whaling’. The London-based daily says NATO officials have been “reluctant to say publicly who was behind the attack”. But the paper claims it has been told that declassified briefings from NATO point to a series of Internet protocol addresses belonging to Chinese government facilities. Organization officials insist —correctly— that the individuals or government agencies behind the operation to falsify Stavridis’ social networking identity are unlikely to have acquired any actual military secrets. However, the information collected from Western military officials befriended online by Admiral Stavridis’ fake Facebook account could aid the compilation of personal and psychological profiles of these officials produced by foreign intelligence agencies. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #679

February 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Salem al-HassiBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►New spy chief in Libya. Libya’s ruling National Transitional Council yesterday appointed a lifelong opponent of slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as the country’s new intelligence chief. Salem al-Hassi, who was involved in a bid to assassinate Gaddafi in 1984, was appointed as the intelligence chief at a meeting of the council.
►►Anonymous hackers release German classified information. Hackers from the group Anonymous said last week they had accessed classified German files and posted them online, revealing details of the country’s military operations in Afghanistan. The military documents were collected for an inquiry, now finished, into a September 2009 airstrike by US jets under German orders that killed more than 140 Taliban fighters and Afghan civilians. Anonymous said it obtained the data from a server at the Bundestag  (German parliament).
►►Did Chinese espionage lead to F-35 delays? Did Chinese cyber spying cause the United States’ F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s cost spikes and production delays? This is the question being asked by US Pentagon budget officials, according to industry magazine Aviation Week. Chinese spies apparently hacked into secure conference calls and listened to meetings discussing the classified technologies aboard the jets. In particular, China may have stolen info about the F-35’s secure communications and antenna systems, leading to costly software rewrites and other redesigns to compromised parts of the plane.

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Has China’s most famous police official defected to the United States?

February 9, 2012 by 3 Comments

Wang LijunBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
There are rumors that China’s most famous law enforcement official may have tried to defect to the United States, after Chinese police surrounded a US consulate in Southwest China. Three years ago, Wang Lijun, the chief of police in Chongqing, a city of nearly 30 million inhabitants, launched an extensive campaign aimed at dismantling southwestern China’s criminal networks. Among his targets were the notorious Triad gangs, as well as China’s extensive drugs, human, and consumer goods smuggling networks. Since that time, he has conducted nearly 1,100 arrests, helped convict several organized syndicate bosses to death, and overseen an anti-corruption program that led to the removal or arrest of several Chongqing police officials. Media sources in China report that Wang, who has become a popular icon of anti-corruption campaigners in China, has been targeted in numerous knife and sniper attacks, one of which left him in a coma for over a week. But the 52-year-old police official has survived thanks to the support of the Chinese government and Chongqing’s Communist Party secretary, Bo Xilai, who in 2011 appointed Wang to the position of vice-mayor. All this changed last week, however, when Bo’s office abruptly issued a brief statement saying that Want had been demoted to a local government post outside the law enforcement chain of command. On the following day, it emerged that a group of investigators from the Communist Party of China’s Central Disciplinary Commission had been dispatched to Chongqing to check on Wang’s activities. And on Wednesday, another cryptic message from the Chinese government stated that Wang had accepted “vacation-style treatment […] because of long-term overwork”, which had left him “highly stressed and in poor health”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #677: Analysis edition

February 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

Che Guevara after his arrest in BoliviaBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►New book ties Johnson administration to Che Guevara’s death. Michael Ratner and Michael Steven Smith are the co-authors of a new book about the US role in the killing of Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. In their book, Who Killed Che?, Ratner and Smith draw on previously unpublished government documents to argue the CIA played a critical role in the killing. “The line of the [US] government was that the Bolivians did it, we couldn’t do anything about it. That’s not true”, Smith said. “This whole operation was organized out of the White House by Walt Whitman Rostow. And the CIA, by this time, had become a paramilitary organization”.
►►CIA digs in as US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan. The CIA is expected to maintain a large clandestine presence in Iraq and Afghanistan long after the departure of conventional US troops as part of a plan by the Obama administration to rely on a combination of spies and Special Operations forces to protect US interests in the two longtime war zones, US officials said. They added that the CIA’s stations in Kabul and Baghdad will probably remain the agency’s largest overseas outposts for years.
►►Indian Army ‘preparing for limited conflict with China’. Noting that India is increasingly getting concerned about China’s posture on its border, James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, said this week that the Indian Army is strengthening itself for a “limited conflict” with China. “The Indian Army believes a major Sino-Indian conflict is not imminent, but the Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean,” he said.

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News you may have missed #675

January 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

Eugene ForseyBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►US ‘has engaged in cyberwarfare’. Former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell said in an interview with Reuters that the United States has already used cyber attacks against an adversary. Most believe he was referring to Stuxnet, the computer virus unleashed against Iran in 2010.
►►Philippines studying US offer to deploy spy planes. The Philippines is considering a US proposal to deploy surveillance aircraft on a temporary, rotating basis to enhance its ability to guard disputed areas in the South China Sea, the Philippine defense minister said last week. The effort to expand military ties between the United States and the Philippines, which voted to remove huge American naval and air bases 20 years ago, occurs as both countries grapple with the growing assertiveness of China.
►►Canadian intelligence spied on constitutional expert. Canadian security forces kept close tabs on renowned constitutional scholar Eugene Forsey from his early days as a left-wing academic to his stint as a senator, according to newly declassified documents. The collection of more than 400 pages, which has been obtained by Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star, reveals the RCMP Security Service (the predecessor to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), followed Forsey for four decades throughout his career as an economics professor, research director for the Canadian Congress of Labour (now called the Canadian Labour Congress), a two-time Ottawa-area candidate for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and then his 1970 appointment as a Liberal senator. No surprises here.

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