Presidential Guard member convicted of espionage in West Bank

January 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has announced a death sentence against a former member of the Presidential Guard who is said to have spied for Israel. Palestinian Authority prosecutors accused the unnamed 28-year-old man, resident of Hebron, of supplying sensitive information to Israeli intelligence agents since being recruited as an informant in 1997. The prosecution said that the information supplied to Israeli agents by the former Presidential Guard member resulted in –among other things– the capture by Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet) of Rateb Abayet and Adnan Abayat, both commanders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the secular armed wing of Fatah. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

World’s most prolific nuclear arms smuggler admits CIA link

January 23, 2009 by 8 Comments

Urs Tinner

Urs Tinner

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On October 4, 2003, Italian authorities, acting on a tip by the CIA, inspected a Libya-bound German ship anchored at Taranto, Italy. The ship was found to be carrying several centrifuges for use in Libya’s uranium enrichment program. The discovery led to the uncovering of the role of Dr. Abdul Qadeer (A.Q.) Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, in subcontracting his nuclear knowhow to North Korea, Iran and Libya. It also led to the uncovering of Urs Tinner, a Swiss engineer who worked under A.Q. Khan, and was said at the time to be leading “the world’s biggest nuclear smuggling ring”. Tinner was eventually arrested along with his father Friedrich and brother Marco, both members of Tinner’s ring, and extradited to Switzerland. Strangely, however, he was never charged and was in fact released from detention last December, with the blessings of the CIA, who did not wish to see him prosecuted. Now Swiss TV station SF1 has announced the scheduled airing of a documentary, in which the freed Tinner will acknowledge that he tipped the CIA about the German ship in Taranto and A.Q. Khan’s nuclear subcontracting. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

MI6 informant found guilty of murder in secret trial

January 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews |
A Chinese anti-communist dissident who worked for years as a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) informant has been found guilty of murdering an elderly British author and attempting to steal his identity. The British external intelligence agency admitted to have hired Wang Yam as a “low-level informant” since the mid 1990s, after the well-known anticommunist campaigner moved to London from Hong Kong. MI6 gave Yam British citizenship and tasked him with gathering information about Chinese expatriates living in Britain. In addition to working for MI6, however, Yam launched a number of fraudulent schemes, including online credit card fraud networks and several shady business ventures. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , ,

Austin activist reveals himself to be FBI informant

January 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

Brandon Darby

Brandon Darby

In the days just prior to last year’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, two activists from Texas used a rented U-Haul trailer to transport dozens of homemade shields, helmets and batons to Minnesota’s capital. The two activists, David McKay and Bradley Crowder, presumably intended the homemade protection gear to be used in street demonstrations during the RNC. They were eventually intercepted by St. Paul police officers who appeared to know what the two men were hauling. The officers, who did not use a warrant, proceeded to smash the trailer’s lock and seize its contents. This incident appears to have failed to convince McKay and Crowder of the obvious existence of an informant in their ranks. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CIA conducting ‘unprecedented’ operations in Britain

January 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has published an article (reprinted in Australia’s The Age) discussing what it describes as CIA’s “unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain”. The paper cites “security sources in Washington and London” in revealing that the US spy agency is “recruiting and handling a record number of informers within the British Pakistani community”. Security circles in Washington have been known to express concerns about militant tendencies in that community, which is nearly one-million-strong. Bruce Reidel, a 26-year CIA veteran and al-Qaeda expert, who now advises US President Elect Barack Obama’s transition team, says that Britain’s Muslim community (whose members can travel to the US without visas) is “regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single-biggest threat environment.” Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Scotland Yard urged to drop advisor with terrorist ties

December 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

Harrath

Harrath

For four years, the Scotland Yard, headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police Service, has employed Mohamed Ali Harrath as an “anti-terrorism advisor” while funding his London-based Muslim television station with tens of thousands of pounds. Last week The London Times discovered that Harrath is wanted by the Tunisian authorities and by Interpol “because of his links to an alleged terror organization”. The organization, known as the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT), is said to advocate “an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence”. The Tunisian government is not known for its democratic credentials, but British intelligence organizations seem to agree with its assessment of FIT. In 2003 an MI5 witness implicated “FIT [in] terrorism activities in France” before Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Police spying revelation rocks New Zealand

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

IntelNews has paid particular attention to domestic intelligence operations conducted against law-abiding protest activity in the so-called “war on terrorism”. The US is hardly the only Western country where intensification of government spying on protest activity has been noted in recent years. During the past few days, political life in New Zealand has been stirred by revelations that the country’s police force has for years used “paid informants to infiltrate protest groups”, including “groups such as Greenpeace, animal rights and climate change campaigners and Iraq war protesters”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , ,

Analysis: Political policing in the war on terrorism

December 1, 2008 by Leave a comment

Today’s revelation from Minneapolis that the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office infiltrated groups planning civil disobedience actions during the 2008 Republican National Convention should come as no surprise. The infiltration of the Minneapolis Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee by three undercover operatives of the local police department’s Special Investigations Unit is indicative of a recent pattern of intensification of surveillance of mostly lawful domestic political groups by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Joseph Fitsanakis outlines the general picture in “Political Policing in the War on Terrorism”. [JF]

.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Newer posts →