News you may have missed #621

November 3, 2011 by Leave a comment

Pakistan

Pakistan

►►Pakistan denies spying on German forces in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials have rejected a German newspaper report that the country’s secret service spied on German security forces in Afghanistan. Without citing its sources, mass-selling weekly Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday that Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency warned its interior ministry that Pakistan had spied on 180 German police officers deployed in Afghanistan to train locals.
►►CIA expert says US government lacks security operating system. Industry is not providing the US government with the basic tools it needs to build a secure information infrastructure, according to Robert Bigman, chief of the CIA’s Information Assurance Group. “What we need is a secure operating system”, he said during a panel discussion at the Security Innovation Network showcase in Washington last month. “We gave up some time ago on the battle to build a secure operating system, and we don’t have one”.
►►US increased spy spending in 2011. The US Congress appropriated $54.6 billion for intelligence programs in the 2011 fiscal year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence disclosed last week. The amount, which does not include what was spent on military intelligence, is a slight increase from the year before but could be the end of the upward trend, says CNN’s Security Clearance blog.

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News you may have missed #618

October 31, 2011 by Leave a comment

Abdullah al-Senoussi

Al-Senussi

►►US Congressman urges expulsion of ‘Iranian spies’ at the UN. New York Congressman Peter King says the US should kick out Iranian officials at the UN in New York and in Washington because many of them are spies. Speaking at a hearing Wednesday, the Democrat said such a move would send a clear signal after the recent alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
►►Colombia’s intelligence chief denies knowledge of illegal wiretapping. Felipe Muñoz, the director of Colombia’s intelligence agency DAS has denied knowledge of illegal interception of unionists’ emails and phone calls by DAS employees, following the announcement that the Inspector General’s Office will be investigating these allegations. According to the allegations, Muñoz and other leading DAS officials were aware of the illegal interception.
►►Gaddafi intelligence chief now in Niger. Moammar Gadhafi’s intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi (pictured), who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, has slipped into the desert nation of Niger and is hiding in the expanse of dunes at the Niger-Algeria border, a Niger presidential adviser said last week. Meanwhile, Gaddafi’s former spy chief, Moussa Koussa, has denied claims made in a BBC documentary that he tortured prisoners.

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Alleged Russian spies in Germany used low-tech methods to evade detection

October 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

Anna Chapman

Anna Chapman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A couple arrested in Germany last week on suspicion of working for Russian intelligence, was using low-tech radio communications to receive orders from Moscow, according to media reports. The two arrestees have been identified as Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag; German prosecutors accuse them of spying for SVR, the successor to the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (PGU), responsible for foreign operations and intelligence collection abroad. They are said to have worked as non-official-cover operatives for the KGB and SVR since at least 1990, when they entered Germany from Mexico, using forged Austrian travel documents. Authorities in Germany say that Heidrun Anschlag, 51, was caught by German police in the act of listening to encrypted radio messages from Moscow. German investigators are reportedly puzzled by the fact that, in the Internet age, when most intelligence operatives employ digital secure communications, the Anschlags insisted on using a low-tech method that mostly died with the end of the Cold War. But intelNews readers will remember the case of former United States State Department analysts Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, who were arrested in 2009 for spying on the US for Cuba for over 30 years. Shortly after the Myers’ arrest, we wrote that the couple appeared to have avoided capture for decades, precisely because their communications with the government of Cuba were too low-tech to be detected by sophisticated US monitors. The latter tend to focus on scanning for encrypted satellite or microwave communications which —among other hi-tech means— are now the communication method of choice for modern clandestine spy networks. But some intelligence agencies, including —apparently— the SVR, appear to insist on using old-school oral cipher signals, based on straightforward number-to-letter codes, which they broadcast to their agents over predetermined shortwave frequencies at specified times. Read more of this post

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Analysis: United States and Germany spy on each other

October 26, 2011 by 5 Comments

BND seal

BND seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Newly released documents reveal that the Central Intelligence Agency has maintained an active program of espionage against Germany in the post-Cold War era, and experts say that Germany reciprocates the ‘favor’. According to an article in the latest issue of German newsmagazine Focus, the US intelligence community, led by the CIA, has been keeping tabs on Germany’s intelligence agencies since the 1950s, and continues to do so today. The magazine’s editors say they are in possession of internal government documents, which describe constant CIA monitoring on the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s main external intelligence agency. The CIA’s spying extends to Germany’s counterintelligence agency, known as the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz). CIA operations against the Office have reportedly included the interception of telephone calls, some of which involved high-level conversations between German and British or French intelligence officials. Focus claims that CIA spying against the BND actually intensified following German reunification in 1990, as the American agency kept tabs on German intelligence officers with former Nazi or communist past. According to one report, the CIA was able to verify that at least two BND officers with service in the Nazi SS had joined a NATO sabotage unit. The magazine spoke to an unnamed former BND counterintelligence officer, who said he was not in the least surprised by the revelations. Commenting yesterday on the Focus report, Washington-based reporter Jeff Stein argued that a little friendly spying is to be expected among allied intelligence services. The veteran intelligence correspondent spoke to an unnamed former CIA officer, who told him that the espionage between Washington and Berlin has not been “a one-way street” —the BND also spies on the CIA and other American intelligence agencies. Read more of this post

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German commandos arrest couple ‘spying for Russia’

October 24, 2011 by 2 Comments

Russian and German flags

Russia & Germany

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Members of an elite German commando unit have arrested a man and a woman, on suspicion of having spied for Russia for over two decades. A statement issued by the German prosecutor’s office does not name the couple, nor does it explicitly identify them as Russian spies. It says simply that they are “suspected of having worked in Germany over a long period of time for a foreign intelligence agency”. But an article in Germany’s leading newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, identifies the couple as “Andreas A.” and “Heidrun A.”, and claims that the two have spied for Russian intelligence since at least 1988. The newsmagazine reports that the suspected spies were caught separately in the towns of Balingen and Marburg, located in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse respectively. It also suggests that the two were apprehended by members of Germany’s GSG-9, the elite counter-terrorism and special operations unit of the German Federal Police, and that the woman was actually caught in the act of listening to a coded radio message. Both were found to be in possession of forged Austrian passports, as well as —apparently fake— birth certificates stating that they were born in Argentina (Andreas) and Peru (Heidrun). Following the Spiegel article, Germany’s Federal Prosecutor confirmed that two people had indeed been arrested on suspicion of espionage activities on behalf of a foreign country. If a Russian connection is established, it will be the first international espionage case linking Russia and Germany since the latter’s reunification in 1990. If they are followed by convictions, the arrests could constitute a much needed success story for the German intelligence community, whose reputation has lately been damaged by several unsavory media stories. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #610

October 13, 2011 by Leave a comment

Charles S. Faddis

Charles S. Faddis

►►Australian agency warns spy cells ‘lie in wait’. In its annual report, Australia’s intelligence service, the ASIO, warns that foreign powers may be recruiting sleeper agents in Australia to carry out sabotage in future conflicts. The report further notes that, despite the rise of cyberespionage, there has not been a marked reduction in the intensity of more traditional forms of espionage.
►►US frees convicted Cuban spy but debate rages on. Few topics illustrate the gulf in perception between the governments of Cuba and the United States like the case of the Cuban Five. The five Cuban agents were arrested in Florida in the 1990s and convicted on espionage charges. US federal prosecutors said the men were trying to spy on military installations. But Cuba’s government has long maintained the men were trying to monitor Miami-based exile groups that were planning attacks on the island nation.
►►Analysis: It’s time for the Pakistanis to pick a side. Former CIA operations officer Charles Faddis (pictured) argues that the US government needs to immediately designate Pakistan’s proxy army, the Haqqani network, as a terrorist organization. It has avoided taking that action for far too long and only because of crass political concerns, says Faddis, but the time has come to change course.

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News you may have missed #607

October 10, 2011 by Leave a comment

Shakil Afridi

Shakil Afridi

►►Ex-worker sues US spy agency for anti-Islamic bias. Mahmoud Hegab, a former employee of the super-secretive US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says he lost his security clearance because his wife attended an Islamic school and worked for a Muslim charity, Alexandria-based Islamic Relief USA.
►►Russia says China still spies the old-fashioned way. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), issued a rare statement last week, claiming it had arrested Tong Shengyong, a Chinese citizen who, posing as a translator for official delegations, was working under the direction of the Chinese government in an attempt to buy state secrets from Russians about Russia’s S-300 missile system. It now says that the Tong case shows that China continues to employ an old standby in the tradecraft playbook: outright bribery.
►►Pakistan panel says doctor who aided CIA should face charges. Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi, who ran a vaccination program for the CIA to help track down Osama bin Laden, should be put on trial for high treason, a Paksitani government commission said Thursday.

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News you may have missed #605

October 6, 2011 by Leave a comment

Hamid Karzai

Hamid Karzai

►►French intelligence ‘spied on Socialist politician’. Hand-picked” French intelligence agents allegedly spied on the private life of François Hollande, the Socialist whom polls predict is best-placed to beat Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s presidential elections. They are also said to have spied on Hollande’s partner, Valérie Trierweiler –-potentially France’s future first lady.
►►US to release Cuban spy under supervision. Rene Gonzalez, the first of five Cubans imprisoned in the United States as spies since 1998 will regain his freedom Friday but won’t be able to go home for three more years because of a court order requiring he remain under US supervision.
►►Afghan intelligence says it stopped plot to kill Karzai. A plot to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been foiled by Afghan intelligence agents in Kabul who arrested six men with links to al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network. The discovery of the plot comes just two days before the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan in retaliation for the September 11 attacks in the US and, had it been successful, would have plunged the country further into chaos.

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Russia reveals arrest of Chinese national on spy charges

October 6, 2011 by Leave a comment

FSB officer

FSB officer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Russian counterintelligence officials have revealed the arrest of an alleged Chinese intelligence operative, who has reportedly been imprisoned in Moscow for nearly a year and is awaiting trial on espionage charges. Russia’s FSB domestic intelligence agency said on Wednesday that it arrested Chinese national Tong Shengyong on October 28 last year. In a press statement, the FSB said that Tong’s professional cover was that of an “interpreter for official delegations”, but that in reality he was operating in Russia on an assignment from China’s Ministry of Public Security. The Ministry is the principal police and security authority of the People’s Republic of China, and is considered one of the world’s largest intelligence organizations. The FSB claims that Tong allegedly used his high-level contacts in Moscow and elsewhere to routinely solicit Russian nationals, offering to purchase from them information relating to Russian missile systems. According to the FSB, Tong was particularly interested in the S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile system, which developed for the Soviet Air Defense Forces as protection against American aircraft and cruise missiles. The Soviet-era system has since been replaced by the more advanced S-400, but China, which has historically been Russia’s largest weapons procurer, is already in possession of several S-300s, which it purchased from Moscow in the 1990s. Beijing is therefore desperate to access classified manuals that would allow it to repair and modify S-300s currently in its possession, without giving in to Russia’s insistence to upgrade to the post-Soviet S-400. Moreover, during the past decade, China has begun developing its own missile system technology, which some say is loosely based on Russian blueprints. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #602 (Israel edition)

October 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

Ahmed Jamal Daif

Ahmed Jamal Daif

►►Lebanon arrests three suspected of spying for Israel. Lebanon has arrested three people suspected of spying for Israel and trespassing, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported Tuesday. According to the report, an Egyptian citizen and his wife were arrested on suspicion of spying, and an Arab-Israeli man was arrested on suspicion of trespassing. The Israeli, Ahmed Jamal Daif (pictured), was found on Monday in a diving suit on a beach in the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura, a Lebanese army source said.
►►Egypt may release alleged Israel spy. Agence France Presse is reporting that Cairo is considering the release of alleged Israeli spy Ilan Grapel, in exchange for “political and economic incentives” offered by the United States. Grapel was arrested by Egyptian state security officers in June, on charges of spying for Israel. According to one source, former CIA Director and current US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is set to visit Egypt today and is supposed to “take Grapel with him at the end of his visit”.
►►Jordanian accused of spying for Israel pleads not guilty. A Jordanian telecommunications engineer, who is on trial in Egypt on charges of spying for Israel, pleaded not guilty on Sunday. Bashar Ibrahim Abu Zeid was detained in Egypt last April after intelligence information allegedly showed he was spying for the Mossad, with Ofir Herari, an alleged Mossad agent, being tried in absentia.

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Biden stopped Obama from granting clemency to Israel spy

October 3, 2011 by Leave a comment

Joe Biden

Joe Biden

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The President of the United States considered clemency for an American Navy analyst who spied on the US for Israel, but was stopped by his Vice President, Joe Biden, according to a report in The New York Times. The report claims that Barack Obama gave in to concerted pressure from the Israeli government and members of the pro-Israel lobby in the US, and proposed that Jonathan Pollard, who was jailed for life in 1986 for handing over classified US government documents to Israeli spies, be released. But Joe Biden rejected Obama’s proposal, reportedly telling the President that “over my dead body are we going to let [Pollard] out before his time”. The information appears to have come from Joe Biden himself, who revealed it during a recent meeting with rabbis in Boca Raton, Florida. The Times reports that, “according to several people at the meeting”, Biden was asked by one of the rabbis why it was that Pollard remained in prison, despite a lengthy campaign in Israel to have him released, or transferred to an Israeli jail. Biden responded that Obama had proposed releasing Pollard, but his suggestion never reached the heads of America’s intelligence community, because it was blocked by Biden himself. The Vice President said he told Obama that, if it were up to him, Pollard “would stay in jail for life”. The Times article does not relay the reaction to Biden’s forceful answer at the meeting; but the paper states that Biden appears to be on a mission to improve Obama’s image with Jewish voters in the United States. Although Jewish Americans traditionally tend to vote for the Democratic Party, they are currently being aggressively courted by the Republicans, worrying some Democratic electoral strategists. By answering the way he did in response to the question about Pollard, Biden “took a punch meant for his boss”, argues the paper. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #600 (China edition)

September 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

Lo Hsien-che

Lo Hsien-che

►►Chinese spy stirs unease in Taiwan military. Excellent, well-researched piece by The Washington Post about Lo Hsien-che, a Major General in the Taiwanese military, who earlier this year was convicted in what has been described as Taiwan’s biggest spy scandal in over 50 years. Lo appears to have fallen victim to a carefully planned Chinese honey-trap operation, involving a “tall, beautiful and chic” Chinese female operative, who held an Australian passport.
►►US consulate guard accused of trying to spy for China. Bryan Underwood, a former contract security guard at a US consulate under construction in southern China’s largest city, Guangzhou, was charged Wednesday with trying to pass defense secrets about the site to Chinese intelligence officials. Scheduled for completion next year, the consulate is the only one under construction in the world’s most populous nation.
►►Taiwan professor detained for spying for China. Wu Chang-yu, of Taiwan’s Central Police University, was detained Friday for allegedly providing data on visiting Chinese activists to Beijing. Taiwan’s United Daily News quoted unidentified sources as saying Wu was recruited during a recent visit to China.

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Spy archivist discusses fate of Swedish diplomat abducted by KGB

September 29, 2011 by 2 Comments

Raoul Wallenberg

Raoul Wallenberg

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The fate of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was abducted by Soviet intelligence officers in the closing stages of World War II, is one of the unsolved mysteries of 20th century espionage. The 33-year-old Wallenberg was a shrewd businessman who, in the summer of 1944, was posted as Sweden’s ambassador in Budapest, Hungary. During his time in Budapest, he was able to save over 20,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazi concentration camps, by supplying them with Swedish travel documentation, or smuggling them out of the country through a network of safe houses. He is also reported to have managed to dissuade German military commanders from launching an all-out attack on Budapest’s Jewish ghetto. But Wallenberg was also an American intelligence asset, having been recruited by a US spy operating out of the War Refugee Board, an American government outfit with offices throughout Eastern Europe. In January of 1945, as Soviet forces descended on Axis ally Hungary, Moscow gave orders for Wallenberg’s arrest on charges of spying for Washington. The Swedish diplomat disappeared, never to be seen in public again. Some historians speculate that Joseph Stalin initially intended to exchange Wallenberg for a number of Soviet diplomats and intelligence officers who had defected to Sweden. But according to official Soviet government reports, Wallenberg died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947, while being interrogated at the Lubyanka, a KGB-affiliated prison complex in downtown Moscow. Despite the claims of the official Soviet record, historians have cited periodic reports that Wallenberg may have managed to survive in the Soviet concentration camp system until as late as the 1980s. Earlier this week, Lt. Gen. Vasily Khristoforov, Chief Archivist for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), one of two successor agencies to the old Soviet KGB, gave an interview about Wallenberg to the Associated Press. Read more of this post

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More Arabs want to work for Mossad, says Israeli Foreign Ministry

September 28, 2011 by Leave a comment

Ahmed Jamal Daif

Ahmed Jamal Daif

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The unprecedented political changes in the Arab world have generated a flurry of electronic correspondence between young Arabs and the Israeli government, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Israeli officials say that the lifting of Internet restrictions in much of the Arab world has allowed young people to access the Israeli government’s Arabic-language websites and social networking sites. This has facilitated “thousands of messages […] with words of praise, requests for asylum […], and even offers [by young Arabs] to serve in the [Israel Defense Forces] and Mossad”. In a carefully coordinated public relations campaign, the Ministry voluntarily released on Monday some anonymous messages —allegedly from Arabs and Iranians— to Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, which leans politically toward Israel’s center-right Kadima party. In one message, an Iraqi computer technician wrote to request political asylum, adding that Israel is the Middle East’s “only country that respects personal freedom”. In another released message, an Iranian Muslim expressed the will to resettle in Israel, because its population is “the strongest and most cultured in the region”. The story in Yedioth Ahronoth includes comments by the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Paul Hirschson, who argues that the flood of electronic correspondence from the Muslim world “is illustrative of the fact that across the Middle East there are people who hold Israel in far higher regard than is presumed”. Hirschson added that some of the electronic messages have come from “from Arab politicians and officials”. Read more of this post

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US spy Pollard tried to spy for Australia before spying for Israel

September 23, 2011 by 1 Comment

Jonathan Pollard

Jonathan Pollard

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lobbyists campaigning for the release of jailed spy Jonathan Pollard portray him as a genuine Jewish patriot, who risked his freedom to spy on the United States for Israel. But in her first-ever public interview, Pollard’s FBI interrogator has revealed that he also spied for South Africa and tried to spy for Australia, before working as an agent for Israel. Lydia Jechorek was the FBI agent assigned to the case of Jonathan Pollard, after the United States Navy analyst was arrested for spying against his country, by handing countless classified documents over to his Israeli handlers. She spent countless hours with Pollard, interrogating him in jails in Washington, DC, and Lewisburg, PA. On Monday, Jechorek, who has never publicly commented about her role in the Pollard case, spoke to Newsmax, after having received clearance from the FBI to do so. She told the website that, during his FBI interrogation sessions, Pollard said that, before spying for Israel, he had attempted to spy on the United States for a “friendly country”. Jechorek did not mention the “friendly country” by name. But John L. Martin, who supervised the Pollard case on behalf of the Counterespionage Division of the United States Department of Justice, told Newsmax that the “friendly country” was Australia. It appears that Pollard approached Australian officials in the United States and offered to provide them with classified US government documents. It was only after they rejected his offer that Pollard accosted Israeli intelligence officers and began spying for Tel Aviv. Read more of this post

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