MI6 starts recruiting naturalized British citizens after change in rules

February 10, 2021 by 6 Comments

MI6BRITAIN’S MAIN EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE agency has begun hiring foreign-born British citizens for the first time in decades, reportedly in an effort to augment the skillsets of its personnel and diversify its workforce. For much of its history, the Secret Intelligence Service, known informally as MI6, required potential recruits to have been born in the United Kingdom to British-born parents. This excluded British-born children of immigrants to the United Kingdom.

In 2018, however, MI6 shelved the requirement that both parents of employment candidates had to be British-born. Since then, children of immigrants to the United Kingdom could apply for employment, so long as they had been born on British soil and held a British passport. This rule has now been shelved too. From now on, naturalized British citizens will be considered for work at MI6. The only stipulation is that one of their parents must be (or have been, if deceased) a British citizen, or have “substantial ties” to the United Kingdom.

The spy agency states that dual or multiple citizens who are hired to work at MI6 may be required to formally renounce their non-British citizenship(s), “depending on the type of role that they are offered”. reported to a government source cited in the London-based Times newspaper, the change in recruitment practices is aimed at creating a workforce “with a diversification of thought, not people who all think in similar ways”. The change in recruitment rules comes on the heels of a decision last year to lower the minimum age requirement for employment at MI6 from 21 to 18 years.

In a related development, several British newspapers reported last month that the spy agency had begun to recruit for the first time “part-time consultants” with valuable skills or contacts overseas. In several job advertisements that appeared online or in print publications, MI6 said it is seeking candidates with “diverse skill sets and life experiences for part-time and consulting roles”. The advertisements also note that MI6 is looking for “highly desirable individuals” with “expertise in their chosen field”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 10 February 2021 | Permalink

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News you may have missed #897

May 16, 2020 by Leave a comment

• Coronavirus not slowing Russian, Chinese space activities, US general says. Lt. Gen. David Thompson (pictured), the US Space Force vice commander, said this week that Russia and China continue to launch military rockets and test space weapons amid the coronavirus pandemic. Russia tested a satellite-killing missile last month, drawing scorn from US military leaders. Meanwhile in April, a Chinese rocket carrying an Indonesian satellite failed to reach orbit, according to sources.
• US security clearances become more lucrative amid pandemic. Security clearances will almost certainly become an even more valuable credential as the US economy transforms amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While well over 30 million Americans have filed initial unemployment claims since mid-March, those employed in jobs that require a security clearance remain largely insulated from the economic volatility caused by the pandemic. The ever-increasing desirability of a security clearance has raised the stakes for those looking to gain or maintain a clearance in these economically uncertain times.
• Michigan cancels legislative session to avoid armed protests. Michigan closed down its capitol in Lansing on Thursday and canceled its legislative session rather than face the possibility of an armed protest and death threats against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The gathering, meant to advocate opening the state for business despite the coronavirus pandemic, followed one April 30 that resulted in pictures of protesters clad in military-style gear and carrying long guns crowding the statehouse. They confronted police and taunted lawmakers. The debate grew more tense in recent days as some lawmakers read about threats to the governor’s life on social media, which were published in the Detroit Metro Times.

Author: Ian Allen | Date: 16 May 2020 | Permalink

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Seeking to expand, French spy agency is frustrated with poor quality of job applicants

May 8, 2020 by 1 Comment

dgse franceFrance’s primary external intelligence agency has expressed frustration with the overall poor quality of job applicants, as it tries to expand its staff by 20 percent in the coming years. The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, known as DGSE, is France’s equivalent to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. It is tasked with procuring secret political, military and economic information from foreign targets.

During the past decade, the DGSE has nearly doubled the size of its personnel. In 2008, it employed fewer than 4,500 people. By 2019, its staff size had grown to over 7,000, including many thousands of operations officers serving secretly abroad. Last year, the agency announced that it planned to grow its personnel size to 8,500 by 2022. To do so, it launched an unprecedented recruitment campaign, which French security experts described as nothing short of revolutionary. The staunchly reclusive DGSE sent recruiters to job fairs across France —mostly at universities— and began advertising its job vacancies online, primarily on YouTube and LinkedIn.

As a result of its efforts, the agency said that it received 400 applications for 14 positions that were advertised in January. Of those 14 positions, 10 required advanced knowledge and understanding of foreign affairs and geopolitical developments, while two sought candidates with logistical and administrative expertise. The remaining two positions equired fluency in Arabic.

But, according to the British newspaper The Times, the French spy agency struggled to fill the positions. On Thursday the paper cited a DGSE report, which said that the performance of candidates during the selection process “revealed critical shortcomings”. Candidates appeared for interviews severely under-prepared and their level of knowledge, as demonstrated in interviews, was “unacceptable for someone wishing to join the ranks of the DGSE”, said the report. It added that job candidates showed “markedly limited grasp” of global geopolitics, while their knowledge of intelligence work was even more limited. Even minimum requirements, like a résumé free of spelling mistakes were rarely met, it said.

Consequently, and despite the fact that majority of the applicants had graduate degrees, the DGSE struggled to fill the positions, with the process taking much longer than expected. The report said that 12 of the 14 job posts were eventually filled. The remaining two posts —requiring fluency in Arabic— remain unfilled “for want of suitable candidates”, noted The Times.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 08 May 2020 | Permalink

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German government to hire 600 new officers to help monitor far-right activity

December 18, 2019 by Leave a comment

German Federal Criminal Police OfficeThe German government has announced plans to hire hundreds of new police and intelligence officers, in order to step up its monitoring of violent far-right groups in the country. The announcement came at a press conference hosted on Tuesday in Berlin by Horst Seehofer, Germany’s Interior Minister.

Seehofer told reporters that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution —BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence and counterterrorism agency— would hire 300 new officers whose job will be to focus on domestic far-right extremism. The German Federal Criminal Police Office will hire an additional 300 offers for the same purpose, added Seehofer. With these additional 600 officers, federal authorities will be able to increase their monitoring of far-right political groups, football fan clubs, far-right websites, and other hubs of far-right activity, said the minister.

German authorities estimate that there are 12,000 committed far-right extremists in the country who are willing and able to carry out violent attacks inside Germany or abroad. However, nearly 50 percent of actual attacks by adherents of far-right ideologies that have taken place in Germany in recent years have been carried out by individuals who were not on the radar of the police and intelligence services.

In addition to hiring 300 new intelligence officers, the BfV will set up a new “Central Office for Far Right Extremism in Public Service”, whose task will be to uncover adherents of far-right ideologies working in government agencies. The new office will concentrate its investigations on the police, the military and other government bodies.

During his press conference on Tuesday, Minister Seehofer stressed that the intensification of investigations into far-right terrorism would not happen at the expense of probing political violence from the far left and Islamist extremists.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 December 2019 | Permalink

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British spy agency speeds up hiring process to compete with private firms

December 28, 2017 by Leave a comment

GCHQThe Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), one of Britain’s most powerful intelligence agencies, says it plans to accelerate its vetting process because it is losing top recruits to the private sector. Founded in 1919 and headquartered in Cheltenham, England, the GCHQ is tasked with communications interception. It also provides information assurance to both civilian and military components of the British state. It primarily hires people with technical expertise in communications hardware and software. But in the past fiscal year, the agency fell notably short of its recruitment target, according to a new government report published this week.

The information is included in the annual report of the Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament. According to the document, GCHQ’s recruitment shortfall during the past fiscal year exceeded 22 percent, as the agency hired 500 new staff, 140 short of its initial goal of 640. Because of its mission, the agency must have the “ability to recruit and retain cyber specialists”, says the report. However, GCHQ officials told the parliamentary committee that they “struggle to attract and retain a suitable and sufficient cadre of in-house technical specialists”. The latter are lured away by large hi-tech companies, for two reasons: first, because the salaries are higher; and second, because the hiring process is faster. Due to its security requirements, GCHQ has a lengthy vetting process for all potential employees, which sometimes takes more than a year. In recent times, the process has suffered backlogs, a phenomenon that has negatively impacted on the agency’s ability to recruit top talent.

In response to its recruitment shortfall, GCHQ told the parliamentary committee that it plans to speed up its vetting process by addressing its “lack of security vetting capacity”. In July of 2016, the agency had 51 vetting officers in its ranks. It hopes to raise this number to 110 by the summer of 2018, according to the parliamentary report. This will allow it to clear hiring backlogs by December of next year and thus be able to bettercompete with hi-tech firms in the private sector. Other British intelligence agencies have faced recruitment challenges in recent years. In 2010, the then Director-General of MI5, Jonathan Evans, told the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee that “some [MI5] staff perhaps aren’t quite the ones that we will want for the future”. He added that the lack of even basic computer skills among MI5’s aging officer ranks have sparked the introduction of a program of “both voluntary and compulsory redundancies”. And in 2016, MI6 said that it would increase its staff size by 40 percent by 2020, reflecting a renewed emphasis in foreign intelligence collection using human sources, which is the primary task of the agency.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 December 2017 | Permalink

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MI6 to revert to old-fashioned ways of recruitment, says director

March 3, 2017 by 1 Comment

Alex YoungerBritain’s primary external-intelligence agency will revert to old-fashioned ways of recruiting employees, including the co-called “tap on the shoulder” method, according to its director. Known informally as MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) was founded in 1908 to protect Britain’s national security by collecting intelligence from foreign sources. However, the agency has had difficulty recruiting a diverse group of people, and many still view it as a professional destination for a small wealthy elite, drawn primarily from Britain’s most prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.

MI6 is now trying to diversify the makeup of its employees, according to its director, Alex Younger. Younger, who is known at MI6 as ‘C’, gave an interview to British newspaper The Guardian on Thursday. He did so as the agency he leads prepares to increase its personnel numbers by 40 percent in the next four years. Last year, the British government announced that MI6’s personnel strength would grow from its current size of 2,500 employees to approximately 3,500 by 2020. The reason for the increase, said Younger, is that Britain is facing “more threats than ever before […] from terrorist groups and hostile states”. As a result, “the demands on our services [and] capabilities are on the up”, Younger told The Guardian in his first-ever interview with a national newspaper.

But MI6 would function more efficiently and achieve better results it if had a “more diverse workforce”, said Younger. Therefore, he said, the agency must go out of its way to “draw in a new cadre of black and Asian officers”. In doing so, the spy service would need to reach out to minority communities who are “selecting themselves out” of working for the British intelligence community. Useful in this process are what Younger called “old recruitment techniques”, such as the so-called “tap on the shoulder”. The term refers to the deliberate recruitment of individuals who will be approached by MI6 without having applied for employment with the agency. “We have to go to people that would not have thought of being recruited to MI6”, said Younger, adding that the “tap on the shoulder” method can be redeployed in order to increase diversity among MI6’s workforce and “reflect the society we live in”.

The spy agency is preparing to launch an aggressive recruitment campaign next week, aiming at bringing its overall size to 3,500 —a historic high, according to intelligence observers.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 03 March 2017 | Permalink

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Britain’s MI6 to increase its size by 40% in four years

September 23, 2016 by Leave a comment

MI6Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, MI6, will see a 40 percent increase in personnel numbers in the next four years, according to a new report. The agency, which is formally known as the Secret Intelligence Service, currently employs about 2,500 people. But the BBC said on Wednesday that the number of MI6 employees will rise to approximately 3,500 by 2020. The broadcaster said that no public announcement had been made about the planned increase, but that it had verified the information “via Whitehall sources”, referring to the official seat of the British government.

If the BBC’s report is accurate, the planned increase will be the biggest personnel boost for MI6 since the Cold War. It reflects a renewed emphasis in foreign intelligence collection using human sources, which is the primary task of the spy agency. The broadcaster said that the increase in personnel has been “made necessary by the development of the Internet and technology” in recent years. Earlier this week, the director of MI6, Alex Younger, said during a panel presentation in Washington, DC, that the operating environment of MI6 had fundamentally changed due to “the information revolution”. The latter, he said, presented the agency with “an existential threat” and a “golden opportunity” at the same time.

The reported increase is consistent with an announcement made by the then British Prime Minister David Cameron in November 2015, that London would boost significantly the size of its intelligence services. Cameron made the announcement shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed over 130 people and injured 700. In a subsequent report, called the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the British government said it would incorporate 1,900 additional staff to its intelligence and security services. It now appears that over half of these new recruits will join MI6, while the Security Service (MI5), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorist Command will hire the remaining 900 people.

A similar rise in personnel numbers occurred after the July 7 London bus bombings in 2005. Following those attacks, the MI5, which focuses on domestic security and counterterrorism, saw its personnel size increase by approximately 35 percent.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 23 September 2016 | Permalink

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CIA using Macau casinos to recruit Chinese officials, says report

July 23, 2015 by 2 Comments

Sands casino in Macau ChinaOfficials in China think that United States spy agencies are using casinos in Macau to entrap Chinese government employees, according to a report produced on behalf of an American-owned casino chain in the former Portuguese colony. The report was produced by a private investigator and was commissioned by Sands China, the Macau branch of a casino venture owned by American gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson. Its goal was to investigate why the Chinese-appointed authorities in Macau were hostile to the gambling industry in general and Sands China in particular.

The report is dated June 25, 2010, and includes a warning that it should not be shared with Chinese officials in Macau or in mainland China. It cites several unnamed officials in China’s Liaison Office, which governs Macau and Hong Kong, as well as sources in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Chinese businessmen with close ties to the government in Beijing. It suggests that Beijing is weary of the damage caused to its public image by thousands of its employees gambling away an estimated $2 billion each year in Macau. Additionally, says the report, the central government in Beijing is hostile to the foreign-owned gambling industry in Macau because it believes that it collaborates with Western intelligence agencies. Sands China establishments in Macau, in particular, are believed by the Chinese government to be recruiting grounds for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, says the 2010 report.

Citing “well-placed sources” in the Chinese capital, the report suggests that the fear of espionage is “the primary subject” that causes Beijing’s hostility toward Sands China. It notes that “many of the [Chinese] officials we contacted were of the view that US intelligence agencies […] have penetrated and utilized the casinos [in Macau] to support their operations”. It adds that Chinese counterintelligence agencies have “evidence” that CIA operatives “monitor mainland government officials” who visit Macau to gamble, paying particular attention to those losing large amounts of money, or those visiting Macau without the knowledge of their superiors. They then “lure and entrap” them, forcing them “to cooperate with US government interests”.

The report was uncovered by the Investigative Reporting Program of the University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and published on Wednesday in British broadsheet The Guardian. The paper said the report was among a set of documents filed with a court in Las Vegas, where the former head of Sands’ Macau casinos is suing the company for wrongful dismissal. The Guardian contacted the Sands Company, which rejected the contents of the report as “a collection of meaningless speculation”. Its senior vice president for global communications and corporate affairs, Ron Reese, also dismissed the report as “an idea for a movie script”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 23 July 2015 | Permalink: https://intelnews.org/2015/07/23/01-1741/

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News you may have missed #891

April 2, 2015 by Leave a comment

Edward SnowdenBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►Sophisticated malware found in 10 countries ‘came from Lebanon’. An Israeli-based computer security firm has discovered a computer spying campaign that it said “likely” originated with a government agency or political group in Lebanon, underscoring how far the capability for sophisticated computer espionage is spreading beyond the world’s top powers. Researchers ruled out any financial motive for the effort that targeted telecommunications and networking companies, military contractors, media organizations and other institutions in Lebanon, Israel, Turkey and seven other countries. The campaign dates back at least three years and allegedly deploys hand-crafted software with some of the hallmarks of state-sponsored computer espionage.
►►Canada’s spy watchdog struggles to keep tabs on agencies. The Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), which monitors Canada’s intelligence agencies, said continued vacancies on its board, the inability to investigate spy operations with other agencies, and delays in intelligence agencies providing required information are “key risks” to its mandate. As a result, SIRC said it can review only a “small number” of intelligence operations each year.
►►Analysis: After Snowden NSA faces recruitment challenge. This year, the NSA needs to find 1,600 recruits. Hundreds of them must come from highly specialized fields like computer science and mathematics. So far the agency has been successful. But with its popularity down, and pay from wealthy Silicon Valley companies way up, Agency officials concede that recruitment is a worry.

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British spy agencies launch recruitment drive for Russian speakers

November 5, 2014 by Leave a comment

MI5 HQ Thames HouseBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Amid mounting tensions between Russia and the West, British spy agencies have announced an ambitious recruitment campaign aimed at hiring a new generation of Russian-language specialists. The Security Service, known as MI5, which is responsible for domestic security and counterintelligence, posted an advertisement on its website this week, alerting potential applicants that the job search for Russian-language speakers will officially launch “in mid-November 2014”. The recruitment campaign, which is described on the spy agency’s website as “an exciting opportunity to match your language skills to a position in MI5”, appears to be jointly administered with the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s signals intelligence agency, which is tasked with intercepting foreign communications. The move takes place in a wider context of deteriorating relations between Moscow and Western Europe, notably in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of southeastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Some suggest that there has also been a low-intensity intelligence war taking place between London and Moscow ever since the assassination in the British capital of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. In late 2012, an officer of the Royal Navy was captured during a counterintelligence sting operation while trying to sell top-secret British government documents to people he believed were Russian intelligence operatives. A few months later, the British government let it be known of its increasing annoyance by persistent allegations made in the Russian media that Denis Keefe, the UK’s deputy ambassador to Moscow, was “an undercover spy, with his diplomatic position serving as a smokescreen”. In March of 2013, Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet KGB’s former station chief in London, who defected to the UK in the 1980s, alleged in an interview that Russia operates as many spies in Britain today as it did during the Cold War. His comments were echoed earlier this year by the former director of MI5, Jonathan Evans, who said that there had been no change in the number of undeclared Russian intelligence officers operating in Britain since the end of the Cold War. Evans said that up to 50 undeclared Russian military and civilian spies were believed to be operating in Britain at any given moment. In June of this year, intelNews reported that the crisis in Crimea had caused the British military to hurriedly reach out to hundreds of retired Russian-language analysts who left the service at the end of the Cold War, most of whom are now in their 60s.

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News you may have missed #884 (Mossad edition)

September 24, 2014 by Leave a comment

Mossad sealBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►How Israel spies on the Sinai. Israeli intelligence services have expanded their activities in the Sinai Peninsula since the Hosni Mubarak regime fell in 2011, and along with it, the Sinai state security apparatus affiliated with the Egyptian Ministry of Interior. Israeli intelligence services often target young smugglers, attempting to pressure them into working as operatives for Israel in the peninsula.
►►Veteran Mossad operative Mike Harari dies. Israeli secret service agent Mike Harari, who played a major role in planning WRATH OF GOD, Mossad’s revenge attacks against Palestinian militants implicated in the 1972 Munich massacre of the country’s Olympics team, has died. He was 87. Harari was also involved in planning Israel’s dramatic rescue of hostages held by militants in Entebbe, Uganda in 1976. He was depicted by Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film “Munich”, a controversial account of the Operation WRATH OF GOD affair.
►►Mossad launches new recruiting website. The Mossad has launched a new website, in several languages, in order to recruit candidates to its ranks. The reported goal of the upgraded site is to make the organization more accessible to potential recruits in Israel and abroad, who “may not be exposed to the variety of positions available in operations, intelligence, technology and cyber, and administration”. The Israeli covert-action agency says positions are available for men and women alike.

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New generation of FBI counterintelligence agents enters the field

December 19, 2013 by 1 Comment

FBIBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, America’s foremost counterintelligence agency, is preparing to field its first generation of operatives who acquired the bulk of their professional experiences after 9/11. In an enlightening analysis published in Newsweek, veteran intelligence corresponded Jeff Stein says the FBI’s is now being staffed by a new breed of field agents. This new cohort, which is gradually replacing the older generation of counterterrorism and counterintelligence agents, is far more skilled in the geopolitics of Islam, something that distinguishes them from their older colleagues. Tim Murphy, who recently retired as Deputy Director at the Bureau, told Stein that now “everyone in [FBI] counterterrorism knows the difference [between Sunnis and Shiites]”, which was not the case for many years after 9/11. The new FBI agents, said Murphy, also know “know the difference between factions in al Qaeda [and] the political and religious differences” that feed political Islam. The retired official added that over half of the agents on duty now at the FBI entered the Bureau after 9/11. Their interest in counterterrorism and counterintelligence has been furthered by the FBI’s decision to open up a host of new career branches for agents with specializations in intelligence. The latter have now started to enter the Bureau with degrees in international relations, intelligence studies, or computer science, whereas some years ago backgrounds in law and accounting topped the lists of new recruits. But new counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents are far more into “the world of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, Chinese hackers and Russian spies”, says Stein. Read more of this post

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Is mismanagement driving away some of the CIA’s best talent?

July 31, 2013 by 11 Comments

CIA headquartersBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Poor management practices and a culture that tolerates blunders by senior officials are generating cynicism and disillusionment among employees at the United States Central Intelligence Agency, according to an internal study. Completed in 2010 by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General, the study was released in heavily redacted form last week, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The Los Angeles Times, which filed the request in 2011, said the report identifies mismanagement and unaccountability among senior leadership as major factors contributing to the CIA’s “retention challenges”. It cites a 2009 Agency-wide anonymous survey, which found that around 12% of the CIA’s workforce was considering resigning. Over half of those said they wanted to leave because of “poor management and a lack of accountability for poor management” among senior-level staff. This feeling is stronger among younger recruits, “who have exhibited high resignation rates in current years”, according to the report. Operations officers at the National Clandestine Service —the CIA’s covert-action arm— are also more disturbed than other Agency employees by perceived mismanagement. The report also notes that the CIA has failed to introduce mechanisms for encouraging accountability, in response to growing concerns by lower-level staff. The Times said it spoke to “more than 20 former [CIA] officers”, who said the 2010 report echoed “longstanding concerns about the CIA’s culture”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #818 (USA edition)

December 19, 2012 by 3 Comments

Osama bin LadenBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►The real-life female CIA officer who helped track bin Laden. The Washington Post has a good article on the real-life career of a female CIA officer who helped the Agency track al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. It is disappointing, however that the article, authored by Greg Miller and Toby Warrick, is headlined “In Zero Dark Thirty she’s the hero; in real life, CIA agent’s career is more complicated”. The CIA employee in question is not an “agent”; she is an officer. In the CIA, agents are assets, people recruited and handled by CIA officers. Amazing that The Post, with its experienced journalists and editors would confuse such a basic operational distinction.
►►US spy agencies to detail cyber-attacks from abroad. The US intelligence community is nearing completion of its first detailed review of cyber-spying against American targets from abroad, including an attempt to calculate US financial losses from hacker attacks based in China. The National Intelligence Estimate, the first involving cyber-espionage, will also seek to determine how large a role the Chinese government plays in directing or coordinating digital attacks aimed at stealing US intellectual property, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified undertaking.
►►CIA begins LGBT recruiting. As part of the CIA’s efforts to diversify its workforce, the spy agency is reaching out to a group that once was unable to get security clearance: lesbians and gay men. CIA officials have held a networking event for the Miami gay community sponsored by the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and the CIA. “This is the first time we’ve done a networking event of this type with any of the gay and lesbian chamber of commerces in the United States,” says Michael Barber, a self-identified “straight ally” and the spy agency’s LGBT Community Outreach and Liaison program manager.

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News you may have missed #775

August 8, 2012 by Leave a comment

Ramstein Air Base, GermanyBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Israel arrests man for allegedly spying for Syria. Israeli prosecutors have charged Iyad Jamil Assad al-Johari, a Druze resident of the occupied Golan Heights, with spying for Syria. The Shin Bet internal security service said in a statement that Johari, who is from the border village of Majdal Shams, was charged with “having contact with a foreign agent” and “passing information to the enemy”. The Shin Bet said Johari was arrested last month “on suspicion of maintaining contact with Syrian intelligence and passed information on Israeli army deployment on the Golan Heights”. The man’s family has denied the accusations.
►►German NATO employee charged with spying. Markus Koehler, a spokesman for German federal prosecutors, said in a statement that the suspect –identified only as Manfred K. in accordance with German privacy rules– was arrested Monday on charges of obtaining state secrets with the intent to provide them to an unidentified third party. The civilian NATO employee, who works at the US air base at Ramstein, is alleged to have obtained the data and then transferred it to his private computer.
►►Aussie spy agency looking for locksmith. In a new notice on its careers webpage, ASIS, Australia’s foreign intelligence agency, is looking for a “corporate locksmith”. “This is a unique role for a highly motivated and dedicated locksmith to provide complex locksmith services and advice across our organisation”, the notice states. “The position involves interstate and overseas travel, often at short notice”. The job notice says the successful applicant would have to manage the purchasing of all locks, safes and other secure containers for the service.

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