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News you may have missed #0076

August 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Australia’s domestic spy agency considers FBI model. There are reports that Australia’s domestic spy agency could be expanded to become more like its US counterpart, the FBI.
Weapons manufacturers planted spy on Swiss anti-military group. The Group for Switzerland without an Army, a campaign group calling for Switzerland to disband its military, has accused the weapons industry of planting a spy within its membership.
Retired Lebanese security official “confesses” to spying for Israel. Lebanon’s counterespionage operations continue after Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, a 62-year-old retired Internal Security Forces official, has allegedly confessed to having “collaborated with Israeli intelligence agents” between 1993 and 2006.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Al-Alam spy ring, ASIO, Australia, corporate espionage, domestic intelligence, espionage, FBI, ISF (Lebanon), Israel, Lebanon, Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, News, news you may have missed, Switzerland, The Group for Switzerland without an Army, United States, weapons trade

FBI investigates attorneys for trying to identify CIA torturers

August 21, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Washington Post and The New York Times are reporting three military attorneys at Guantánamo Bay have been questioned by the FBI for allegedly showing pictures of CIA operatives to prisoners accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks. In some cases, the pictures were taken surreptitiously outside the operatives’ homes. The lawyers were apparently trying to identify agents who may have been involved in torturing prisoners at US jails overseas. But US military officials say the lawyers could have broken laws shielding the identity of classified intelligence. The FBI investigation is reportedly headed by John Dion, head of the US Justice Department’s counterespionage section. Dion has worked on several high-profile national security cases, including the prosecution of Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA double agent who spied for the USSR. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with ACLU, Aldrich H. Ames, Anthony Romero, CIA, FBI, Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, John Adams Project, John Dion, lawsuits, News, torture, United States, US Department of Justice, USSR, War on Terrorism

Ex-FBI translator alleges Turkish intelligence activities in US

August 13, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Sibel Edmonds

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A former FBI translator has alleged that agents acting at the behest of the Turkish government have bugged, blackmailed and bribed US politicians. Sibel Edmonds has spent seven years trying to get a US court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. On August 8, she gave a public testimony at the Washington headquarters of the National Whistleblowers Association, in an attempt to keep her case alive in the public eye. Among other allegations, she said that Turkish intelligence agents bugged the apartment of a female member of Congress and then blackmailed her, threatening to expose her extra-marital affair. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Armenian Genocide, blackmail, corruption, FBI, MİT (Turkey), National Whistleblowers Association, News, Sibel Edmonds, Turkey, United States, US Congress, whistleblowing, wiretapping

News you may have missed #0060

August 6, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ex-FBI translator tests US Justice Department again. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has spent seven years trying to get a court to hear her allegations that Turkish intelligence agents had penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress. This weekend she’s going to try again.
Bulgaria appoints new National Security Agency director. Tsvetelin Yovchev is the new head of the State National Security Agency (DANS). The Agency’s previous director, Petko Sertov, recently handed his resignation, allegedly after Bulgaria’s “American partners were said to have lost faith” in him. He will now serve as Bulgaria’s general consul in Thessaloniki, northern Greece.
US paper sees power struggle inside Iranian intelligence. The Washington Times claims the recent firing of intelligence minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, two other Ali Khamenei loyalists and nearly 20 other high-ranking officials, has weakened Khamenei’s hold over the Iranian intelligence ministry and has strengthened the power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Ali Khamenei, Bulgaria, DANS (Bulgaria), diplomacy, FBI, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, Greece, Iran, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, lawsuits, Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, MİT (Turkey), Petko Sertov, Sibel Edmonds, Thessaloniki (Greece), Tsvetelin Yovchev, Turkey, United States, US Department of State, US DoD

Ex-DoD analyst accused of spying says he was FBI double spy

July 31, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Larry Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lawrence Anthony Franklin, the former US Defense Department analyst whose 12-year prison sentence was suspended last month, now claims he was an FBI informant in a case of alleged spying by the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. Franklin was accused by the US government of handing classified military information to Uzi Arad, Naor Gilon, an Israeli Embassy official in Washington, as well as to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Besides Franklin, Rosen and Weissman were also taken to court by the FBI. Last May, however, US Justice Department prosecutors dropped all charges against the two former AIPAC members. It was just a matter of time before Franklin’s sentence was also suspended. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with AIPAC, CBS News, eavesdropping, FBI, informants, Israel, Israeli embassy in the US, John Miller, Keith Weissman, Lawrence Anthony Franklin, lawsuits, Naor Gilon, News, Steve Rosen, United States, US Department of Justice, US DoD, Uzi Arad

FOIA request reveals US Army spying on activists

July 29, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Eileen Clancy

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
US government documents released through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by activists in Washington state have helped unmask a US Army informant operating amidst their ranks. John Towery, a member of the US Army’s Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis in Washington, claimed to be an anarchist named “John Jacob” in order to join Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance. He then spied on the groups on behalf of several regional and federal government agencies, including Immigration Customs Enforcement, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the US Army. This is the latest in a long line of similar incidents, which inevitably point to a systematic campaign of domestic intelligence gathering against antiwar groups. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Can Obama’s inter-agency interrogation unit overcome turf-wars?

July 28, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The task force set up by President Barack Obama to reform US interrogation policies will shortly be unveiling its long-awaited report. There are rumors in the US intelligence community that the report will call for a new inter-agency interrogation unit that will combine experts from several US military and intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI. But in a well-argued article in Time magazine, Bobby Ghosh asks the important question of whether such a plan is represents mere wishful thinking, by ignoring the “brief and bleak” history of inter-agency cooperation on interrogation. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Zubaida, al-Qaeda, Analysis, CIA, FBI, interrogation techniques, Obama Administration, Pakistan, torture, turf wars, United States, US DoD, War on Terrorism, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn

News you may have missed #0040

July 24, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Top court scolds German government over spy secrecy. Angela Merkel’s government has been rebuked by Germany’s most senior court for withholding information from a parliamentary inquiry into the role of Germany’s intelligence service (BND) in the detention of two Muslims from Germany at a US prison in Afghanistan.
Man implicated in Israeli spy affair says US government “tainted by anti-Semitism”. Larry Franklin, the former Defense Department analyst accused by the US government of handing classified US military information to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists, has told Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that “some of the agencies of the US administration, and in particular the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are tainted by anti-Semitism”.
Defense contractors preparing private cyberwarriors? US Defense contractors such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and others, are moving into the lucrative realm of cyberwarfare.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, AIPAC, BND, cyberwar, defense industry, espionage, FBI, German Muslims, Germany, Israel, Lawrence Anthony Franklin, News, news you may have missed, United States

Post-9/11 torture sparked internal dissent, rift between FBI and CIA

July 20, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Abu Zubaida

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Citing interviews with almost “two dozen [anonymous] current and former US officials” The Washington Post has revealed crucial new background information on the CIA’s torture methodology after 9/11. The exposé, by reporters Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, helps piece together some of the complex puzzle of internal decisions that led US interrogators to resort to waterboarding and other forms of torture against “war on terrorism” detainees. The article focuses on Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, two psychologists who were hired by the CIA to design an elaborate ten-stage harsh interrogation program (see previous intelNews report). According to The Washington Post, Mitchell, who was the program’s mastermind, told associates he had modeled it on the theory of “learned helplessness”, used by professional psychologists “to describe people or animals reduced to a state of complete helplessness by some form of coercion or pain, such as electric shock”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Zubaida, al-Qaeda, Bruce Jessen, CIA, FBI, Jim Mitchell, learned helplessness, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, News, psychology, torture, United States, War on Terrorism, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn

Attorney behind NSA domestic wiretapping defends his views

July 17, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

John Yoo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The former US Justice Department lawyer who authored legal memos sanctioning the legality of the Bush administration’s secret wiretapping program has defended his views. John Yoo, who on 9/11 was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, has penned an article in The Wall Street Journal, in which he voices disagreement over a recently published US government report that criticizes the wiretap program’s secrecy and dubious legal basis. The report was authored by the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It says that the Bush administration’s decision to keep NSA’s domestic wiretap program secret even from senior Department of Justice and intelligence officials hampered the broader intelligence community’s ability to use the program’s output, and subverted the government’s ethical standing in the so-called “war on terrorism”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bush Administration, communications interception, FBI, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John C. Yoo, News, NSA, Office of Legal Counsel, operation STELLAR WIND, Terrorist Surveillance Program (STELLAR WIND), United States, US Department of Justice, War on Terrorism, warrantless communications interception, wiretapping, World War II

Analysis: Ulterior Motives In Panetta’s Philippines Visit

July 14, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Panetta, Arroyo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Few heads outside Southeast Asia were turned last Sunday by CIA director Leon Panetta’s brief visit to the Philippines. Panetta arrived in Manila early Sunday morning and left at 10 p.m. on the same day. But he managed to squeeze in meetings with Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, as well as her most senior cabinet executives, such as Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. Panetta’s meeting with the President was brief, reportedly lasting around 30 minutes, but its significance was enormous for Washington’s continuing military and intelligence presence in the region. To understand the level of that commitment, one must consider the rare telephone call that US President Barack Obama recently placed to his Philippine counterpart. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Sayyaf Group, Alberto Romulo, Barack Obama, espionage, FBI, Gilbert Teodoro Jr., Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Ian Allen, Joseph Estrada, Leandro Aragoncillo, Leon Panetta, Michael Ray Aquino, Moro ethnic group, NPIG (Philippines), Philippines, RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement, Southeast Asia, United States, US Joint Civil Military Operation Task Force

News you may have missed #0025

July 12, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

BREAKING NEWS: Several news outlets are reporting this morning that it was former US vice-President Dick Cheney who ordered the CIA to conceal from Congress key information about a covert action intelligence program of an undisclosed nature. See here for more.
New book claims Ernest Hemingway was KGB agent. The new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, alleges that the Nobel prize-winning novelist was on the KGB’s list of agents in America from 1941, when he was given the codename “Argo” by the Soviets.
Thousands of former Stasi spies still working in German civil service. A report in the German edition of The Financial Times claims that over 17,000 former members of East Germany’s Stasi remain employed as civil servants in reunified Germany. Stasi is the name commonly used for the Ministry for State Security, communist East Germany’s secret police.
NSA director’s secret visit to New Zealand revealed. A reporter accidentally spotted Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, director of the US National Security Agency, entering a Wellington building accompanied by security personnel. The revelation prompted a spokesperson at the US embassy in Wellington to admit that Alexander was indeed in New Zealand “for consultations with government officials”. The close signals intelligence relationship between the US and New Zealand have been known since 1996.
Chinese national caught trying to purchase crypto hardware. Chi Tong Kuok was arrested by the FBI at the Atlanta International Airport en route from Paris to Panama, where he allegedly planned to purchase US military radios. The US government claims Kuok has admitted he was “acting at the direction of officials for the People’s Republic of China”.
Taliban say cell phone SIM cards guide US drone strikes. A Taliban circular says SIM cards planted by informants in cell phones used by militants are used to signal American drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As IntelNews recently explained, there are suspicions that this and similar discoveries are gradually prompting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to stop using cell phones altogether.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, AUSCANZUKUS, book news and reviews, Chi Tong Kuok, China, CIA, Cold War, cryptology, Dick Cheney, ECHELON, Ernest Hemingway, FBI, German Democratic Republic, Germany, Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, intelligence oversight, Keith Alexander, KGB, Ministry for State Security (GDR), New Zealand, News, news you may have missed, NSA, Pakistan, Predator drones, SIGINT, Stasi (GDR), Taliban, telephony, UK-USA Security Agreement, UKUSA

Larry Franklin, implicated in Israeli spy affair, breaks silence

July 6, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Franklin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Lawrence Anthony Franklin, the former US Defense Department analyst whose 12-year prison sentence was suspended last month, has finally broken his silence. Franklin, who was accused by the US government of handing classified US military information to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists, has told Jeff Stein of SpyTalk that he handed out the secret information “in hopes that it would be passed on to the White House”. He said he was “worried” the Bush administration pursued a schizophrenic policy on Iran and had not calculated the Iranian reaction to a possible US invasion of Iraq. He therefore decided to pass on the classified information, which included “the names and locations of Iran’s secret agents and safe houses in Iraq”, to AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who claimed they had senior contacts in the Bush administration. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0017

July 3, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Spain’s chief spy resigns in financial scandal. Alberto Saiz, who headed Spain’s National Intelligence Center, was accused by the daily newspaper El Mundo of using public money for diving and hunting trips in Mexico, Senegal, Mali and Morocco. He denied the accusations, but on July 2, he resigned “to prevent further damage to the reputation of the intelligence agency and the government”.
FBI declassifies reports on agents’ interviews with Saddam. Just-declassified FBI reports reveal that FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by US troops in December 2003. Interestingly, the declassified reports include nothing about “Iraq’s complicated relationship with the US”, especially the alleged role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power in the 1960s.
Release of CIA report on detention, interrogation, delayed (again). Like many others, we at intelNews were eagerly expecting this previously classified CIA report on detention and interrogation under the Bush administration to be released last Wednesday. It was initially going to be released in mid-June, but was then delayed until July 1. Now the CIA says it won’t be able to release the report until the end of August. The ACLU says it will wait for as long as it has to.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with ACLU, Alberto Saiz, Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (Iraq), CIA, declassification, extraordinary rendition, FBI, Iraq, Iraq War, National Intelligence Center (Spain), News, news you may have missed, Saddam Hussein, Spain, torture, War on Terrorism

Australian espionage convict leaving US for home

June 30, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Australian former intelligence officer who was arrested by the FBI for trying to sell classified US defense documents will be allowed to serve the remaining of his prison sentence in Victoria, Australia. Jean-Philippe Wispelaere was an employee of Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation, the agency responsible for assessing and relaying intelligence information to Australian government officials. In 1999, he resigned from his job and flew to Bangkok, Thailand, where he contacted embassy officials of a third country (rumored to be Singapore) and offered to sell them over 700 pages of classified US documents. Read more of this post