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News you may have missed #0255 (espionage edition)

January 15, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

South Korea jails alleged spy for 10 years. A 37-year-old college professor, identified only as Lee, has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for allegedly spying undercover on behalf of North Korea for 17 years. South Korean authorities said Lee, who was charged in November, was recruited by the North in 1992, while studying in New Delhi, India.
New details in Nozette spy case. Maryland scientist Stewart Nozette, who is accused of giving classified defense information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, may have impersonated a naval research official in order to acquire classified information, according to new court documents.
“I didn’t kill Islamic Jihad members because I was busy spying for Israel“. Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, a retired Lebanese Internal Security Forces official, has already confessed to having “collaborated with Israeli intelligence agents” between 1993 and 2006. But he denies having participated in the 2006 assassinations of two Islamic Jihad leaders in Lebanon, because on the night of the assassinations he was conducting a reconnaissance mission in Lebanon on behalf of Israeli spy agency Mossad.

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Comment: CIA Deaths a Failure of Intelligence, Not Security

January 11, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Khalil al-Balawi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Early on Thursday, rumors began spreading among intelligence observers that the December 30 suicide blast in Khost, Afghanistan, which killed seven and seriously injured six CIA personnel, went off in the open air, and not inside a gym on the base, as had previously been reported. Soon afterwards, an article written by CIA director Leon Panetta for the Sunday edition of The Washington Post, dated January 10, was published by the paper two days early. The op-ed is an apparent attempt by the CIA leadership to officially get the word out that suicide bomber Humam Khalil al-Balawi “was about to be searched by our security officers –a distance away from other intelligence personnel– when he set off his explosives”, according to Panetta. Read more of this post

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Polish officials reveal arrest of alleged Russian spy

January 7, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

V. Korabelnikov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Polish government has announced the arrest of a Russian resident of Warsaw, on charges of spying for Russia. The man, whose identity has not been released, was apparently arrested last February or March, after a six-month surveillance operation by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW). Polish officials did not say why the arrest was kept secret for so long, but revealed that the alleged spy’s capture was known only to Poland’s president, the prime minister and the office of the prosecutor. The alleged spy is said to be a Russian citizen and a fluent Polish speaker, who has lived in Poland under permanent residency status for at least decade. His legal income appears to have come from his ownership of a hunting-rifle accessories store. Read more of this post

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Files reveal previously unknown UK-Soviet diplomatic scuffle

January 5, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Aubone Pyke

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A previously unknown fracas between two British diplomatic officials, their wives, and a team of Soviet intelligence agents, has been revealed in declassified British government reports. The documents, which were released last weekend, show that two employees of the British embassy in Moscow were detained, along with their wives, allegedly for photographing a Soviet military installation. The British diplomats were Lieutenant-Commanders Ian Clapham and Aubone Pyke, who was the embassy’s assistant military attaché. Escorted by their wives, the two officials were allegedly taking a tour of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), in February of 1979, when a group of “about 25” Soviet intelligence agents rapidly approached them. The agents proceeded to confiscate a cameral belonging to Pyke, after rapidly pulling down his trousers, an old trick aimed to prevent a suspect from running away. Read more of this post

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Writings by CIA defector Edward Lee Howard published

December 7, 2009 by intelNews 3 Comments

E.L. Howard

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An extensive article on spy tradecraft, written by CIA case officer Edward Lee Howard, after he defected to the Soviet Union in 1985, has been published for the first time. Howard, the only intelligence agent known to have been trained by both the CIA and the Soviet KGB, joined the CIA in 1980, but began collaborating with the KGB in 1983, after the CIA fired him for repeatedly failing to pass a polygraph test. After he was exposed by Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB officer who allegedly defected to the US in Rome, Italy, Howard employed his CIA training to evade FBI counterintelligence agents and escape to Russia, where he lived until his death in 2002. In the early 1990s, the FBI tried to lure Howard to capture, using, among others, Bureau counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer. Eringer befriended Howard and, as part of the luring operation, commissioned the former CIA agent to write a book entitled Spy’s Guide to Central Europe. Read more of this post

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Israeli listening bugs found in UN meeting room: Swiss paper

December 2, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

The UN in Geneva

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Switzerland’s most esteemed newspaper has revealed that a number of listening devices, most likely of Israeli origin, were discovered in a room designated for sensitive meetings on disarmament issues, at the United Nations building in Geneva. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), quoted “a senior official” of the Service for Analysis and Prevention (Dienst für Analyse und Prävention), Switzerland’s domestic intelligence agency, who said the bugs were among several discovered throughout the building during regular maintenance work in 2006. The anonymous official said counterintelligence experts drew on “technical and geopolitical criteria” to create a shortlist of the possible culprits. Israel topped the list, which also included North Korea, Britain, China, Russia, France and the United States. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0172

November 8, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Ex-Olympic Committee president was KGB agent: new book. Juan Antonio Samaranch worked as a secret agent for the Soviet KGB, whose agents helped him win his election to become the president of the IOC, according to The KGB Playing Chess, a new book published in Russia by Vladimir Popov, a former top official in the Soviet secret police.
Do we really need an NSA data center in Utah? Interesting local opinion piece about the 1-million-square-foot data center to be built at Utah’s Camp Williams by the US National Security Agency.
Visual ‘proof’ of Monaco’s Intelligence Service. We have written before about former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer, who until recently was spymaster to Prince Albert II of Monaco, and is now completing a book on his experiences in the tiny principality, a project he began after quitting his post. The question is, is there a Monaco Intelligence Service? Eringer says yes, and has published a purported MIS logo MIS identity card to prove it. and his

https://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/01-249/

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Jailed US scientist actually gave secret information to Israel

November 2, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

S.D. Nozette

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On October 22, shortly after the arrest of US nuclear scientist Stuart David Nozette by an FBI counterintelligence agent, I speculated that Nozette “was already working for Israeli intelligence” when he was arrested by the FBI. My assumption appears to have been correct. On Thursday, the case prosecutor informed a US district court that Nozette told the undercover FBI agent, who was posing as an Israeli spy, that “he had passed information to Israel in the past”. As I have explained elsewhere, Nozette was employed for ten years as a technical consultant by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), an Israeli government-owned company that some believe is routinely involved in espionage operations on behalf of Israel. Read more of this post

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FBI still lacks translators, eight years after 9/11, says report

October 29, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Report cover

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An internal audit by the US Justice Department’s inspector general has found that the FBI faces a critical shortage of foreign-language specialists, eight years after 9/11. The audit report (redacted version available in .pdf here) issued last Monday by inspector general Glenn Fine, reveals that the lack of translators prevented the FBI from accessing 31 per cent of the foreign-language material it collected in counter-terrorism operations from 2006 to 2008. This means the Bureau, which serves as America’s primary counterintelligence and counterterrorism force, has been unable to read tens of thousands of pages and listen to or review 1.2 million hours of audio intercepts in the last two years alone. Remarkably, despite the well-understood need for foreign-language specialists in the post-9/11 security environment, the audit found that the total number of FBI translators dropped from 1,338 in March 2005 to 1,298 in September last year. Read more of this post

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Analysis: US Scientist’s Espionage Arrest Raises Questions

October 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Nozette

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Stewart David Nozette, who was arrested by the FBI on October 19, on charges of sharing classified US government data with a man he believed was an Israeli government officer, is to remain in jail. The reason given by the US federal judge in charge of the case is that Nozette might flee to Israel if not confined. However, unlike the case of former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was jailed in 1987 for spying on the US for Israel, the government of Israel is said to have had no role in Nozette’s attempted espionage. The FBI itself admits that it “does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under US laws in this case”. This is because Nozette shared classified US government data with an undercover FBI officer posing as a handler of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. But if this is so, then two important counterintelligence questions are raised: first, how did the FBI know to lure Nozette with an agent posing as an Israeli –as opposed to a Russian or Chinese– handler? Second, why would Nozette flee to –and presumably be protected by– Israel, even though the government of Israel was not involved in this case, according to the FBI? Keep reading →

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Busted spy ring in Lebanon was Israel’s top network in the Arab world

September 23, 2009 by intelNews 4 Comments

Hezbollah parade

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
French newspaper Le Figaro has published a well-researched account of an ongoing counterintelligence operation in Lebanon, which has resulted in the dismantling of an enormous network of Israeli spy cells in the country. The paper describes the discovery of the Israeli spy network as “one of the most resounding defeats in [Israel’s] history”. IntelNews has been following the counterintelligence operation from its very beginning last February. Since then, over 70 Lebanese nationals have been charged with conducting espionage operations on behalf of Israel, of whom nearly 40 have been apprehended. According to Lebanese officials, the dismantled spy ring was probably Israel’s most important intelligence network in the Arab world. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0100

September 8, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Iran says US is forging nuclear intelligence. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the US government is using forged intelligence to make the case to the UN’s nuclear watchdog group that Iran is pursuing an atomic weapons program. What is arguably missing in the Iranian nuclear debacle is conclusive IAEA confirmation of the existence of Iran’s nuclear arms program, as in the case of Syria.
Pakistanis call for intelligence dialogue with India. Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s former national security adviser, has called for a “frank dialogue” between Pakistani and Indian security services. As intelNews reported earlier this year, Durrani was fired for his dovish stance vis-à-vis India and for being “too pro-American”.
US official was investigated for espionage. Alberto Coll, a Cuban-American who lost a senior job at the Navy War College after he was convicted of lying about a 2004 trip to Havana, was also investigated for espionage, according to an FBI document.

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Analysis: Assessing the record of Russian espionage

August 29, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

R. Kupchinsky

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Roman Kupchinsky has penned an article for The Prague Post, in which he examines the recent expulsion of two Russian spies from the Czech Republic as part of a broader decline in Russian intelligence operations. The Jamestown Foundation analyst explains that Vladimir Putin’s campaign to rebuild the Russian espionage activities abroad to their former glory has not borne fruits. Rather, the gradual decay in Russia’s global intelligence presence, which began in the early 1980s, continues to mire the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The SVR is the successor to the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (PGU), which was responsible for foreign operations and intelligence collection. Although Kupchinsky’s view is shared by a many Western intelligence observers, some remain skeptical. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0081

August 27, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Russians arrest “spies” at air show. The FSB says it uncovered two Dutch spies at the MAKS 2009 aviation and space show in Moscow.
Interview with Israeli intelligence minister. Dan Meridor gave a rare interview to German magazine Der Spiegel, saying he doesn’t “want to get into details” about rumors that Israel is considering bombing Iran.
Karadzic asks for French intelligence documents. Karadzic claims France has documents confirming that the USA and several Muslim countries supplied weapons to the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, despite an international embargo.

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Russians helped Lebanon bust Israeli spy ring, claims site

August 5, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

FSB agent

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli website DEBKAfile claims that the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is the primary counterintelligence force behind the busting of the Al-Alam spy ring in Lebanon, which intelNews has been monitoring since February, when it first erupted. The website, known for its contacts with intelligence circles, says that it was Russian, not French, surveillance technology that helped uncover the spy ring. The article cites “Western intelligence sources in the Middle East”, who apparently revealed that a specialist FSB unit was commissioned by Hezbollah, the Shia Islamic political and paramilitary organization that controls large parts of Lebanon, to root out the massive spy ring. The unit then proceeded to do so “with the help of super-efficient detection systems”, DEBKAfile claims. Read more of this post