Iranian defector briefed UN inspectors on Iran nuclear program

December 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

Iranian nuclear facility in Qum

Qum facility

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An Iranian nuclear scientist who vanished during a pilgrimage to Mecca last June has defected to the West and has briefed American and United Nations officials about Iran’s nuclear program. As intelNews reported on October 9, rumors have been circulating in the Arab press that Shahram Amiri, a senior figure in the Iranian nuclear research program, was not abducted by Saudi and Western intelligence agencies, as Iran claims, but actually defected to the West. Now British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has cited “a source close to France’s overseas secret service, the DGSE”, who claims that Amiri’s defection was facilitated through a carefully planned intelligence operation involving the CIA, as well as French and German operatives. Read more of this post

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Germany arrests Chinese informants for spying on exiles

November 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

Chinese consulate in Munich

Chinese consulate

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
German federal and local detectives yesterday raided the homes of four Chinese residents of Munich, who are suspected of spying on the city’s Uighur Chinese community on behalf of the government in Beijing. The four were charged after German counterintelligence agents spotted them holding secret meetings with a Chinese diplomat operating out of China’s consulate in Munich (photo). Munich has the world’s largest Uighur population outside of China, and is home to the World Uighur Congress, which Beijing views as an anti-Chinese organization. The Uighur people are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia, and are primarily concentrated in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0194

November 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

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French spies saw Hitler danger in 1924, document shows

November 23, 2009 by 1 Comment

Hitler in 1924

Hitler in 1924

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
At the same time when British intelligence was employing Benito Mussolini, and US diplomats were describing segments of the German Nazi party as “moderate [with] appeal to all civilized and reasonable people”, French intelligence reports were identifying Adolf Hitler as a “fascist […] demagogue” and “the German Mussolini”. This emerges from a 1924 report by an anonymous French intelligence operative, which is due to be declassified along with thousands of similar documents currently stored in the French National Archives, according to French newspaper Le Monde. Read more of this post

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A terrible week for German spy agencies

November 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

BND logo

BND logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Germany’s largest intelligence agencies are in for a challenging few days, as two spy scandals are making headlines in the country’s media. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s foremost domestic intelligence organization, is firmly in the hot seat after it emerged that a woman it employed as an undercover informer was among seven extremists indicted for helping operate a hardcore neo-Nazi online radio station. The woman, who has been identified only as “Sandra F.”, had been hired by the spy agency to monitor the German People’s Union (DVU), a national socialist political grouping with substantial following in Brandenburg and Saxony. Read more of this post

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Abducted Iranian defense official reportedly held in Israel

November 17, 2009 by 3 Comments

 

Ali Reza Asgari

Ali-Reza Asgari

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Iran’s former deputy defense minister, who went missing during a 2006 official visit to Turkey, was kidnapped in a joint Israeli-German-British operation, according to an Iranian newsmagazine. Brigadier general Ali-Reza Asgari, who once commanded Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, disappeared on December 9, 2006, from his hotel room in Istanbul, Turkey. Little more than a year later, Hans Rühle, former Director of Policy Planning in the German Ministry of Defense, wrote in Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung that Asgari was in Western hands and that “information was obtained” from him. Since then, other sources have alleged that Asgari defected willingly, including Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post and intelligence historian Gordon Thomas, in his 2009 book Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence (see intelNews book review). Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0184

November 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Rumors of joint US-Israel-Egypt-Jordan spy meeting. Israeli site DEBKAfile is one of several Middle Eastern news outlets alleging that a secret meeting was held earlier this month between senior intelligence officials of the US, Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
  • Germany won’t prosecute suspect in Litvinenko murder. Germany has dropped attempts to prosecute Dmitri Kovtun, a former Soviet military intelligence officer implicated in the 2006 killing in London of Russian former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Meanwhile the primary suspect in the case, former KGB bodyguard Andrey Lugovoy, who lives in Russia, said he may be ready to face questioning in the UK “under certain conditions”.
  • FBI charged terrorism suspect after trying to recruit him. Tarek Mehanna, a Massachusetts man accused of plotting to kill Americans, was charged by the FBI only after he refused to work as an informant against Muslims, according to his lawyer. This is not the first time such allegations have surfaced.

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News you may have missed #0177

November 11, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • TV footage shows Afghan insurgents with US ammo. Television footage broadcast Tuesday in Kabul showed Afghan insurgents handling what appears to be US ammunition, in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan that American forces left last month following a deadly firefight that killed eight US troops.
  • US formally accuses Iran of weapons sales to Hezbollah. The US has accused Iran of illicit arms deliveries to Lebanese Hezbollah during a session of the UN Security Council, endorsing charges by Israel following its seizure of a German ship in the Mediterranean last week.
  • Finnish union spokesman was Stasi informant, says paper. Riitta Juntunen, spokeswoman at the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), worked for the Stasi, the former East German ministry of state security, Swedish-language daily Hufvudstadsbladet reported on Monday.

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News you may have missed #0174

November 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • West feared German reunification in 1989, documents show. The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago caused major anxiety in not only Eastern, but also Western capitals, to the point of outright opposition to a possible German unification, according to documents published last Friday by the National Security Archive.
  • Convicted CIA agents also in Norway. At least two of the 22 (not 23, as the article mistakenly states) CIA agents convicted last week for the 2003 abduction from Italy of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, were also active in Norway, according to Norwegian daily Stavanger Aftenblad.
  • Shin Bet tried to recruit alleged Israeli terrorist. Jack Teitel, an American-born Jewish settler who was recently arrested for allegedly having murdered two Palestinians, was asked by Israel’s internal intelligence agency to inform on extremist Israeli groups after the attacks, the agency said Friday.

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US prevented Israel from bombing arms ship, says paper

November 9, 2009 by 1 Comment

The Francop

The Francop

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israel wanted to bomb a German cargo ship, which allegedly carried tons of weapons from Syria and Iran to Lebanon, but the plan was “rejected” by US intelligence, according to a London-based Arabic-language newspaper. An article in last Friday’s Asharq Alawsat appears to confirm earlier speculation that the ship, which was seized by Israeli commandos in a predawn raid on Wednesday off the coast of Cyprus, was first brought to the Israelis’ attention by US intelligence agencies on October 18. The newspaper alleges that the raid by Israeli commandos took place only after the US rejected an Israeli suggestion to bomb the ship while it was sailing through the Red Sea. An air attack on the cargo ship, named Francop, would have undoubtedly caused a multinational diplomatic episode. The vessel is reportedly German, leased by Greek-Cypriot charter company UFS Shipping International, and was sailing under the flag of Antigua & Barbuda, with an Egyptian crew and a Polish captain. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0168

November 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • 1,600 suggested daily for FBI’s terrorist watch list. Newly released data show that, during a 12-month period ending in March this year, the US intelligence community suggested 1,600 names daily for entry on the FBI’s terrorist-watch list. The ever-churning list is said to contain over a million entries and more than 400,000 unique names, of which around 5 percent are US citizens or legal residents.
  • German spies keep files on leftist politicians. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence service, has kept tabs on 27 elected German lawmakers since 2005. All of those targeted are members of Germany’s Left Party. The news, disclosed during an internal German parliament investigation, is certain to upset members and supporters of the Left Party, which holds 76 seats in the country’s 662-seat federal parliament.

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News you may have missed #0167

November 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • DAS official confirms Colombia spying on Ecuador. An official of Colombia’s DAS intelligence service has admitted Colombia “had an informant in the Ecuadorean security forces”. The revelation comes days after Venezuelan officials claimed they had uncovered Operation SALOMON, a joint Colombian-US espionage operation against Ecuador.
  • Clinton meets Libyan ex-intelligence chief. While attending a regional-development conference in Morocco, US secretary of state Hilary Clinton met briefly with Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa. Kusa, who served as Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s intelligence chief during the 1990s, was expelled from Britain in 1980 for his alleged involvement in assassinating a Gaddafi opponent in London. Clinton has a talent for meeting with controversial foreign spies.
  • Ex-Yugoslav secret agent arrested in Germany. German authorities have arrested a man with Croatian and Swedish citizenships, identified only as “Luka S.”, who allegedly participated in the 1983 murder of Stjepan Durekovic, an exiled Yugoslav dissident living in Germany. Another accomplice in Durekovic’s assassination, identified only as “Kronoslav P.”, was jailed in 2008.

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New research reveals extent of East German spying in Canada

October 30, 2009 by 1 Comment

Helmut Muller-Enbergs

Muller-Enbergs

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Previously unknown aspects of East German intelligence-gathering operations in Canada will be presented this coming Saturday at the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies in Ottawa. The new data was unearthed in Berlin by Helmut Müller-Enbergs, a researcher with Germany’s Office of the Federal Commissioner Preserving the Records of the Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic (BStU). His findings show that the Stasi (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), the main foreign intelligence department of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was able to gain “deep insights into the domestic and foreign affairs of Canada”. The feat appears impressive when considering that the GDR had no embassy in Canada until 1987. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0159

October 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US Congress wants to change locks in document safes. Some Congress members have revived “a decade-old debate” on replacing security locks on government safes for storing classified documents with new electromechanical locking mechanisms. According to one independent security consultant, existing mechanical locks in classified document safes “can be penetrated surreptitiously within 20 minutes”, and older barlock containers still in use “can be penetrated within seconds”.
  • A US spy in wartime Ireland. The interesting story of Major Martin S. Quigley, one of three US spies sent by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, CIA’s forerunner) to Ireland, on a mission to find out whether the country’s government, which was officially neutral in the War, was actually siding with Nazi Germany.

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Iran government spying on ex-pat dissidents, says Germany

October 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

Manfred Murck

Manfred Murck

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A German intelligence official has said Iranian government agents are actively spying on Iranian dissidents living in Germany. Speaking to the Panorama program on Germany’s ARD state-owned television station, Manfred Murck, deputy director of the Hamburg branch of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s primary domestic intelligence service, said his department is aware of Iranian intelligence activity targeting Iranians living in Germany. “We know that the Iranian (secret) service has its people circulating in demonstrations. Read more of this post

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