FBI raids alleged Russian front-company, indicts 11 on spy charges

October 4, 2012 by 2 Comments

Russian Ministry of DefenseBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The United States has indicted employees of an alleged Russian front-company in Texas, accused of procuring sensitive microelectronics technology for use by Russian military and intelligence agencies. Public prosecutors in New York said yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted raids in locations around Houston, Texas, which included the headquarters of Arc Electronics, Inc. The export firm is accused of having shipped over $50 million-worth of military-grade microelectronics since 2008. The supplies were received in Moscow, Russia, by a mysterious procurement company called Apex System LLC. Counterintelligence investigators in the US claim both firms are part of an elaborate scheme set up by Russian military intelligence, aimed at stealing dual-use electronics hardware created by American firms. According to the indictment, Arc Electronics told its US suppliers that the microelectronics technologies were intended for use in various types of streetlights. But in reality, said the FBI, the company gave the hi-tech supplies to the Russian Ministry of Defense for use in airborne surveillance systems, as well as in remote weapons guidance systems, among other military applications. Federal prosecutors said that, for over four years, Arc Electronics engaged in a prolonged “surreptitious and systematic” scheme to circumvent US government export controls, thus seriously damaging US national security. Following the early-morning raids, the FBI unsealed indictments against 11 Arc Electronics employees, most of whom were charged with “acting as unregistered agents of the Russian Federation in the United States” —legal jargon for espionage. Read more of this post

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Russian court upholds 15-year prison sentence for alleged CIA spy

October 1, 2012 by Leave a comment

Igor SutyaginBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Russia’s highest court has upheld a lengthy prison sentence given to a Russian arms control and nuclear weapons expert, who Moscow alleges was a spy for the United States. The Russian government accuses Igor Sutyagin of collaborating with Alternative Futures, a British-registered consulting company alleged by Moscow to be a front for the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Before his 1999 arrest, Sutyagin was Division Chairman on the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute. His indictment, prepared by the Russian Federal Security Service, said that he shared with the CIA “classified technical information” about nuclear submarine technology. Sutyagin maintained his innocence throughout his trial, and Human Rights Watch as well as Amnesty International classified him as a political prisoner. The two groups brought the accused spy’s case before the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that Russian government prosecutors had violated Sutyagin’s right to a fair trial. Moreover, the Court ruled that Sutyagin’s pre-trial detention, which lasted five years, was illegal. Eventually, Moscow complied with the Court’s ruling and a retrial was ordered, to the delight of Sutyagin’s family. In the retrial, which ended last week, Russia’s Supreme Court agreed with the European Court of Human Rights that Sutyagin’s pre-trial detention had been unlawful; but the court upheld Sutyagin’s 15-yeard sentenced as “entirely legitimate”. Sutyagin was tried in absentia, however, because in the summer of 2010 he was released and fled to the West, as part of the largest postwar spy-exchange between Russia and United States. Sutyagin was one of four men behind bars in Russia, who were swapped for 10 Russian non-official-cover intelligence operatives that had been arrested in a sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Read more of this post

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Belgian intelligence chief says Brussels is world’s spy capital

September 17, 2012 by Leave a comment

Alain WinantsBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The head of Belgium’s counterintelligence service has said in an interview that Brussels, which hosts the head offices of several international organizations, is home to more spies than any other city in the world. Alain Winants, Director of Belgium’s State Security Service (SV/SE), made the comment during a rare public interview to the Brussels-based English-language newspaper EU Observer. Winants told the paper that Belgium hosts “an enormous concentration” of diplomats, members of international non-governmental organizations, as well as employees of transnational institutions, including the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Because of this, he said, Belgium “is like a kindergarten” for spies, “the place to be” for intelligence operatives. The latter often operate under diplomatic cover or pretend to be students, lobbyists or business executives, he added. When asked how many case officers and spies operate in the Belgian capital, Winants, whose organization is responsible for counterterrorism and counterespionage, said “we are not speaking in the dozens; we are speaking in the hundreds, several hundreds”. He added that the numbers of intelligence operatives currently active in Belgium are “at the same level as the Cold War”. These intelligence operatives, he added represent countries such as Russia, China, and many others. When asked whether nations allied with the European Union also conduct espionage in the Belgian capital, Winants responded diplomatically that intelligence “is one field where the difference between neutral, friendly and unfriendly services tends to disappear”, as “every service is in competition with the others”. And he added that “it would be naïve to think that only countries like Russia, China, Iran are spying” in the Belgian capital. Read more of this post

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US-based Russian illegals ‘groomed children to be spies’

July 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

Yelena Vavilova and Andrey BezrukovBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A group of Russian non-official-cover operatives, who were arrested in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2010, were grooming some of their children to become spies, according to insider accounts. Nearly a dozen covert members of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), one of the successor agencies of the Cold-War-era KGB, were detained on June 26, 2010, in a series of coordinated raids by the FBI, which marked the culmination of a lengthy counterintelligence operation against the deep-cover operatives. None of those arrested were associated with the diplomatic representation of the Russian Federation in the US; eight were married couples and all were using fake identities. But media coverage of the case, which centered overwhelmingly on the glamorous looks of one of the arrestees, Anna Chapman, paid little attention to the seven children belonging to the captured Russian operatives, whose ages ranged from 1 to 20 years at the time of their parents’ arrests. In an article published late last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that some of the SVR operatives were actively grooming their children to follow in their footsteps as unregistered agents of the Russian government in the US. The paper based its claims on discussions “with current and former US officials”, who allegedly had access to surveillance data from the FBI’s investigation against the Russians. According to the unnamed officials, the SVR operatives had secured the cooperation of at least one of the children, Tim Foley, whose parents operated in the US for over a decade under the assumed names of Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley. The couple (real names: Andrey Bezrukov, Elena or Yelena Vavilova) had allegedly revealed their secret mission to their son “well before their arrest” in 2010, and had indicated that “they wanted him to follow in their footsteps”. According to the FBI surveillance records, says The Journal, Tim had agreed and offered to travel to Russia “to begin formal espionage training”. He eventually traveled to the land of his birth at least once following the alleged arrangement with his parents. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #771

July 31, 2012 by Leave a comment

Shawn HenryBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Analysis: Ex FBI official says foreign spies biggest online threat. Former FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry has warned that the biggest threat online comes not from terrorists or hackers, but from foreign intelligence organizations looking to steal intellectual property. “The threat from computer attack is the most significant threat we face as a society, other than a weapon of mass destruction”, he said in his opening keynote at the Black Hat 2012 conference in Las Vegas. “Everything we do —R&D, intellectual property, and corporate strategies— is stored or transmitted electronically. The DNA of companies is available to bad guys”.
►►Taiwanese officials jailed for espionage. Two Taiwanese former officials have been sent to prison by the Taiwan High Court for leaking state secrets to China. Presidential Office official Wang Ren-bing was jailed for two years after being found guilty of passing confidential information about President Ma Ying-jeou’s May 2008 inauguration to Chinese intelligence operatives. Chen Pin-jen, a former aide of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liao Kuo-tung, was sentenced to eight months in prison for delivering the confidential information Wang gave him to China. The two were arrested in 2009.
►►Germany charges suspected Syrian spy. A spokeswoman for federal prosecutors in Germany said Sunday that they have filed charges against suspected Syrian spy Akram O., one of two men arrested on suspicion of having spied on Syrian opposition activists in Germany for several years. The two were arrested in February during a sting operation involving over 70 German counterintelligence operatives, who searched the suspects’ apartments. The spokeswoman said she could not give further details before an official confirmation is issued that the suspect and the defense team have received the indictment.

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Dutch diplomat arrested for spying for Russia

June 27, 2012 by 14 Comments

Anna ChapmanBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Holland have arrested a Dutch diplomat who is said to have worked for the same Russian intelligence unit that handled a group of Russian sleeper agents captured in the United States in 2010. The 60-year-old diplomat, who has been publicly identified only as Raymond P., was arrested over the weekend in The Hague following an extensive investigation by German counterintelligence. According to German newsmagazine Focus, which first aired the story on Saturday, the diplomat is believed to have given nearly 500 classified documents to Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, two Russian intelligence officers operating in Germany. The Anschlags, who are married to each other, and are believed to be Mexican-born, were arrested in October of 2011 in the university town of Marburg in central Germany. They are thought to have moved to Germany from Mexico in 1990, using false Austrian passports supplied to them by the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. At the time of the Anschlags’ arrest, Russian media claimed that the couple had “effectively retired” from the SVR several years ago and were being utilized mostly as message couriers. It now appears that Raymond P. was one of their informants, and that the three operated as part of the same espionage ring in Germany. Interestingly, the Anschlags were also said to be in frequent contact with Russian intelligence agent Anna Chapman (pictured), who was arrested by the FBI in the US in 2010. Chapman was part of a group of 11 Russian sleeper agents who were arrested on the same day by the FBI, and were later expelled to Russia. Read more of this post

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Interview with agent who caught US-Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard

June 11, 2012 by 2 Comments

Jonathan PollardBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Twenty-six years ago this month, a United States court convicted Jonathan Jay Pollard, a US Navy analyst who had been caught spying on his country for Israel. Pollard, who is still serving his life sentence, enjoys tremendous popularity in Israel as well as among pro-Israeli public figures in the US. His supporters in Israel and elsewhere view him as a hero who is serving an unfairly harsh sentence and they pressure the US government to release him. In light of that, it is worth paying attention to a recent radio interview with the man who caught him spying on America. The interview was conducted by Mike Lanchin, a reporter and producer for BBC radio’s Witness program. Lanchin managed to trace Ron Olive, a retired Assistant Special Agent at US Navy Counterintelligence, who in June 1986 cracked the Pollard case, leading to the spy’s arrest and eventual conviction. Olive, who now runs his own security consultancy firm in Arizona, told Witness that it took him and his fellow investigators over six months to piece together their case against Pollard. He added that, according to his investigation, “Pollard stole so many documents, so highly classified, more so than any other spy in the history of this country, in such a short period of time”. The case, said Olive, was the worst he had ever seen and it “devastated the entire [US] Intelligence Community”. The reason was not only the volume of stolen classified material, but also the fact that Pollard “could have been stopped from the very beginning”. Read more of this post

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Russian colonel was ‘most successful CIA spy’ in recent years

June 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

Valery Mikhailov, left, with his attorneyBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Before the dust could settle from last month’s closed-door trial of Vladimir Lazar, and the arrest of an unnamed missile engineer on charges of espionage, Russia claims to have exposed yet another spy. Valery Mikhailov, a retired Russian counterintelligence officer, has been given an 18-year prison sentence for allegedly spying on behalf of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. In disclosing Mikhailov’s sentence yesterday, Moscow District Military Court officials were deliberately vague about Mikhailov’s alleged espionage activities, and provided limited information on the precise charges against him. But reporters, who were not allowed to attend Mikhailov’s trial, were told that he voluntarily approached CIA officers in Russia in 2001 and offered to spy on his country on behalf of the US, in exchange for regular payments in cash. Russian government prosecutors said that, from 2001 until 2007, when his activities were detected by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Mikhailov gave his American handlers access to over a thousand copies of secret or top-secret documents. Most of these, according to reports in the Russian media, had been prepared by FSB analysts for top-level Russian government officials, including the President, Prime Minister, and members of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. Russian government prosecutors say that Mikhailov was arrested following an extensive period of surveillance by the FSB, which allegedly resulted in the capture of an American CIA courier. The latter was apprehended while surreptitiously collecting classified documents copied by Mikhailov. Following his arrest, Mikhailov is said to have admitted that he earned over $2 million from his espionage activities. Read more of this post

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Japan investigates senior Chinese diplomat for spying

June 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

Chinese embassy in TokyoBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Japanese authorities are investigating a senior Chinese diplomat for having engaged in “activities in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations”, which is technical language for espionage. The diplomat, who has been named by the Associated Press as Li Chunguang, and is fluent in Japanese, was posted at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo in July of 2007 as the Embassy’s Second Secretary in charge of economic affairs. But Japan’s Public Security Intelligence Agency, which serves as the country’s primary counterintelligence organization, secretly monitored Li’s activities almost from the moment he was posted in Tokyo, eventually reaching the conclusion that the Chinese diplomat had ties to “an intelligence division of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army”. Earlier this year, the Agency determined that Li had used fraudulent information and had failed to disclose his diplomatic status while applying for an alien registration certificate from the Japanese government. According to news reports, he used the fraudulent certificate to open a bank account in Tokyo, where he deposited ¥100,000 (about US$ 1,300). According to Japanese investigators, Li he planned to “use [the money] for intelligence activities”. In mid-May of this year, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, acting on a tip from Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, requested from the Chinese Embassy that Li turned himself in “for questioning”. However, instead of presenting himself to Japanese authorities, as requested, Li left his Tokyo Embassy post for good on May 23, and is presumed to be Read more of this post

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Comment: US helped Canada nab accused spy Jeff Delisle

May 25, 2012 by 5 Comments

Jeffrey Paul DelisleBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Back in January of this year, when the Jeffrey Delisle spy affair made headlines around the world, I spoke with several journalists from The Globe & Mail, The Canadian Press, and other Canadian news outlets. Most of them were –rightly– curious about the role of the United States in the affair, in which Sub-Lieutenant Delisle, who had been employed at Canada’s ultra-secure TRINITY communications center in Halifax, was accused of spying for a foreign power. I told them that, given that Trinity handled –aside from Canadian– NATO communications, Canada was in fact obligated to notify all of its NATO partners about the suspected penetration. That aside, I said that it could be “safely assumed” that US counterintelligence agencies were “fully involved in the Delisle case, and probably ha[d] been for several months”. By the latter phrase, I implied that US counterintelligence agencies had been closely involved in helping their Canadian counterparts build their case against Delisle. Now a new report in The Globe & Mail suggests that US counterintelligence officials “supplied vital information” to their Canadian colleagues during “the early days of the investigation” into the Delisle affair. The article says that the full extent of what the Americans told Canadian authorities remains unclear; but it quotes “a source familiar with the matter”, who claims that the US “helped Canada build its investigation”, not necessarily by providing a single tipoff clue, but through “an accumulation of information”. The paper adds that Washington’s involvement in the investigation from an early stage “adds a key new detail to [the] story”. Not necessarily, I would argue. Read more of this post

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How an ambitious Nazi spy operation in the US ended in failure

May 23, 2012 by 3 Comments

Norden bombsightBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A well-researched article in The Chicago Tribune revisits one of the least known covert action episodes of World War II, which involved an ambitious Nazi espionage operation on US soil. The article, written by Ron Grossman, centers on Herbert Haupt, one of several American citizens and Nazi sympathizers, who were involved in the ruse. The German-born Haupt grew up in Chicago’s North Side and was working in West Garfield Park, at a factory that produced parts used for the Norden bombsight. The Norden bombsight was a sophisticated device that calculated the trajectory of a bomb dropped by an airplane, based on real-time flight conditions; moreover, it was connected to the aircraft’s autopilot, and was thus able to alter bomb trajectories according to changes in the wind, altitude, aircraft speed, or other effects. The Norden bombsight facilitated unprecedented bombing accuracy from high altitudes, and was thus rightly considered one of America’s most highly valued military secrets. In 1941, shortly before the United States entered World War II, Haupt took a leave of absence from his factory job and disappeared from the streets of Chicago’s North Side. It was later revealed that he traveled to Mexico City and presented himself at the German embassy there, offering to conduct espionage work for Nazi Germany. After securing a sum of money from German embassy officials, Haupt sailed to Japan and eventually made his way to Germany. A few months later, he illegally re-entered the US, sailing on a German U-boat that landed secretly in Florida carrying four German agents, all fluent English speakers. A second U-boat, carrying another four German agents, had landed almost simultaneously on Long Island. Haupt’s mission was to reenlist at the Norden bombsight factory in Chicago, so as to provide Nazi Germany with access to the top-secret device. Read more of this post

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US revokes Peruvian ex-defense minister’s visa over alleged spy links

March 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

Vicky Peláez and Mikhail VasenkovBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
The United States has allegedly revoked an entry visa previously issued to the former Deputy Minister of Defense of Peru, over suspicions that he is connected to a major Russian espionage ring found operating in the United States. Fabián Novak had his visa revoked after he was allegedly included on a list drawn by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, containing names of individuals connected to a Russian illegals program caught operating in the US in 2010. According to El Comercio, Peru’s oldest newspaper, Novak, who served as the country’s Deputy Defense Minster between 2006 and 2008, met repeatedly with two members of the 11-member Russian spy ring, which was busted in a series of coordinated raids across several US states in July of 2010. The Lima-based daily quotes an anonymous “high-level [US] government source” who claims that Novak directly contacted two of the 11 Russian spies, who entered the United States from Peru, using Uruguayan and Peruvian travel documentation. The two, Vicky Peláez, who posed as a journalist, and her husband Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov (alias Juan Lazaro), an adjunct professor, were among nearly a dozen Russian illegals swapped less than two weeks after their arrests by the FBI with several CIA spies held in Russian prisons. The El Comercio source claimed that, according to the FBI, Novak met with two officials from the Russian embassy in Lima at least twice, in 2001 and 2006, to discuss the activities of Peláez and Vasenkov in the US. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #678

February 10, 2012 by Leave a comment

Hakan FidanBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Russia ‘exposed 199 spies’ last year. Outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that Russian counterintelligence had exposed 199 spies working for foreign powers last year. He was speaking at a meeting of the Federal Security Service. He also urged the FSB to “take extra measures to protect Russian interests” and reinforce the country’s borders in the Arctic.
►►Germany expels four Syrian diplomats. As tensions mount between Western nations and Syria, the German authorities said Thursday that they had ordered the expulsion of four Syrian diplomats after arresting two men accused separately of spying on opponents of President Bashar al-Assad. The four diplomats —three men and a woman who were not identified by name— have been given three days to leave Germany.
►►Turkey summons spy chief over talks with Kurds. Prosecutors have summoned Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT), as well as his predecessor, Emre Taner, for questioning, over reports of secret peace talks in Norway between Turkish intelligence agents and Kurdish militant leaders. Predictably, MİT has appealed the move.

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Germany summons Syrian ambassador following spy arrests

February 8, 2012 by Leave a comment

Ferhad AhmaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The government of Germany has summoned the Syrian ambassador to Berlin after German counterintelligence officers arrested two Syrian nationals on espionage charges. The two men, believed to be employees of Syrian intelligence, have been identified as 34-year-old Akram O., a Syrian national, and Mahmoud El A., a German citizen of Lebanese descent. Both were arrested early on Tuesday morning, during a sting operation involving over 70 German counterintelligence operatives, who searched the suspects’ apartments. According to a statement by the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the two men are “strongly suspected” of having engaged “for years” in systematic surveillance against Syrian political figures in Germany, with particular focus on expatriate groups critical of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The statement added that German authorities are investigating the apartments of six alleged accomplices, suspected of assisting the two alleged spies. According to media reports, the counterintelligence operation was authorized after Ferhad Ahma, a Syrian-born elected official of the Green Party, was severely beaten at his apartment on December 26, by two men posing as German police officers. The Green Party launched a complaint with German police, suspecting that the two thugs were in fact Syrian government agents trying to intimidate Ahma, who is known in Germany for his strong criticism of the al-Assad regime. In announcing the diplomatic protest, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle told journalists that “any apparent activity against the Syrian opposition in Germany is in no way tolerable and a violation of [German] law”. Read more of this post

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Does Iran have access to satellite jamming technology?

December 20, 2011 by 5 Comments

Iran displays captured US droneBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A European intelligence official has said that Iran downed an unmanned American surveillance aircraft earlier this month by remotely sabotaging its satellite navigation system. The official, who has not been named, told The Christian Science Monitor that the Iranians used a state-of-the-art laser system to effectively “blind” the American spy satellite that guided the drone’s global positioning system (GPS). In doing this, Iran’s military was able to remotely skyjack the aircraft and assume control over its navigational system. The paper also published an exclusive interview with an Iranian electronic warfare specialist, who claimed he was part of a team that hacked into the drone’s communication frequency and reprogrammed its GPS data. Eventually, the Iranian specialists managed to cause the unmanned aircraft to switch into autopilot mode, and guided it to land relatively smoothly on Iranian territory, where it was eventually captured intact by Iranian authorities. If this is true, it will mark the first-ever indication that the Iranian state is in possession of sophisticated satellite jamming technology. In an important development, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Iran’s government-run IRNA news agency on Saturday that the American drone was brought down by Iranian armed forces, without any foreign assistance. If this is so, then does it mean that the Iranians developed the state-of-the-art jamming system themselves? Read more of this post

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