Comment: Major changes in Australian, NZ spy agencies

May 14, 2010 by 1 Comment

Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
This website has been keeping tabs on the ongoing transformation of New Zealand and Australian intelligence agencies. Recent media reports from both countries indicate that the changes, many of which are still underway, will mark the broadest reorganization in New Zealand and Australian intelligence agencies’ operational focus and mission in over half a century. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #335

April 23, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Leading al-Qaeda expert to leave FBI. J. Philip Mudd, one of the US intelligence community’s leading al-Qaeda analysts, has quietly retired from the FBI, where he was the National Security Branch’s associate executive director. He will be replaced by 23-year FBI veteran Sean Joyce.
  • Three more domestic spying programs revealed. The US Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of three more government programs charged with spying on American citizens in the aftermath of 9/11. The programs, Pantheon, Pathfinder and Organizational Shared Space, used a variety of software tools to gather and analyze information about Americans.
  • NSA Utah facility contractors shortlisted. We have mentioned before that for contractors in northern Utah, where the NSA is preparing to build a million-square-foot facility, at Camp Williams, it’s party time. Five of them, including three from Utah, have now been shortlisted by the government.

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News you may have missed #330

April 15, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Pakistan released captured Taliban behind CIA’s back. IntelNews has not joined the chorus of commentators who have been claiming that the relationship between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate and the CIA has warmed up. It now appears that even as the ISI was collaborating with the CIA, it quietly freed at least two captured senior Afghan Taliban figures.
  • Kiwi activists accuse police of spying. New Zealand’s Peace Action Wellington has submitted an Official Information Act (OIA) request relating to domestic police surveillance, after accusing the police of “heavily spying on and running operations on protest groups”. It is not the first time that similar accusations have been directed against the country’s police force.
  • CIA suspected existence of Israeli nukes in 1974. Israel will neither confirm nor deny the rumored existence of its nuclear arsenal. But the CIA, which has kept an eye on Israel’s nuclear weapons project since at least the early 1960s, was convinced of its existence by 1974, according to a declassified report.

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News you may have missed #315

March 25, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Nuclear bunker spy comes out of hiding. A British retiree named Mike Lesser has revealed he was one of the so-called “spies for peace”, a group of peace activists who in the 1960s helped uncover Britain’s secret network of underground bunkers built to protect the government in case of nuclear war.
  • Aussie spy agency spied on little girls. Secret files kept by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation reveal spooks tailed the teenage children of suspected socialists and communist sympathizers during the late 1960s, and anyone with whom they associated, including school friends and boyfriends.
  • Analysis: Under Panetta, a more aggressive CIA. Expectations among CIA hardliners were low when Leon Panetta arrived at the Agency’s headquarters in February 2009. But almost from the first week, Panetta positioned himself as a strong advocate for the CIA, to the extent that critics worry that Panetta has become a captive of the agency he leads.

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News you may have missed #300

March 1, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Indonesian activists capture government spy. Activists of the United Indonesia Movement (GIB) have captured a military intelligence officer, identified only as E.S., who was allegedly spying on their plans to prepare an anti-government rally on Tuesday. Last August, the Indonesian government denied rumors it planned to begin spying on Mosques around the country.
  • Former Monaco head-spy recounts meeting with Prince Albert. Former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer, who until recently was spymaster to Prince Albert II of Monaco, recounts how he was appointed to lead the principality’s intelligence service by the Prince himself.

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Analysis: Landrieu-Gate is Scary, but it’s No Watergate

January 29, 2010 by Leave a comment

Stan Dai

Stan Dai

By J. FITSANAKIS and I. ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The arrests by US Marshals of four self-described conservative activists, who were caught trying to tamper with the telephone lines of Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu’ New Orleans office, have caused outcry in liberal and silence in conservative blogs. Most political allies of the four young men have been scrambling to denounce them, and the few who haven’t, have tried to play off the case as an ill-conceived political prank that got out of hand. Considering that America’s political culture still reels from the effects of Watergate (1972-1974), and the far more serious COINTELPRO (1956-1971), it would be criminal neglect on behalf of the FBI to treat the Landrieu incident as a “prank”. At the same time, however, Landrieu-gate is no Watergate. Neither the target nor the operational tactics and institutional affiliations of the four men involved in the case resemble anything remotely akin to either Watergate or COINTELPRO. Keep reading →

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US mosque says FBI informant responsible for shootout killing

January 20, 2010 by Leave a comment

Luqman Ameen Abdullah

L.A. Abdullah

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Community relations between the FBI and American Muslim groups took a turn for the worse yesterday, after an African-American Muslim congregation in Detroit accused a Bureau informant of luring a Mosque member to his death. Luqman Ameen Abdullah, leader of the self-described Ummah Mosque in Detroit, was killed in a shootout with FBI agents on October 28, during a raid at a warehouse reportedly aimed at recovering stolen goods. But Mosque worshipers claim that Abdullah was led to the warehouse by a man going by the name of Jabril, who they say was an FBI informant. The man allegedly infiltrated the Mosque for several months leading to the shootout, but disappeared following the FBI raid. The FBI has admitted it employed three informants to spy on the group, but has refused to reveal details, and is now seeking a protective order to shield the informants’ identities. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0254 (activism edition)

January 15, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • US activists file lawsuit over domestic spying. Anti-war activists in Washington State are suing military analyst John Towery and police officials for allegedly infiltrating and spying on two antiwar groups in Olympia. The suit also names the City of Olympia and a US Coast Guard employee.
  • Antiwar activist to stage sit-in at CIA HQ. American political activist Cindy Sheehan says she intends to stage a sit-in in front of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on January 16, to protest the Agency’s unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan. Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq War in 2004, attracted international attention for her extended protest at a makeshift camp outside President George Bush’s Texas ranch.
  • Is there legal basis for CIA drone strikes in Pakistan? We at intelNews have asked this question before. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is asking it also, and has requested to see the US government’s estimates of civilian casualties caused by the strikes.

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US court upholds NSA’s refusal to admit or deny wiretap data

January 3, 2010 by Leave a comment

Glomar Challenger

The Glomar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A US federal appeals court has concluded that the National Security Agency can refuse to admit or deny it possesses information about the US government spying on lawyers representing Guantánamo prison detainees. The decision by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York relates to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request under a civil liberties lawsuit challenging post-9/11 warrantless surveillance operations by US agencies. The latter typically respond to most FOIA requests by confirming or denying possession of information relating to particular requests, and then by proceeding to either deny release, or release selected segments of the requested data. It is rare for an agency to refuse even to acknowledge the existence of information sought through FOIA. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0231

December 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Chinese honey trap methods net another victim. This time it was M.M. Sharma, an Indian diplomat posted with India’s mission in China, who reportedly had an affair with “a Chinese female spy”. She managed to gain access to his personal computer and “peruse [classified] documents without any restraint”. London’s ex-deputy mayor, Ian Clement, must feel better knowing he is not alone.
  • NSA’s $1.9 billion cyber spy center a power grab. Extensive –if a little ‘light’– analysis of the US National Security Agency’s planned new data storage center in Utah, by Chuck Gates of Deseret News.
  • Connecticut police spying on Democratic Party activists? Kenneth Krayeske, a political activist and free-lance journalist is suing the Connecticut State Police, claiming that officers engaged in “political spying [by using] cloaked Connecticut State Police addresses [to] subscribe to e-mail bulletin boards and lists […] that contain political information relating to the Green Party, the Democratic Party” and independent political activists.

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News you may have missed #0227

December 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • British politicians sue CIA over rendition flights. A group of British members of parliament, led by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, has filed a complaint in a district court in Washington, DC, asking for a judicial review of secret agreements between the US and UK on renditioning terrorism suspects.
  • US DHS broke domestic spying rules. The US Department of Homeland Security gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam for eight months in 2007, and broke the law by taking longer than 180 days to determine whether the US-based group or its American members posed a terrorist threat.
  • Expert says UK ex-spy chief misled Iraq War probe. Sir John Scarlett, Britain’s former spy chief has misled the Iraq inquiry by exaggerating the reliability of crucial claims about Saddam Hussein’s ability to launch weapons of mass destruction, according to Dr. Brian Jones, the leading UK Ministry of Defense expert who assessed the intelligence behind London’s decision to go to war in 2003.

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News you may have missed #0224

December 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Parts 6 and 7 of CIA defector’s writings now available. Former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer has published the sixth and seventh installments (chapters 2 and 3 of “The Spy’s Cookbook”) of the writings of Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who defected to the USSR in 1985 (see here for previous intelNews coverage). In part six, Howard writes about the methodology of visiting (among other places) the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, DC. In part seven, he advises that the only time a double agent’s handlers should call the agent’s home is to tell him or her to “get out and leave the country!”.
  • Congressional vote on US PATRIOT Act delayed. The US House of Representatives tabled on Wednesday legislation to reform US domestic surveillance law. The Senate is likewise expected to delay the matter. The delays will automatically extend provisions of the PATRIOT Act that would otherwise expire at year’s end.

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Canadian police spying on anti-Olympics groups sparks debate

December 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

Jamie Graham

Jamie Graham

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Intense debate has been sparked in Canada by the revelation that local police departments are actively spying on peaceful citizen groups opposing the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, due to be held in Vancouver in February. The surprise disclosure was made by Victoria Police chief Jamie Graham, during his keynote speech at the Vancouver International Security Conference, a closed-door event held earlier this month to discuss emergency management and public safety arrangements for the Games. Speaking at the Conference, Graham, who formerly was Chief of Vancouver Police, revealed that law enforcement operatives planted among an anti-Olympics protest group an undercover officer, who posed as the driver of a leased bus and drove the group to an anti-Olympics demonstration. Read more of this post

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EU foreign minister’s husband shunned KGB approaches in 1980s

December 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

Peter Kellner

Peter Kellner

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The husband of the recently appointed European Union minister for foreign affairs has acknowledged that the KGB tried to cultivate a relationship with him in the 1980s. Peter Kellner, who now presides over influential British polling company YouGov, is married to Baroness Ashton of Upholland (born Catherine Margaret Ashton), who assumed the prominent EU post on November 19. Intelligence documents show that British domestic intelligence agency MI5 had tagged Kellner and his wife as “communist sympathizers”, because of their anti-apartheid activism and long-term involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, considered a “subversive” movement within the intelligence services. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0209

December 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

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