News you may have missed #0279

  • Pakistani spy agencies drug political activists. Intelligence agencies in Pakistan are using drugs to extract information from political activists, with the cooperation of doctors on the payroll of the state, according to one of Pakistan’s leading newspapers.
  • Georgia jails alleged Russian spy. Vakhtang Maisaia, a military expert who advised Georgia’s mission to NATO, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for spying for Russia during the 2008 South Ossetia War. Last week, Tsotne Gamsakhurdia, son of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia’s first post-communist president, was formally charged with “collaborating with Russian intelligence services”.

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News you may have missed #0273

  • Tinner nuclear spy ring worked for CIA, documents confirm. IntelNews has been reporting for more than a year that Urs Tinner, a Swiss engineer who worked under Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, and was said at the time to be leading “the world’s biggest nuclear smuggling ring”, was in fact a CIA informant. Now documents submitted in a Swiss federal court appear to confirm Tinner’s CIA connection.
  • Son of Georgia’s former president charged with spying for Russia. Some say that Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Georgia’s first post-communist president, was assassinated in 1993. Now his son, Tsotne Gamsakhurdia, has been formally charged with “collaborating with Russian intelligence services”. The former president’s son’s arrest appears to be the latest episode in an ongoing intelligence war between Russia and Georgia.

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Georgian paramilitaries posed as election observers, say Ukrainians

Viktor Yanukovych

V. Yanukovych

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Ukraine’s largest political party has accused the nearby nation of Georgia of sending to Ukraine a team of paramilitary operatives disguised as international election monitors. Vladyslav Lukianov, who represents Ukraine’s Party of Regions in the country’s parliament, has given to the press ten names of Georgian paramilitary agents who allegedly performed “law enforcement operations” in Ukraine, while supposedly monitoring last Sunday’s Ukrainian elections. It appears that three more Georgians, who were arrested on Saturday in Donetsk, reportedly did not possess identity papers or travel documentation, and are so far refusing to speak to Ukrainian security officials. To further complicate the issue, an allegedly wiretapped conversation between Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili, and an unidentified woman surfaced in the Ukrainian news media last week. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0243

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News you may have missed #0225

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Controversial Israel-Russia drone deal includes secret Iran clause

MK II UAV

MK II UAV

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
I have written before on this blog about a controversial $53 million agreement between Russia and Israel to provide Moscow with Israeli-made intelligence-gathering drones. The agreement, revealed last April, marked Israel’s first-ever sale of military systems to Russia, as well as Moscow’s first known purchase of a foreign weapons system. Last time I wroteintelNews received information that the Israeli move angered some US Pentagon officials. It turns out, however, that the Israeli-Russian deal contains a vital clause: the Israelis have agreed to provide Russia with as many intelligence-gathering drones as they want, and even allow them to reverse-engineer them, providing they cancel an agreement with Tehran to provide the Iranian government with Russian-made state-of-the-art air defense missiles. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0208

  • Georgia denies entry to Russian ‘spies’. Georgia has denied entry to a delegation of Russian scholars from the Russian State Archive and the Center for Caucasian Research at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. It’s the second time this year that the Georgians have accused Russian researchers of being spies.
  • US monitors China’s hiring of foreign journalists. A report by the Open Source Center of the US Directorate of National Intelligence notes that China has been hiring a growing number of foreign reporters to serve as overseas correspondents.
  • Audio interview with NSA’s information assurance director. Dickie George, technical director of information assurance at the US National Security Agency, has given a rare audio interview to GovInfo Security. The first part of the interview is available here. The second part will be posted in a few days.

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Russia claims discovery of secret US-Georgia armaments channel

The PAC-3

The PAC-3

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Several Russian newspapers carried lead articles yesterday, describing the alleged discovery of a secret Washington-led project of supplying the Republic of Georgia with $100 million-worth of US weapons supplies. The articles cited “anonymous Russian intelligence sources” in claiming that the US is in the process of secretly providing Georgia with, among other things, a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) advanced surface-to-air guided missile air defense system. If true, the allegations could raise eyebrows in Congress, as the PAC-3 cannot legally be exported by the US government without explicit Congressional authorization. But Russian media report that, according to secret documents acquired by Russian military intelligence, the US government plans to circumvent Congressional scrutiny by delivering the weapons to Georgia through a private exporter, Barrington Alliance Inc., headquartered in Chicago, of which little is known. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0173

  • Russia, Georgia, in secret border reopening talks. Russia and Georgia, whose borders have been shut since the 2006 South Ossetia War, are in secret negotiations to reopen their only common border checkpoint, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
  • Why Shin Bet is taking over Israeli domestic investigations. Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s domestic intelligence service, is overtaking the role of the police forces in solving criminal cases. The reasons are primarily political.
  • Interview with Bruce Schneier. A Q&A session with the cryptography legend, author of Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear. Interesting quote: “[W]e now know that the NSA vacuums up all sorts of electronic communications, e-mail included. So maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to routinely encrypt our e-mail”.

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News you may have missed #0147

  • Major purge in Gambian intelligence services. The Gambian government gave no official reasons for the dismissal of 27 officers from the country’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA). But local media said the dismissals were aimed to end bitter internal turf wars that have affected NIA’s performance.
  • US Congress bars release of more torture photos. US House and Senate members have approved legislation that would permit the Pentagon to withhold photographs if it determines that their disclosure “would endanger citizens of the US, members of the US Armed Forces, or employees of the US government deployed outside the US”. The ACLU said that “the suppression of these photos will ultimately be far more damaging to our national security than their disclosure would be”.
  • Russia jails alleged Georgian spy. A Russian military court has jailed Russian Army sergeant Jemal Nakaidze for nine years, for passing secrets to Georgia during a war between the two countries last year. See here for more on the recent tug-of-war between Russia and Georgia.

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Russia accuses Georgian intelligence of aiding Islamists

A.V. Bortnikov

A.V. Bortnikov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has accused Georgian intelligence and security services of aiding anti-Moscow militants in Russia’s southern republics. Speaking before Russia’s National Antiterrorism Committee on Tuesday, Alexander V. Bortnikov said that the FSB’s counterintelligence department had seized a number of “audio reports” from Islamist militants active in the Russian Caucasus, which allegedly show that a number of “al-Qaeda emissaries” mediate between militants in Russia and “Georgian special services”. The latter, said Bortnikov, train militants from Chechnya, Dagestan and North Caucasus, and supply them with funds, weapons and explosives. But the Washington-based Radio Free Europe has quoted David Bakradze, the speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, as denying Bortnikov’s “groundless” allegations. Read more of this post

Iran blames US, Saudis over defection of Iranian nuclear scientist

Manouchehr Mottaki

M. Mottaki

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, has accused American and Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies of complicity in the recent disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Mottaki’s comments followed revelations in London-based Arabic-language daily, Al-Sharq al-Awsat, that the scientist, Shahram Amiri, defected to the West earlier this year. The paper said the researcher, who worked for the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program, defected during a hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It also claimed that another Iranian nuclear scientist, whose identity has not yet emerged, has disappeared, and may have defected, during a recent visit to the Republic of Georgia. The rumored disappearances may be part of Israel’s ongoing secret war on Iran’s nuclear program, which British newspaper The Daily Telegraph described last February as a covert “decapitation program” by Israeli intelligence, targeting Iran’s nuclear scientists. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0130

  • One in three votes for Karzai was fraudulent, says US diplomat. Hamid Karzai was fraudulently re-elected to Afghanistan’s presidency, according to Peter Galbraith, a US diplomat who was sacked last week from the UN mission in Afghanistan. Galbraith also warned that Karzai, who was handpicked by the US to lead Afghanistan following the US invasion, and whose brother is probably a CIA informant, is not credible with many Afghans following the election fiasco.
  • US lobbyist for Rep. of Georgia says Russian agents tried to kill him. Paul Joyal, former director of security for the US Senate Intelligence Committee, and a paid lobbyist in the US for the country of Georgia, insists that agents of the Russian government tried to kill him two years ago outside his Washington, DC, home.
  • Ex-CIA agent says Indian spies operating in Afghanistan. Milt Bearden, former CIA station chief in Pakistan, has told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Indian intelligence operatives were active in Afghanistan, and that “the concerns of Pakistan’s Army are legitimate in this regard”. His words appear to echo complaints expressed last June by Pakistani security officials that Indian intelligence services are helping pro-Taliban warlords fight the Pakistani army in the Afghan borderlands. However, the Pakistanis also said that Israel supplies tribal warlords “with modern technology”, including radio equipment.

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News you may have missed #0089

  • German intelligence negotiating on Israel’s behalf. Israel has asked Gemany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, to mediate in negotiations for the release Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza since June 2006. Intelligence sources say a prisoner exchange deal may be imminent.
  • France to send more spies to Somalia. Days after the dramatic escape of a French spy from his militant captors in Somalia, the French government has announced its intention to station more operatives in the country.
  • Senior Russian military officer jailed for spying for Georgia. Authorities said Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Khachidze, who is an ethnic Georgian, passed Russian military secrets over the Internet to Georgian secret services in June and July 2008. Khachidze was allegedly recruited by Georgian intelligence in late 2007, while stationed on Georgian territory.

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Polish agency report refutes Russian link in shooting incident

On the evening of November 23, automatic gunfire erupted about 100 feet away from a motorcade carrying Mikhail Saakashvili, President of Georgia, and Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland. The latter was on a state visit to the former Soviet Republic. Nobody was hurt during the incident. Saakashvili was quick to blame Russian forces stationed in Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia, saying at a subsequent press conference that Russian troops are manned with “unpredictable people [who] weren’t happy to see our guest and they weren’t happy to see me either”. Read more of this post