Hawaii couple alleged to be Russian spies using fake names held without bail

Walter Glenn Primose, Gwynn Darle MorrisonA FEDERAL JUDGE IN HAWAII has denied bail to a married American couple, who are believed to have assumed the identities of dead children in order to lead double lives for over 20 years, according to prosecutors. Local media reports allege that Bobby Edward Fort and Julie Lyn Montague, who were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on July 22 on the island of Oahu, are Russian spies, and that their names are parts of their assumed identities.

According to the reports, the real names of the couple are Walter Glenn Primose, 66, and Gwynn Darle Morrison, 54. Government prosecutors allege that, in the late 1980s, the couple hurriedly left their home in the state of Texas, telling family members that they were entering the US Federal Witness Protection Program. They are also said to have given some family members permission to take whatever they wanted from their home, before it was foreclosed.

The government claims that the couple then assumed the identities of two infants, Bobby Edward Fort and Julie Lyn Montague, who had died in Texas in 1967 and 1968 respectively. They then used these infants’ birth certificates to obtain social security cards, drivers’ licenses, and even US passports. In 1994, while living in Hawaii under his assumed name, Primrose enlisted in the US Coast Guard, which is the maritime security and law enforcement service branch of the US military. He served there for over 20 years as an avionic electrical technician with a secret level clearance. Following his retirement in 2016, Primrose is said to have worked as a private contractor for the US Department of Defense until his arrest on July 22 of this year. Read more of this post

CIA declassifies controversial submarine recovery project

Glomar Explorer

Glomar Explorer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
I have written before about the CIA’s controversial 1974 project to recover a Soviet submarine that had sunk in 1968, in 17,000 feet of water, about 750 miles northwest of Hawaii. The project involved the infamous ship Hughes Glomar Explorer and was led by CIA agent Christopher Fitzgerald, who died last year. But the CIA recovery team nearly caused a nuclear explosion when the submarine split while being raised, and its body hit the ocean floor. Now the CIA has for the first time declassified a substantial document relating to the project, codenamed AZORIAN. The document is a lengthy article first published in 1985 in the mostly classified CIA research journal Studies in Intelligence, written by an unnamed CIA team member who participated in the recovery effort. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0283

  • Romanian spy chief in rare interview. On the 20th anniversary of Romania’s post-communist Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), Romanian daily Libera published an interesting interview with SIE director Mihai Razvan Ungureanu. Includes quote of the week: “The diplomat does nothing illegal […] while the spy does nothing in the spirit of respecting the laws of other states”.
  • Trial of Hawaii resident accused of spying for China postponed. Noshir Gowadia’s federal trial has been delayed several times since he was arrested in 2005, for allegedly providing China with information on making cruise missiles less visible to radar and heat-seeking missiles.
  • Bizarre suicide streak in Turkish military continues. Could the latest in a long list of recent alleged suicides by members of the Turkish military be connected to the shadowy Ergenekon military-intelligence network?

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US court upholds NSA’s refusal to admit or deny wiretap data

Glomar Challenger

The Glomar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A US federal appeals court has concluded that the National Security Agency can refuse to admit or deny it possesses information about the US government spying on lawyers representing Guantánamo prison detainees. The decision by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York relates to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request under a civil liberties lawsuit challenging post-9/11 warrantless surveillance operations by US agencies. The latter typically respond to most FOIA requests by confirming or denying possession of information relating to particular requests, and then by proceeding to either deny release, or release selected segments of the requested data. It is rare for an agency to refuse even to acknowledge the existence of information sought through FOIA. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0193

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