Did Blackwater bribe Iraqi officials after 2007 shooting?

February 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

Blackwater logo

Blackwater logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The US-based private security company Blackwater is under investigation by the US State Department, which suspects the corporation of having bribed Iraqi officials, in order to gain permission to continue to operate in Iraq, after the 2007 Nisour Square massacre. The company’s license to operate in Iraq was revoked by the Iraqi government on September 17, 2007, a day after trigger-happy Blackwater guards indiscriminately opened fire in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, killing 17 civilians, including women and children. But information obtained by The New York Times shows that the company hired well-connected Iraqi lawyers, and may have tried to buy off Iraqi lawmakers, in order to regain the right to operate on Iraqi soil. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Interim report on Obama’s intelligence reforms

November 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

Melvin A. Goodman

M.A. Goodman

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
It has been nearly a year since US President Barack Obama initiated his plan to reform the CIA and its tattered relations with the rest of the US intelligence community. How is he doing so far? Not great, says Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst, in a well-argued article on the subject. On the one hand, Obama has been successful and “deserves high grades” for addressing the CIA’s renditions, detentions and interrogations programs, argues Goodman. On the other hand, the President has avoided taking a strong leadership role in addressing the major problems of the CIA, including “appoint[ing] leaders willing to address the culture of cover-up that exists at the CIA and to make the necessary strategic changes”. Read more of this post

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Lawsuit exposes rumored CIA-NRO turf war

November 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

NRO logo

NRO logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
After the CIA’s ongoing turf wars with the FBI and the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DCI), a new federal lawsuit appears to substantiate rumors of another turf war, this time between the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Eric Feldman was recently removed from his position as inspector general of the super-secretive NRO, the agency that builds and operates the US government’s spy satellites, after he was found to have filed for the same travel expenses on two separate reimbursement accounts. But he now claims that his removal was part of a conspiracy by “senior officials in the CIA” to get rid of him. In his lawsuit, Feldman names former CIA inspector general John Helgerson and CIA agent Anthony Cipparone, who Feldman says “had a personal vendetta against him [because he] had passed him over for his deputy assistant position”. The former NRO inspector general claims Cipparone and Helgerson, along with other CIA officials, managed to terminate his position by illegally leaking information from the internal investigation into his reimbursement filings, in an attempt “to hurt his reputation”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0156

October 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • NGOs worry African spy services. A memo authored by African spy service representatives at the third annual conference of the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA), has acknowledged what most intelligence services in developing countries already know: that many “volunteers” of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are in fact intelligence operatives using their NGO status as a cover.
  • Nozette admitted guilt in fraud charges last January. New information shows that Stewart D. Nozette, who was arrested and charged last week under the US Espionage Act, pleaded guilty in January to overbilling NASA and the Pentagon more than $265,000 for consulting services.

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News you may have missed #0152

October 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Madoff befriends Israeli-handled spy in prison. According to legal papers filed last Tuesday, Bernard Madoff, imprisoned for masterminding one of history’s largest financial frauds, is sharing a cell with Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of selling military secrets to Israel over two decades ago.
  • Polish undercover agent has cover blown. An undercover agent of Poland’s controversial Anti-Corruption Agency (CBA), known simply as Tomek K. (a.k.a. Tomasz Malecki or Tom Piotrowski) has had his cover blown after seducing Polish television star Weronika Marczuk-Pazura during an anti-corruption investigation. Whoever said undercover work was boring?
  • Finnish former prime minister says KGB tried to recruit him. In his political memoirs published last week, Paavo Lipponen, who was Finland’s prime minister from 1995 to 2003, reveals the Soviet KGB tried unsuccessfully to recruit him in 1966 and again in the early 1970s.

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French “trial of the century” continues with ex-spy’s testimony

October 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

Philippe Rondot

Philippe Rondot

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A complex court case in France, which the nation’s media have dubbed “trial of the century”, continued this week with the testimony of one of France’s most distinguished intelligence agents. Retired General Philippe Rondot, who worked for France’s domestic (DST) and foreign intelligence (DGSE), and advised several French leaders, gained international fame in 1994, when he managed to arrest Venezuelan-born operative Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal. General Rondot was called earlier this week to testify whether France’s former Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, helped forge a series of documents showing that France’s current President, Nicolas Sarkozy, had laundered millions of dollars in defense contract bribes through secret accounts in Luxembourg’s Clearstream bank. Mr. de Villepin will face up to five years in prison if found guilty of the forgery. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0114

September 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Spy chief’s records feature prominently in France’s “trial of the century”

September 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

Yves Bertrand

Yves Bertrand

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A five-year court case described in France as “the trial of the century” or “France’s Watergate” resumed on Monday with the appearance in court of one of five defendants, who is no other than France’s former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. He is accused of forging a series of documents showing that France’s current President, Nicolas Sarkozy, had laundered millions of dollars in defense contract bribes through secret accounts in Luxembourg’s Clearstream bank. At the center of the trial is the adversary relationship between Mr. de Villepin, who was former French President Jacques Chirac’s preferred successor, and Nicolas Sarkozy. Mr. Sarkozy accuses Mr. de Villepin of ordering an intelligence investigation into his financial dealings in order to ruin his reputation and score a political victory. Read more of this post

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Colombia to dismantle scandal-prone spy agency

September 22, 2009 by Leave a comment

Semana cover

Semana cover

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (DAS) is to be dismantled and most of its 6,000 employees are to be transferred to the country’s other law enforcement agencies, according to Colombian officials. The decision was announced last Friday by DAS director Felipe Muñoz, who said that a new organization would be established to replace the corrupt and scandal-prone agency. A day earlier, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe said that a flood of recent scandals involving DAS had forced him to consider eliminating the agency. Earlier this year, the Colombian government was forced to fire 33 DAS agents for illegally wiretapping the phones of several public figures Read more of this post

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French former spy wanted in Dubai to be tried in Florida

September 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

Herve Jaubert

Herve Jaubert

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A French former spy who escaped secretly from the United Arab Emirates, where he is wanted for fraud and embezzlement, will face trial in the US, where he currently resides. Herve Jaubert left Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency, in 1993, to pursue a career in the luxury tourist market, first in Florida and then in Dubai. But less than a year ago, Emirates authorities accused the Frenchman of embezzling nearly $4 million from Dubai World, a company he helped found in the country. Jaubert says he was threatened with torture by Emirates authorities and decided to escape, despite having been forced to surrender his French passport. He allegedly left the country using an inflatable rubber dinghy to reach a sailboat located just outside UAE territorial waters, which he then used to sail to India. Read more of this post

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CIA censored me to avoid embarrassment, says ex-οfficer

September 11, 2009 by 1 Comment

V.L. Montesinos

V.L. Montesinos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
More than a month after Secrecy News reported the legal victory of a former CIA agent, who managed to have a censored report he wrote about the CIA’s dirty dealings in Peru declassified, a US news outlet has finally given some attention to the story. On August 4 (see previous intelNews reporting), Secrecy News revealed that a memorandum drafted in 2001 by CIA officer Franz Boening, detailing assistance illegally provided by the CIA to the then chief of Peruvian intelligence, had finally been declassified following an eight-year court battle. In the censored memorandum, Boening argued that the Agency violated US law by providing material and political assistance to Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos Torres, a graduate of the US Army’s School of the Americas and longtime CIA operative, who headed Peru’s Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN) under the corrupt administration of President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori is now in prison, as is Montesinos himself. Read more of this post

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Colombian ex-spy details coup plot against Venezuela

September 8, 2009 by 2 Comments

Rafael García

Rafael García

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The former director of information technology at Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, or DAS) has revealed details of what he claims was a Colombian-assisted coup against the Venezuelan government. Speaking on Colombia’s Noticias Uno television station, former DAS official Rafael García said the Colombian government of Álvaro Uribe was the main supporter of a 2004 attempt to topple the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez. García, who was fired from DAS three years ago, after being caught taking bribes from right wing paramilitaries and drug barons, said Colombia recruited 120 Colombian paramilitary members of Northern Bloc, a militia unit of the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which operates mostly along the Venezuelan-Colombian border. Read more of this post

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Latest developments in ongoing Kazakh intelligence war

September 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

Alnur Musaev

Alnur Musaev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In September of 2008, a Kazakh spy, identified by Austrian authorities only as “Ildar A.”, tried to kidnap from Austria former Kazakh National Security Committee (KNB) chief Alnur Musaev (photo), who has lived in self-imposed exile in Vienna since 2007. Apparently, Musaev, who has fallen out with the Kazakh dictatorship, knows too many secrets about corrupt Kazakh rulers. One can see why the latter consider him a national security threat: last week, Musaev gave an interview to Washington-owned Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in which he said that Rakhat Aliyev, also former KNB director and former son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, might have been involved in the kidnapping of two high-ranking bankers in Kazakhstan. Read more of this post

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Former Colombian spy director surrenders in assassination probe

August 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

Maza Marquez

Maza Marquez

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Miguel Maza Marquez, a fugitive from justice who briefly directed Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, or DAS) in the late 1980s, has turned himself in at a DAS academy. His arrest was ordered in June by the office of the Colombian Attorney General, in connection with the 1989 assassination of reformist Colombian politician Luis Carlos Galán. Galán, who was the leading presidential candidate at the time of his assassination, gained his popularity by declaring himself an enemy of Colombia’s drug cartels, such as those led by Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodríguez. On August 18, 1989, Galán was shot in the face during a pre-election rally in Soacha, on the outskirts of Bogota. Prosecutors investigating his assassination allege that Maza Marquez, whose Department was responsible for Galán’s bodyguards, intervened to make suspicious changes to Galán’s security detail on the night of his assassination. Some say that Maza Marquez was acting on orders from notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar himself.

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Ex-FBI translator alleges Turkish intelligence activities in US

August 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sibel Edmonds

Sibel Edmonds

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A former FBI translator has alleged that agents acting at the behest of the Turkish government have bugged, blackmailed and bribed US politicians. Sibel Edmonds has spent seven years trying to get a US court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. On August 8, she gave a public testimony at the Washington headquarters of the National Whistleblowers Association, in an attempt to keep her case alive in the public eye. Among other allegations, she said that Turkish intelligence agents bugged the apartment of a female member of Congress and then blackmailed her, threatening to expose her extra-marital affair. Read more of this post

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