Russia claims discovery of secret US-Georgia armaments channel

November 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

The PAC-3

The PAC-3

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Several Russian newspapers carried lead articles yesterday, describing the alleged discovery of a secret Washington-led project of supplying the Republic of Georgia with $100 million-worth of US weapons supplies. The articles cited “anonymous Russian intelligence sources” in claiming that the US is in the process of secretly providing Georgia with, among other things, a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) advanced surface-to-air guided missile air defense system. If true, the allegations could raise eyebrows in Congress, as the PAC-3 cannot legally be exported by the US government without explicit Congressional authorization. But Russian media report that, according to secret documents acquired by Russian military intelligence, the US government plans to circumvent Congressional scrutiny by delivering the weapons to Georgia through a private exporter, Barrington Alliance Inc., headquartered in Chicago, of which little is known. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0174

November 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • West feared German reunification in 1989, documents show. The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago caused major anxiety in not only Eastern, but also Western capitals, to the point of outright opposition to a possible German unification, according to documents published last Friday by the National Security Archive.
  • Convicted CIA agents also in Norway. At least two of the 22 (not 23, as the article mistakenly states) CIA agents convicted last week for the 2003 abduction from Italy of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, were also active in Norway, according to Norwegian daily Stavanger Aftenblad.
  • Shin Bet tried to recruit alleged Israeli terrorist. Jack Teitel, an American-born Jewish settler who was recently arrested for allegedly having murdered two Palestinians, was asked by Israel’s internal intelligence agency to inform on extremist Israeli groups after the attacks, the agency said Friday.

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News you may have missed #0173

November 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Russia, Georgia, in secret border reopening talks. Russia and Georgia, whose borders have been shut since the 2006 South Ossetia War, are in secret negotiations to reopen their only common border checkpoint, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
  • Why Shin Bet is taking over Israeli domestic investigations. Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s domestic intelligence service, is overtaking the role of the police forces in solving criminal cases. The reasons are primarily political.
  • Interview with Bruce Schneier. A Q&A session with the cryptography legend, author of Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear. Interesting quote: “[W]e now know that the NSA vacuums up all sorts of electronic communications, e-mail included. So maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to routinely encrypt our e-mail”.

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US prevented Israel from bombing arms ship, says paper

November 9, 2009 by 1 Comment

The Francop

The Francop

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israel wanted to bomb a German cargo ship, which allegedly carried tons of weapons from Syria and Iran to Lebanon, but the plan was “rejected” by US intelligence, according to a London-based Arabic-language newspaper. An article in last Friday’s Asharq Alawsat appears to confirm earlier speculation that the ship, which was seized by Israeli commandos in a predawn raid on Wednesday off the coast of Cyprus, was first brought to the Israelis’ attention by US intelligence agencies on October 18. The newspaper alleges that the raid by Israeli commandos took place only after the US rejected an Israeli suggestion to bomb the ship while it was sailing through the Red Sea. An air attack on the cargo ship, named Francop, would have undoubtedly caused a multinational diplomatic episode. The vessel is reportedly German, leased by Greek-Cypriot charter company UFS Shipping International, and was sailing under the flag of Antigua & Barbuda, with an Egyptian crew and a Polish captain. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0171

November 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Court date for US couple accused of spying for Cuba. Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, who were arrested by the FBI last summer on charges of spying for Cuba for over 30 years, have a court appearance scheduled for Thursday. Meanwhile, the judge overseeing their case is trying to decide how to make evidence available for their trial while protect US intelligence sources and methods.
  • CIA responds to declassification request…20 years later. The CIA has finally released a small number of documents relating to Manucher Ghorbanifar, a shady weapons trader who mediated between Washington and Tehran during the Iran-Contra scandal. The declassification comes two decades after the Agency was asked to release the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.
  • Kalmanovic was Shin Bet informant, says Ha’aretz. It is well known that Shabtai von Kalmanovic, who was gunned down in downtown Moscow on Monday, had worked for the Soviet KGB. He confessed as much and was jailed in Israel in the 1980s for spying. But Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Kalmanovic was also “a Shin Bet [Israel’s internal security service] informant”. In a new article, the paper says Kalmanovic “was a low-level informer for the Shin Bet” before his arrest for spying for the KGB.

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Israeli commandos seize ship allegedly carrying tons of weapons

November 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

Israeli commandos

Israeli commandos

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A ship apprehended off the coast of Cyprus by Israeli commandos in a predawn raid on Wednesday was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons, according to the Israeli Navy. Israeli military officials told a press conference in Tel Aviv that the ship was loaded with “40 containers filled with 300 tons of weapons each”, hidden under several rows of civilian goods. Israel insisted that the weapons, which include missiles and rockets, originated from Iran and Syria and were bound for Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamic political and paramilitary organization that controls large parts of Lebanon. But the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, called the Israeli commandos “pirates” and said the seized ship was heading from Syria to Iran, carrying only civilian goods. Israel has yet to release evidence of the ship’s contents, or even name. Read more of this post

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Convicted gun smuggler ‘worked for French intelligence’

November 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

Arcadi Gaydamak

Arcadi Gaydamak

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A shady gun smuggler convicted earlier this year in France for illegally selling weapons to Angola, was a French intelligence agent, according to a French newspaper. Speaking to Le Figaro, Charles Pasqua, France’s former interior minister, said that Arcady Gaydamak, who fled to Israel to escape imprisonment in France, was formerly an agent of DST, France’s domestic intelligence agency. Pasqua even said that Gaydamak, who holds Israeli, Russian and French citizenship, was secretly cited by former French President Jacques Chirac for his secret intelligence work. Speaking to Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Gaydamak confirmed Pasqua’s revelations, and said his work was “so secret” that “the citations spoke of his contribution to ‘agriculture’ instead”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0166

November 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Ex-KGB agent shot dead in downtown Moscow

November 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

Kalmanovic

Kalmanovic

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A former KGB agent, who was jailed in Israel in the 1980s for spying for the Soviet Union, was gunned down in downtown Moscow on Monday afternoon. Shabtai von Kalmanovic was shot repeatedly from close range in an apparent contract killing operation, as his chauffeur-driven Mercedes car was stopped at a red light a few blocks away from the Kremlin. Kalmanovic, 62, was a citizen of Lithuania, Russia and Israel. He was born in Soviet Lithuania in 1947, and permitted to emigrate to Israel with his Jewish parents in 1971. In 1987, Israeli authorities arrested Kalmanovic for allegedly giving Israeli military secrets to the KGB. Read more of this post

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Details emerge on Israeli bombing of Syrian nuke reactor

November 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

Ibrahim Othman

Ibrahim Othman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has published a most detailed examination of the background to Operation ORCHARD, the 2007 Israeli air attack on what is thought to have been a Syrian nuclear reactor. The attack was carried out by Israeli fighter jets in the night of September 6, 2007, at Al-Kibar, a site deep in the Syro-Arabian Desert, twenty miles from Deir al-Zour. Neither Syria nor Israel have commented on the attack, which is widely thought to have targeted Syria’s so-called Al-Kibar nuclear reactor. Der Spiegel’s article is based on interviews with nuclear and security experts, as well as “with individuals involved in the operation, [and] have only now agreed to [speak], under conditions of anonymity”, according to the authors. The article claims that the initial tip about Al-Kibar was given to the Israelis in 2004 by the US National Security Agency, which “detected a suspiciously high number of telephone calls between Syria and North Korea”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0164

November 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Jailed US scientist actually gave secret information to Israel

November 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

Stewart David Nozette

S.D. Nozette

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On October 22, shortly after the arrest of US nuclear scientist Stuart David Nozette by an FBI counterintelligence agent, I speculated that Nozette “was already working for Israeli intelligence” when he was arrested by the FBI. My assumption appears to have been correct. On Thursday, the case prosecutor informed a US district court that Nozette told the undercover FBI agent, who was posing as an Israeli spy, that “he had passed information to Israel in the past”. As I have explained elsewhere, Nozette was employed for ten years as a technical consultant by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), an Israeli government-owned company that some believe is routinely involved in espionage operations on behalf of Israel. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0158

October 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Former Los Alamos scientist is no spy, say physicists. US scientists familiar with the work of P. Leonardo Mascheroni, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear physicist whose house was recently searched by the FBI, insist he is not a spy. Mascheroni says he was told by the FBI that he is suspected of possible involvement in “nuclear espionage”.
  • Analysis: The West’s intelligence deficit on Iran. The fact is that neither a single intelligence agency nor the collective wisdom of the Brits, Israelis, French and Americans, has given Western countries a full picture of what is going on either in Iran’s nuclear program or in the minds of the leadership in Tehran.
  • Australia hires more spies. The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) has said in its annual security review that “hostile intelligence agencies” are increasingly using the Internet to gather intelligence from Australian government computer networks. Interestingly, ASIO also noted that the number of its staff members increased from 1492 in 2008 to 1690 today.

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News you may have missed #0156

October 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • NGOs worry African spy services. A memo authored by African spy service representatives at the third annual conference of the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA), has acknowledged what most intelligence services in developing countries already know: that many “volunteers” of Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are in fact intelligence operatives using their NGO status as a cover.
  • Nozette admitted guilt in fraud charges last January. New information shows that Stewart D. Nozette, who was arrested and charged last week under the US Espionage Act, pleaded guilty in January to overbilling NASA and the Pentagon more than $265,000 for consulting services.

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Israel mum on mysterious devices found in Lebanon

October 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

One of the devices

One of the devices

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israel has refused to either confirm or deny it planted a number of communications interception devices that were uncovered last week by security forces in southern Lebanon. Responding to a “request for clarifications” issued by the United Nations, the Israeli government said simply that “collecting intelligence in southern Lebanon will continue as long as the government in Beirut is not in full control of its territory”, an obvious reference to Hezbollah, the Shia Islamic political and paramilitary organization that controls large parts of Lebanon. Three the devices were found last week, attached to a telecommunications cable on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Houla. Interestingly, two of the devices self-destructed by exploding as Lebanese security personnel were approaching. Read more of this post

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