Egypt busts alleged Israeli spy ring

March 17, 2011 by Leave a comment

Egypt

Egypt

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Egypt announced Wednesday that they uncovered an espionage network, which they accuse of spying on the country on behalf of Israel. According to Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm, which cited “informed security sources”, the alleged ring consisted of one Egyptian and several Israeli citizens, at least two of whom have been arrested. Other sources, however, state that the entire spy ring has been captured by Egyptian counterintelligence. The paper says that one of the detained Israelis entered Egypt in late January, carrying Jordanian travel documents and posing as a business executive interested in investing in the country. Al-Ahram has published a follow-up report suggesting that the alleged spy ring specialized on collecting information relating to the Egyptian military. The report also claims that the carrier of the Jordanian passport admitted before Egypt’s state prosecutor that he spied for the Mossad, Israel’s primary external intelligence agency. Al-Masry states that the alleged spy ring began its operations in Egypt following the January 25 revolution, with the aim of passing on information to Tel Aviv about the handover of power from the clique of former President Hosni Mubarak to Egypt’s military leadership, which has controlled the government since Mubarak’s ouster. Read more of this post

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UN official confirms Israel abducted Palestinian engineer from Ukraine

March 14, 2011 by 3 Comments

Dirar Abu Sissi

Dirar Abu Sissi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A UN official has confirmed that a Palestinian engineer, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Ukraine on February 19, is currently in Israeli custody. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior, Dirar Abu Sissi, 42, who was born in Jordan, but has lived in the Gaza strip for over a decade, had gone to Ukraine to apply for citizenship in the Eastern European country. His Ukrainian wife, Veronika, said Sissi disappeared in the early morning hours of February 19, shortly after boarding a train from Kharkiv to capital Kiev, in order to reunite with this brother, a Dutch national, whom he had not seen since 1997. His disappearance has puzzled Ukrainian police investigators. But on Thursday, Maksim Butkevych, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Ukraine, told the Associated Press that Sissi was kidnapped by Israeli operatives and is currently in prison in Israel. Butkevych did not openly name the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, but said that the Palestinian engineer was abducted by “Israeli security forces”, possibly with the assistance of Ukrainian intelligence officers. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #482

March 11, 2011 by 2 Comments

  • Kissinger wants US spy for Israel freed. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is urging President Barack Obama to release Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of spying on the US for Israel 24 years ago. He has sent Obama a letter, in which he writes “I believe justice would be served by commuting” Pollard’s life sentence.
  • MI5 short of surveillance officers says minister. A senior British official has revealed MI5 does not have enough spies to allow it to increase its counterintelligence surveillance, as per government plans. Security Minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones said the Security Service needed to recruit and train more surveillance officers.
  • US spy agencies lack fluent bilingual speakers. Many Americans don’t learn a second or a third language from birth, let alone a language that the CIA or US Foreign Service might want. The situation has forced US government agencies to learn how to cultivate the most talented second-language speakers from among college students with little to no other-language expertise.

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News you may have missed #481

March 9, 2011 by 3 Comments

  • Who brought down the CIA website last Thursday? US Federal officials as of Monday afternoon were still investigating the cause of a Thursday cyber incident that knocked offline the public website of the CIA and its unclassified e-mail system. The interference was isolated to CIA networks. Some cyber experts say the disruption may have been caused by a denial of service attack perpetrated by pranksters to show off their skills, rather than an act committed by a foreign government.
  • Israeli cabinet minister to visit jailed spy in US. Israel’s Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon is to make a visit next week to see Jonathan Pollard, an American serving a life term in a US jail for spying on the US for Israel. Israeli media claim that Kahlon will give Pollard a “verbal message” from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • Egypt’s spies dragged from shadows. New evidence of spying and torture by Egypt’s General Intelligence Services (GIS) has piled pressure on the country’s military rulers to abolish the agency. After breaking into the GIS Cairo headquarters and ransacking archives, activists posted videos showing a torture chamber with a bloodstained floor and equipped with chains.

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News you may have missed #478

February 22, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Israel and Chile collaborated to spy on Iran and Venezuela. Documents released by WikiLeaks show Israel and Chile cooperated to spy on Iran as it developed bilateral links with Venezuela. A diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Santiago to the State Department in Washington, dated July 21, 2008, said Chile and Israel both expressed concern about growing ties as well as a potential Iranian presence on the border with Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
  • Korean spies broke into Indonesian delegation’s hotel room. Members of South Korea’s NIS spy agency broke into a hotel room of a visiting high-level Indonesian delegation to try to steal sensitive information on a possible arms deal, according to Seoul-based Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The report said the NIS officers left “after being disturbed by a delegate”.
  • High-ranking Libyan pilots defect to Malta. Two air force jets landed in Malta on Monday and their pilots, who said they are “senior colonels” in the Libyan air force, asked for political asylum. The pilots claim to have defected after refusing to follow orders to attack civilians protesting in Benghazi in Libya. Meanwhile, a group of Libyan army officers have issued a statement urging fellow soldiers to “join the people” and help remove Muammar Gaddafi by marching to Tripoli.

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Embassy cables show US spied on UK Foreign Office

February 7, 2011 by 1 Comment

Ivan Lewis

Ivan Lewis

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The latest release of US embassy cables from whistleblower website WikiLeaks shows that the US Department of State ordered its diplomats to actively report on the personal lives of British Foreign Office officials. On several instances, American diplomats in London appear to have reported on the personal life of Ivan Lewis, a Labour Party politician who served as Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs during the closing days of Gordon Brown’s government. It seems that the reports on Lewis were compiled at the request of the State Department in Washington, which issued calls for specific background information on Lewis’ personal life. In response to the request, a memorandum was sent from the US embassy in London on August 12, 2009, suggesting that Lewis was “possibly prone to depression” and that he was described by one of his colleagues as “a bully”. The cable also indicated that Lewis had apologized “in 2007 to a female in his office who accused him of sexual harassment”, and suggested that the incident had been purposely leaked to the British media by Downing Street a few months later, after Lewis publicly joined the internal Labour Party revolt against Brown. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #474

February 3, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Israel jails Arab activist for spying. A court in Haifa has sentenced prominent Israeli Arab activist Ameer Makhoul to nine years in prison and another year suspended sentence for charges of spying and contacting a foreign agent from Lebanon-based Hezbollah.
  • Assange used disguise to evade surveillance new book reveals. WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange disguised himself as an old woman in a wig for fear he was being followed by US intelligence, according to a book published this week by British quality broadsheet The Guardian. According to another book, to be published by journalists at German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Assange expressed private fears that the content of the US embassy cables was too explosive for his organization to withstand.
  • US Congressman wants to know who wants to know. Republican Representative Darrell Issa wants to know the names of hundreds of thousands of ordinary American citizens who have requested copies of federal government documents in recent years. Issa, the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, saying he simply wants to “make sure agencies respond in a timely fashion to Freedom of Information Act requests”. Hmmm…

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News you may have missed #473

February 2, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Cyprus recognizes Palestine as independent nation. The Israeli assessment is that other European Union countries, including Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Malta, Luxembourg, Austria and perhaps others are considering a similar move.
  • Top NZ intel scientist had falsified CV. British-born Stephen Wilce was hired as chief of New Zealand’s Defence Technology Agency in 2005, having got top level security clearance. Last year, he had to resign after it emerged that he had made a series of false claims about his past. But the question is how he passed security checks when he applied for the post in 2005.
  • Report uncovers widespread FBI intelligence violations. A new report by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation has found widespread violations in FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 to 2008. The EFF report suggests that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of Americans to a greater extent than was previously assumed.

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Analysis: Spy Agencies Failed to Predict Egypt Uprising

February 1, 2011 by 2 Comments

Egypt uprising

Egypt uprising

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
It is becoming increasingly clear that the ongoing popular uprising in Egypt represents the most important geopolitical development in the Middle East since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. In light of this, it is remarkable how unprepared foreign intelligence agencies have proven in forecasting the crisis. Even the Israelis were caught completely unaware: on January 25, the day when massive protests first erupted across Egypt, Major General Aviv Kochavi, newly appointed head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, told a Knesset committee that “there are no doubts about the stability of the regime in Egypt” and that “the Muslim Brotherhood is not organized enough to take over”. Instead, Kochavi focused on political volatility in Lebanon; ironically, the latter now seems like an oasis of tranquility compared to the explosive state of Egyptian politics. If the Israelis, whose very concept of national security is inextricably linked with developments in Cairo, were so unsuspecting of the popular wave of anger against the thirty-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak, one can only imagine Washington’s surprise at the protests. Click here to read my article in Intelligent-Intelligence.com, a specialist publication edited by Kyle Cunliffe. Continue reading →

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News you may have missed #472

January 27, 2011 by 1 Comment

  • French spies become embroiled in Renault’s espionage saga (corrected). The Renault spying saga has taken a new turn with the carmaker accusing France’s domestic intelligence agency DGSE DCRI of sabotaging its reputation. Jean Reinhart, Renault’s lawyer, said that the DGSE DCRI had leaked details of the inquiry into accusations of industrial espionage.
  • Palestinian Authority documents leaked by ex-MI6 agent. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday in an interview that a US citizen, who worked in the US State Department, and a British former MI6 official, are responsible for leaking the so-called ‘Palestine papers‘.
  • NY Times editor calls Assange ‘spy-like’. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange resembles a character from a detective novel and is “elusive, manipulative and volatile”, the executive editor of The New York Times says in an upcoming book. Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy, a digital book featuring an introduction by Times executive editor Bill Keller and contributions from other Times reporters, goes on sale Monday.

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US paying ‘price in blood’ for Israel-Palestine conflict, say ex-CIA officers

January 21, 2011 by 7 Comments

Bruce Riedel

Bruce Riedel

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two former CIA officers have warned that America will continue “paying an increasing price in blood” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and urged the White House to directly meddle in domestic Israeli politics in order to help end the dispute. Speaking on Thursday at a conference on achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, Bruce Riedel and Frank Anderson, whose combined CIA careers span 55 years, agreed that a new all-out war between Israel and the Palestinians would be inevitable unless the United States aggressively “puts down its own map of a two-state solution”. Anderson, who is currently President at the Middle East Policy Council, opined that America is “paying an increasing price in blood for [the Israelis’ and the Palestinians’] failure and refusal to reach an agreement”. Riedel, who is Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued that “American lives are being lost today” due to the conflict’s impact on American national security. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #469

January 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Vulture not a Zionist spy after all, declare Saudis. After more than a week of febrile rumor and speculation, the King of Saudi Arabia has declared that a vulture found on the country’s territory, carrying a GPS tracker labeled “Tel Aviv University”, is not part of an Israeli reconnaissance plot.
  • Germany jails two Libyans for spying. Two Libyans have been sentenced in a Berlin court for spying on members of the Libyan opposition living in Europe. ‘Adel Ab.’, an officer for the Libyan intelligence service, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison while his accomplice, ‘Adel Al.’ was sentenced to one year and 10 months.
  • Russian aide accused of spying to remain in UK until October. Britain’s MI5 accuses Katia Zatuliveter, former assistant to Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, of spying for Russia. But she will remain in the UK until next October, when she will be able to challenge her pending deportation at an immigration hearing.

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News you may have missed #467

January 12, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Ex-Mossad chief says Iran nuke program behind schedule. Meir Dagan, Israel’s recently retired spy chief, thinks Iran will not be able to build a nuclear bomb before 2015, further pushing back Israeli intelligence estimates on the subject. Time for critics of the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate to reconsider their views?
  • NSA breaks ground on Utah cybersecurity center. Ground was broken last Thursday on the Utah Data Center, a $1.2 billion, 1 million-square-foot cybersecurity center being built for the US National Security Agency at Camp Williams, near Salt Lake City. Secrecy is expected to shroud the center, with the groundbreaking being one of the public’s last chances to take an open look at the project.
  • Colombian judge orders arrest of ex-spy chief. Colombia’s Prosecutor General has ordered the arrest of Jorge Noguera, a former director of the country’s DAS intelligence agency, for his alleged involvement in the spying on government opponents. This is not the first time Noguera, who was director of the DAS between 2002 and 2006, has been sent to jail. He was imprisoned and released twice for his alleged involvement in allowing members of paramilitary organization United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia to infiltrate the intelligence agency.

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New clues in extensive recount of al-Mabhouh assassination

January 11, 2011 by Leave a comment

Ronen Bergman

Ronen Bergman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The current issue of US-based magazine GQ contains what must be the most extensive account in English of the 2010 assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Written by Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman (author of The Secret War with Iran), the piece contains several new clues about the targeted killing of al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official, in a luxury hotel in Dubai last January. One new element that stands out in Bergman’s account is that, two months prior to his assassination, al-Mabhouh survived a poisoning attempt by the same team of Israeli operatives, again in Dubai. The Hamas official fell ill, but recovered fully. Bergman also claims that the operation to target al-Mabhouh, which must have lasted several months or even years, involved the use of an elaborate Trojan horse virus that was implanted on al-Mabhouh’s computer, and allowed Mossad operatives to monitor his email correspondence. It was through this method that the Israelis became aware of al-Mabhouh’s itinerary during his fatal trip to Dubai. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #466

January 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • France blasts economic warfare by industrial spies. The French government says it is the victim of an economic war, after Renault, France’s partially state-owned carmaker, suspended three top executives over leaks of secret electric-car technology. The French intelligence services are probing a possible Chinese connection. It should be noted that, according to US estimates, France leads industrial spying in Europe.
  • Canada a target for foreign interference, says spy chief. A keenly anticipated report by Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Richard Fadden paints a picture of a broad threat of foreign interference from countries out to influence Canada’s policy and politicians, target dissidents and pilfer technology. It is the most detailed articulation of the spy service’s concerns about overtures from foreign agents, including two suspected cases involving provincial cabinet ministers.
  • Jordanian Hamas spy awarded PhD in jail. Jordanian Azzam Jaber, jailed in Jordan for spying for the Palestinian group Hamas on potential targets including the Israeli embassy, has obtained his doctorate from the University of Yarmuk.

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