News you may have missed #0121

September 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • DHS intelligence official speaks on cross-department collaboration. Since its establishment, the US Department of Homeland Security has been involved in almost every major turf battle within the US security and intelligence community. Bart Johnson, the department’s Acting Undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis, speaks about collaborating with non-DHS actors.
  • Somali group executes two for spying for CIA. Somalia’s al-Shabaab on Monday publicly executed two people accused of spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency and the country’s embattled government. Before the US-assisted Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, al-Shabaab (The Party of Youth) used to be the youth organization of the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Al-Shabaab shares the ICU’s mission of turning Somalia into an Islamic khalifat.
  • US intelligence veterans group backs CIA torture probe. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have authored a memorandum addressed to US President Barack Obama, in which they “voice strong support for Attorney General Eric Holder’s authorization of a wider investigation into CIA interrogation”.

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New documents point to innocence of convicted Swedish “spy”

September 29, 2009 by 1 Comment

Bertil Ströberg

Bertil Ströberg

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A man who was jailed in Sweden in 1983 for spying on behalf of the Eastern Bloc may be innocent, according to an investigation by Sweden’s TV4 channel. On May 20, 1983, Bertil Ströberg was arrested in Stockholm’s main post office, while picking up correspondence for a ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’. What he didn’t know is that Sweden’s Security Service (SAPO) was looking for Larsson after it had surreptitiously opened a letter addressed to the Polish embassy in Stockholm. The letter, which was signed by Larsson, contained a number of classified Swedish security documents and requested $25,000 Swedish kronor ($3,500) in return for further secret information. During his closed-door trial, Ströberg claimed he had made the acquaintance of someone calling himself ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’ in Stockholm, who later sent him a letter asking him to pick up a delivery in his name from the city’s main post office. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0120

September 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Film on America’s most famous whistleblower. A new documentary film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, examines the life of Daniel Ellsberg, a US Pentagon employee who leaked documents to the American public in order to stop the Vietnam War. Ellsberg, 78, is still a pariah in the US defense community. He told the Associated Press that at a RAND (research arm of the Pentagon, where he used to work) reunion several years back, no one would shake his hand.
  • Retired US Air Force officer convicted in China spying case. Retired US Air Force officer James W. Fondren Jr. faces a maximum of 20 years behind bars, after being convicted of selling classified information on US-China military relations to a Chinese agent and lying to the FBI about it. The US Department of Justice accused Fondren, 62, of being part of a spy ring that operated on US soil under the supervision of Chinese government officials, whom Fondren supplied with classified documents for over three years, beginning in 2004.
  • Request to halt CIA probe “nonsense” says former agent. A controversial request by seven former heads of the CIA to end the inquiry into abuse of terrorism suspects held by the Agency is “nonsense”, says Bob Baer, a 20-year CIA caseworker in the Mid-East and former CIA station chief in Iraq. “To say let’s not look further into this because it could upset the agency is like saying let’s not look into Bernie Madoff because it could upset the financial sector”, said Baer.

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News you may have missed #0119

September 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • CIA opens center on climate change. The CIA Center on Climate Change and National Security is a small unit led by senior specialists from the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Science and Technology. It focuses on “the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources”. Methinks the emphasis will probably be on the latter.
  • Brazilian political figures spied on after dictatorship. Senior Brazilian politicians, religious leaders and activists were spied on illegally for 16 years after the 1964-1985 military regime, according to recent allegations in the country’s press. Major surveillance targets included Brazil’s current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, opposition leader and Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, and others.
  • New book examines life of Franco-sympathizer British spy. Jimmy Burns has written a biography of his father, Tom Burns, an anti-communist sympathizer of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who organized the British intelligence network in Spain during and after World War II.

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Comment: How did Iran know US planned to reveal nuclear facility?

September 28, 2009 by 1 Comment

Barack Obama

Barack Obama

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The question may be confusing at first, but it makes perfect sense, considering the series of events. Late last week the US put together a secret plan to reveal to the world that Iran has built a previously undeclared nuclear facility to enrich uranium. However, on the morning of September 25, that is, just hours before US President Barack Obama made the revelation, Iran pre-emptied him with a formal letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in which it volunteered the information that it has built a facility inside a mountain near the city of Qum. Now, we know that US and other Western intelligence agencies have known about the existence of that nuclear facility for many years. However, from an intelligence point of view, the revelation of the site is secondary to the issue of how Iran came to know about the US President’s plan to reveal its existence. Read more of this post

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Chechnya President says US, UK spies active in region

September 26, 2009 by 1 Comment

Ramzan Kadyrov

Ramzan Kadyrov

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The pro-Moscow President of Russia’s Chechen Republic has accused American and British intelligence services of collaborating with Muslim separatists in the region, in order to “split [Russia] apart”. Speaking to conservative newspaper Zavtra, President Ramzan Kadyrov said Russian government forces are “fighting in the mountains [against] the American and English intelligence agencies”. Asked to elaborate, Kadyrov alleged he had personally seen the US driver license of a CIA operative who was shot dead during a security operation he led. Kadyrov’s comments mark the first public allegation by a Russian government official of Western intelligence activity in the Russian Caucasus. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0114

September 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

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

September 23, 2009 by 4 Comments

Hezbollah parade

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 #0111

September 20, 2009 by 2 Comments

  • Obama supports extending USA PATRIOT Act domestic spy provisions. The move confirms the US President’s support for the Act, whose warrantless communications monitoring provisions he approved with his Senate vote in 2008.
  • Poland jails alleged Belarusian spy. The man, known only as “Sergei M.” was sentenced Wednesday to five-and-a-half years in prison by a Warsaw district court for spying against Poland between 2005 and 2006. Meanwhile in Belarus four local army officers are still on trial, accused of spying for Poland.
  • Tolkien was trained as a British spy. Novelist JRR Tolkien, whose day occupation was in linguistics research, secretly trained as a British government spy in the run up to World War II, new documents have disclosed.

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News you may have missed #0107

September 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • CIA invests with low-power Wi-Fi company. The CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, has announced a strategic investment and technology development agreement with GainSpan. The company makes single-chip wireless sensor networks and other embedded applications, with the aim of enabling portable devices to run for up to 10 years on a single AA battery. In-Q-Tel has invested with more than 140 companies in recent years, including relatively unknown software startups Lingotek and Lucid Imagination.
  • Indian spies released from Pakistani prison seek compensation. Three Indian intelligence agents, who were in recent years released from captivity in Pakistani jails, have said that the Indian government has not honored its commitment to take care of them and their families.

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News you may have missed #0105

September 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Trial of Serb former intelligence chiefs opens today. The trial of Jovica Stanišić, Director of Serbia’s State Security Service from 1990 until 1998, and Stojan Župljanin, commander of the Bosnian Serb police during the Bosnian war, opens today at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. As intelNews has reported before, at least two eponymous CIA agents have admitted that Stanišić was a CIA collaborator from 1991 until 1998.
  • Lithuanian Prime Minister was KGB agent, says board. A Lithuanian commission tasked with uncovering pro-Moscow informants and intelligence agents during the country’s communist period, has concluded that Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė, Lithuania’s first Prime Minister after the country’s 1990 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, secretly collaborated with the Soviet KGB.
  • Congo says it won’t execute Norwegian alleged spies. Norway’s foreign minister says he has been assured that the two Norwegians who were sentenced to death by a Congolese military tribunal last week on spying charges will not be executed.

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Soviet star hockey player was spy, claims new book

September 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

Vladislav Tretiak

Vladislav Tretiak

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new book claims that one of the greatest Russian ice hockey players in modern times was a spy for Soviet and Russian intelligence. Vladislav Tretiak, goaltender for the Soviet Union’s national ice hockey team in the 1970s and 1980s, is considered one of the supreme goaltenders in the history of the sport. But Nest of Spies, a new book published this week in Canada, alleges that Tretiak acted as an “international talent-spotter” for the KGB and its post-communist successor, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The books’ authors, Canadian Security Intelligence Service veteran Michel Juneau-Katsuya, and investigative journalist Fabrice de Pierrebourg, claim that Tretiak performed intelligence work during his sports-related visits to Canada and elsewhere, by detecting potential spy recruits for the Russians. Read more of this post

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Lawsuit claims US government paid reporters during Cuban Five spy trial

September 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

NCFCF rally

NCFCF rally

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Campaigners in support of the release of a group of Cuban government agents jailed in the US have sued the US government for allegedly influencing media coverage of the trial by paying journalists in Miami. The Cuban Five were arrested in 1998 and convicted in 2001 of spying on US soil on behalf of the Cuban government. But now the Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has joined forces with The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, in accusing the US government of employing journalists to shape American public opinion about the Five. According to the lawsuit, 16 American journalists working for Radio y Televisión Martí, a US government-funded TV and radio station targeting Cuba, were employed by the US government to air critical views about the Cuban Five through non-governmental news outlets. Read more of this post

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Norwegians sentenced to death for “spying” in Congo

September 9, 2009 by 1 Comment

Joshua French

Joshua French

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two Norwegian citizens were sentenced to death yesterday by a Congolese military court for arms smuggling, murder, attempted murder and spying for the Norwegian government. The two have been identified as Tjostolv Moland, 28, and Joshua French, 27 (photo).  Both were arrested in May in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), after their Congolese driver was found murdered with a bullet wound in his head. Prosecutors also accuse the two Norwegians of trying to kill a murder witness. Immediately upon their arrest, Moland and French were treated as Norwegian government agents, because they carried Norwegian military identification. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0100

September 8, 2009 by 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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