News you may have missed #352

May 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

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CIA ‘used fake British passports’ in kidnap operation

May 17, 2010 by 1 Comment

UK passport

British passport

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities are looking into allegations that a team of CIA agents made use of forged British passports during an abduction operation in 2003. The allegations surfaced last week in Spain, where a team of prosecutors is currently investigating the activities of 13 CIA agents (11 men and two women) who appear to have used the Spanish tourist resort of Majorca as a base for conducting various operations around Europe. Following the example of Italy, which last year convicted several CIA operatives for illegally abducting a Muslim cleric in Milan, Spanish authorities are now considering issuing arrest warrants for the 13 CIA agents. They are all believed to have been involved in the abduction and rendition of German citizen Khaled El-Masri. El-Masri was abducted in Skopje, Macedonia, in 2003, and later transferred on a secret CIA flight to a Syrian prison, where he says he was brutally tortured. He was later released without explanation, once US authorities realized they had the wrong man. Read more of this post

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Israel arrests prominent Arabs on Hezbollah spying charges

May 12, 2010 by Leave a comment

Omar Sayid

Omar Sayid

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli authorities have arrested two prominent Arab-Israeli political activists, accusing them of spying on behalf of Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah. The arrestees are Omar Sayid (or Sayeed), who campaigns on behalf of Israeli-Arab political party Balad, and Amir Makhoul, who heads Ittijah. This Haifa-based group, known as the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, aims to combat alleged cases of discrimination against Arab-Israelis. Sayid was arrested by members of the Israeli police and intelligence agency Shin Bet on April 24, and Makhoul was arrested on May 6. But the Israeli media were not allowed to report on the arrests until late last Sunday, due to Israeli censorship laws enforced in “national security investigations”. Nevertheless, news of the arrests began circulating almost immediately on Arab electronic media outside of Israel, and the Israeli government was eventually forced to lift the gag order, upon learning that hundreds of Haifa residents were preparing a demonstration on Monday in support of the two arrestees. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #348

May 12, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • US knew Guatemalan Army was behind notorious 1982 massacre. Declassified documents released on May 7 show that US officials knew the Guatemalan Army was responsible for the 1982 Dos Erres massacre, one of Guatemala’s most shocking human rights crimes.
  • New presiding judge in US FISA court. Three years after he was first appointed to serve on the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), John D. Bates has taken over as the presiding judge. Last week, Judge Martin Feldman was appointed to serve on the secretive court, which reviews (and invariably approves) government applications for counterintelligence surveillance and physical search.
  • UAE security sector benefits from al-Mabhouh assassination. Business for security companies in the United Arab Emirates has been brisk, with some companies reporting a 40% increase in business, as hotels spend millions bolstering their security systems. Some attribute this to last January’s killing in Dubai of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, by a Mossad hit squad.

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News you may have missed #347

May 11, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • CIA drones now target non-listed targets in Pakistan. It used to be the case that the CIA unmanned drone attacks in Pakistan were directed at confirmed Taliban senior operatives. But an American official has said that the CIA does “not always have their names”. Instead, the Agency targets them based on their “actions over time” that make it “obvious that they are a threat”.
  • Democrat Senator presses Obama for more NSA powers. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is pressing the Obama Administration to give the National Security Agency more power to oversee privately owned portions of the Internet. Speaking on Thursday, Mikulski complained that “we don’t know who the hell is in charge” over the security of private networks.
  • Lebanese officer charged as Israel spy may get death. A Lebanese prosecutor has requested the death penalty for Gazwan Shahin, an army colonel charged with having provided Israel’s spy agency with pictures, information and coordinates of Lebanese civil and military posts during and after the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

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Mossad agent in Dubai assassination also wanted in New Zealand

May 7, 2010 by 2 Comments

Zev William Barkan

Barkan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An Israeli Mossad officer wanted by New Zealand authorities is among five suspects recently identified and named by Dubai police in connection with the assassination of a Hamas official. The officer, Zev William Barkan, has been identified as a major suspect in last January’s assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in a luxury Dubai hotel. In 2004, Barkan was one of three Mossad agents who engaged in an aborted attempt to acquire a New Zealand passport, using the birth certificate of Auckland resident Tony Resnick. New Zealand authorities managed to arrest Barkan’s two associates, Uriel Zoshe Kelman and Eli Cara, both from Israel; but Barkan and Resnick managed to escape arrest by flying to Sydney, Australia, before fleeing to Israel. The case caused a major –albeit temporary– rift in New Zealand-Israel relations. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #345

May 7, 2010 by Leave a comment

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UK barring replacement of London’s Mossad resident

May 5, 2010 by 1 Comment

Mossad seal

Mossad seal

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The British government is officially preventing the replacement of Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s London representative, after it expelled his predecessor six weeks ago. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced the expulsion in March, in response to the use of at least 12 forged British passports by a Mossad hit squad, whose members traveled to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last January, to assassinate Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. According to Israeli media, the British Foreignand Commonwealth Office has requested written assurances from Israel that it will refrain from using British travel documents in future intelligence operations. But the Israeli government is so far refusing to comply with Britain’s request, claiming that doing so would amount to “an admission of culpability” in the assassination of al-Mabhouh. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #340

May 2, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • West Bank urged to drop Israeli cell phone companies. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is urging Palestinians to stop using the Israeli cellular companies Pelephone, Orange, Cellcom and Mirs. The official reasons are economic (Israeli companies don’t pay taxes to the PA), but the real reasons are probably related to communications security.
  • US police wiretaps up 26 percent in one year. The number of wiretaps authorized by US state and federal judges in criminal investigations jumped 26 percent from 2008 to 2009, according to a report released Friday by the Administrative Office of the US Courts.
  • Taliban group executes high-profile ex-ISI spy. Khalid Khawaja, one of two Pakistani former Inter-Services Intelligence directorate officers captured by a Taliban splinter group, named Asian Tigers, has been found dead. The other ex-ISI official, Sultan Amir Tarar, a.k.a. Colonel Imam, who was Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar’s former handler, remains in captivity.

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News you may have missed #337

April 26, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Another Iranian nuclear researcher reportedly defects. An academic linked with Iran’s nuclear program has defected to Israel, according to Ayoub Kara, Israel’s deputy minister for development in the Negev and Galilee. Kara said it “is too soon to provide further details”, adding that the defector is “now in a friendly country”.
  • Dutch spies to become more active abroad. The Dutch secret service, the AIVD, has announced a shift in strategy, deployed increasingly more officers abroad: “in Yemen, Somalia, and the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
  • Why did the CIA destroy waterboarding evidence? It has been established that Porter J. Goss, the former director of the CIA, in 2005 approved the destruction of dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two terrorism detainees. But why did he do it? Former CIA officer Robert Baer examines the question.

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Comment: Is Palestinian Fatah Spying for Israel?

April 18, 2010 by 8 Comments

Mohammed Dahlan

Dahlan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Gaza-based Palestinian movement Hamas has again accused a senior official of rival Palestinian group Fatah of spying for Israel. Speaking last week from Gaza Damascus, Syria, Hamas official Mohammed Nazal said that Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed Dahlan, who has been tipped for the post of Vice President in Fatah-controlled Palestinian National Authority, is actively gathering information on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Nazal said Hamas received a tip-off about Dahlan from a former security officer in the Palestinian National Authority, who appears to have defected to Hamas. The unnamed informant reportedly met with Hamas defense officials on Friday, and told them that Dahlan had asked him to “collect detailed information” about the March 26 execution of two Palestinians, who were accused by Hamas of working for Israeli intelligence. He also claimed that Dahlan showed him a lengthy list of known Hamas operatives and asked him to determine the precise location of their residences in the Gaza strip. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #330

April 15, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Pakistan released captured Taliban behind CIA’s back. IntelNews has not joined the chorus of commentators who have been claiming that the relationship between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate and the CIA has warmed up. It now appears that even as the ISI was collaborating with the CIA, it quietly freed at least two captured senior Afghan Taliban figures.
  • Kiwi activists accuse police of spying. New Zealand’s Peace Action Wellington has submitted an Official Information Act (OIA) request relating to domestic police surveillance, after accusing the police of “heavily spying on and running operations on protest groups”. It is not the first time that similar accusations have been directed against the country’s police force.
  • CIA suspected existence of Israeli nukes in 1974. Israel will neither confirm nor deny the rumored existence of its nuclear arsenal. But the CIA, which has kept an eye on Israel’s nuclear weapons project since at least the early 1960s, was convinced of its existence by 1974, according to a declassified report.

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Australia to expel Israeli diplomat over Mabhouh assassination

April 14, 2010 by Leave a comment

Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Australia has announced that it plans to expel an Israeli diplomat from the country, in connection with forged Australian passports that were used by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. At least four Australian passports were among several Western passports employed by Mossad agents in targeting Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in a luxury Dubai hotel last January. But the Australian government has said it will delay the planned diplomatic expulsion until it has “further advice” about the case from the country’s intelligence authorities. An investigation by the Australian Federal Police, which was completed last week, appears to have failed to yield enough answers. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Inside the US-Israeli intelligence relationship

April 13, 2010 by Leave a comment

US embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel

US embassy, Israel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, authors of Friends in Deed: Inside the US-Israel Alliance, have produced a lengthy, well-researched and up-to-date essay on US-Israeli intelligence relations. The essay, which appears in the latest issue of Tablet, carefully examines the highly complex subject of the CIA’s associations with the Mossad and Shin Bet. The fact is that, despite their unquestionable alliance Israel and the US have for years been among each other’s primary intelligence targets. Melman and Raviv correctly remind us that, by as early as 1954, US officials at the US embassy in Tel Aviv had already discovered several microphones in the office of the ambassador. Two years later, US counter-surveillance experts uncovered electronic bugs at the Tel Aviv residence of a US military attaché. Since then, the use of bribes and even women by the Shin Bet to lure US embassy guards has been frequent –and mostly unsuccessful. Read more of this post

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Malaysia to investigate alleged Israeli spy infiltration

April 12, 2010 by 2 Comments

Anwar Ibrahim

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Malaysian government has ordered an investigation into claims by a prominent opposition leader that Israeli spies, posing as communications technicians, infiltrated the headquarters of the country’s national police. Anwar Ibrahim, leader of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party), told the Malaysian parliament on April 4 that he was in possession of police documents confirming the infiltration. According to Anwar’s allegations, two former officers of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate were able to enter the head office of Malaysia’s national police, acting as representatives of a private communications technology contractor. While there, Anwar said, they were able to access the police’s communications network. Read more of this post

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