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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Dutch double agent called “modern-day Mata Hari” in prison

August 11, 2009 by 2 Comments

Malika Karoum

Malika Karoum

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Malika Karoum, the 33-year old intelligence operative who has been described as the “modern-day Mata Hari” is in prison in Egypt, a Dutch news magazine has revealed. Karoum, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent, joined Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) in 2004, and worked as an undercover agent investigating Islamist groups operating on Dutch soil. In 2006, AIVD sent Karoum to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to aid an international investigation into money laundering with possible Islamist links. But Dutch intelligence sources say that Karoum, whose apparent cover was working as a real-estate agent, began “subcontracting” herself to Egyptian and United Arab Emirates intelligence services, and eventually utilized her real-estate cover to enter the murky business world of property development in Dubai. Read more of this post

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CIA whistleblower’s memo on Peru declassified after eight years

August 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

V.L. Montesinos

V.L. Montesinos

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A memorandum drafted in 2001 by a CIA officer, detailing assistance illegally provided by the CIA to the former chief of Peruvian intelligence, has been declassified following an eight-year court battle. In the memorandum, CIA employee Franz Boening argued that the Agency violated US law by providing material and political assistance to Vladimiro Ilich 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. But in 2001, the CIA Inspector General, to whom Boening’s memorandum was addressed, took no action in response to the officer’s allegations. What is more, the CIA proceeded to classify Boening’s memorandum, claiming that its disclosure “reasonably could be expected to cause damage to national security”. Read more of this post

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Judge accuses CIA of fraud in 15-year court case

July 22, 2009 by Leave a comment

Judge Lamberth

Judge Lamberth

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A 15-year old lawsuit against the CIA unexpectedly resurfaced yesterday, after a US federal judge accused the CIA attorneys of fraud and warned the former and current CIA leadership of serious legal sanctions. US District Judge Royce Lamberth said the CIA misled him on several occasions by falsely claiming that the “state secrets” clause applied to the case, which three consecutive US administrations have tried to bury. The case was filed in 1994 by retired Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer Richard A. Horn, who claimed that CIA agents illegally wiretapped his conversations while he was stationed in Burma. It appears that, at the time, the US diplomatic representation in Burma and the CIA station in Rangoon were at loggerheads with the DEA. Read more of this post

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Ex-director of Japanese domestic intelligence convicted of fraud

July 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Ogata

Ogata

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The former head of Japan’s Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) has been handed a suspended prison sentence for defrauding North Korea’s de facto embassy in Tokyo. After a trial that lasted more than a year, Shigetake Ogata, who headed Japan’s primary domestic intelligence agency from 1993 to 1995, was found to have conspired to defraud Chongryon of about ¥484 million yen (US$ 5.1 million). Chongryon, which is known as General Association of North Korean Residents in Japan, represents the interests of over 200,000 long-term Korean residents in Japan who are ideologically aligned to North Korea. The group is generally considered to represent the Pyongyang government in Japan, in the absence of official diplomatic relations between the two nations. Read more of this post

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Disgraced CIA officer held far more important post than initially thought

February 15, 2009 by 10 Comments

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
On February 7, intelNews reported on the indictment of Steven J. Levan, a 16-year CIA operative who was caught using Agency credit cards to pay for over $75,000 in personal expenses, including luxury hotel stays and a $700 watch. It has now emerged that Levan was “a far more important official at the agency than previously reported”. His office is allegedly located at the CIA’s senior executive suite on the seventh floor of the Agency’s Langley, VA, headquarters, and he has also served as CIA station chief at an unidentified country. Investigative reporter Jeff Stein quotes an unnamed intelligence source who describes Steven Levan as a rising agent serving “in one of the high visibility staff aide positions which are usually reserved for folks expected to move on into top echelons”. Read more of this post

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Another CIA agent gone wild, denied bail

February 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Just hours after intelNews examined the growing number of cases of out-of-control CIA agents, another incident has been added to the long list. Steven J. Levan, a 16-year CIA veteran, pleaded guilty last Thursday to fraud charges, after he was caught using CIA credit cards to pay for over $75,000 in personal expenses, which included pricey hotel stays and a $700 Raymond Weil watch. Levan was a high-paid CIA case agent residing in Virginia, and participated in several overseas CIA tours in the 1980s and 1990s. Recently, however, he was arrested and terminated from the Agency on January 12, after he was caught using credit card accounts customarily used by the CIA for undercover purposes, to fund unauthorized expenses. Interestingly, Levan has been refused bail since his arrest, to prevent him from “peddling national security secrets to foreign powers to raise more money”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Are CIA Agents out of Control (Again)?

February 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
What’s going on at the CIA? As the corruption trial of Kyle “Dysty” Foggo, the Agency’s no. 3 under former CIA Director Porter Goss, continues this week, news has emerged that the Agency’s station chief in Algeria has been unceremoniously recalled back to Washington after being accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women at his residence. Meanwhile, an unidentified “former CIA station chief in Baghdad, allegedly ‘notorious’ for womanizing and the licentious behavior of his aides, is in line to become chief of the spy agency’s powerful Counterterrorism Center”. One might be excused for wondering what’s next for the troubled agency. Read article→

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Sudden reappearance of Zambia’s former spy chief raises suspicions

January 30, 2009 by 1 Comment

Xavier Chungu

Xavier Chungu

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Zambian Police have announced the capture of Xavier Chungu, the country’s former spy chief, who had fled abroad in 2004, escaping trial for embezzlement charges. For nearly a decade, Chungu was the powerful Director of the Zambia Security Intelligence Service (ZSIS). In 2001, following the regime change in Lusaka after the election to the Presidency of the late Levy Mwanawasa, Chungu was dismissed from his post. He was then prosecuted for embezzling state funds and imprisoned for several months. In 2004, however, Chungu jumped bail and escaped to an unknown country (purportedly Canada) using a false passport. A warrant for his arrest was issued by the Zambian Police as well as by Interpol. Earlier last week, Xavier Chungu voluntarily surrendered himself to Zambian Police officers at Lusaka International Airport, after arriving there on a British Airways flight from South Africa. Read more of this post

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Peru wiretapping scandal involves Norwegian oil company

January 12, 2009 by 1 Comment

Alan Garcia

Alan Garcia

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last October, a television station in Peru aired intercepted telephone conversations in which high-level politicians were heard accepting payments by lobbyists in return for awarding state oil contracts to a Discover Petroleum, a small Norwegian oil company. The revelation caused one of the worst crises in modern Peruvian political history, prompting the entire cabinet of President Alan Garcia to resign. Now the country’s Department of Justice is investigating charges of corruption against the president of Discover Petroleum, several lobbyists, numerous government oil executives, and three former government ministers. Meanwhile, the Peruvian police is targeting the people responsible for…intercepting the revelatory telephone calls. Six people were arrested late last week for illegally recording the telephone discussions on behalf of Business Track SAC, a private security company. Interestingly, five of the six are either retired or active counterintelligence officers of the Peruvian Navy. Read more of this post

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Comment: Spreading Democracy Involves Routine Bribing

December 26, 2008 by 2 Comments

Online pundits appear immensely amused by a recent article in The Washington Post, which reveals that Viagra is among numerous “novel incentives” handed out by CIA officers to Afghan warlords in efforts to “win [them] over” to the American side. The article cites an unnamed CIA agent who confirms that pharmaceutical treatments for erectile dysfunction are occasionally dispensed by the Agency to “aging [Afghan] patriarchs with [several young wives and] slumping libidos”. Unlike most, I find the article’s revelations to be neither novel nor amusing. Read more of this post

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