Joseph Fitsanakis | intelNews.org

Analysis: Who is giving Obama advice on national security?

December 16, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment

On Monday, US President-Elect Barack Obama chaired the first official meeting of the national security team he assembled earlier this month. But according to an article published today in The International Herald Tribune, an extended list of national security advisers to the President-Elect includes several conservatives, such as Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz and even Richard Armitage (!), whom he has contacted seeking counsel. Why does Barack Obama continue to court such Reaganite and neoconservative figures? Is he simply contacting them as a standard procedural duty, wishing perhaps to ensure some kind of managerial continuum between the current and incoming administrations? But if this is the case, then why do his senior advisers insist on releasing these names to the press in connection with the very first official meeting of Obama’s national security team? Read Article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, Brent Scowcroft, General James Jones, George Shultz, Joseph Fitsanakis, national security, Richard Armitage, United States

Comment: Negroponte Carries US Message to India, Pakistan

December 12, 2008 by intelNews 1 Comment

In early December, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited India and Pakistan to spearhead Washington’s handling of the two countries’ response to the Mumbai attacks. Now the State Department has appointed Deputy Secretary John Negroponte to oversee the situation. The US government-affiliated Voice of America network reports that Negroponte’s main mission during his trip to India and Pakistan is “to advise […] political leaders on improving the[ir] intelligence agencies”. Now, Negroponte does many things, but “advising” is not one of them. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2008 Mumbai attacks, Barack Obama, Battalion 3-16, DNI, Honduras, India, John Negroponte, Joseph Fitsanakis, News, Pakistan, War on Terrorism

Comment: Was Poland’s Lech Walesa an Intelligence Operative?

December 11, 2008 by intelNews 1 Comment

The Warsaw-based Polish Institute of National Remembrance (INP) is a government-affiliated organization, whose main mission is to investigate, expose and indict participants in criminal actions during the Nazi occupation of Poland, as well as during the country’s communist period. It also aims to expose clandestine agents and collaborators of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), Poland’s Security Service during the communist era. Earlier this year the INP published a book by historians Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, titled Secret services and Lech Walesa: A Contribution to the Biography (SB a Lech Wałęsa: Przyczynek do Biografii). Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, Cold War, Eastern Europe, Edward Craczyk, Institute for National Remembrance, Joseph Fitsanakis, Lech Walesa, News, Piotr Gontarczyk, Poland, Polish Democratic Opposition, Robert Gates, SB (Poland), Solidarity, Sławomir Cenckiewicz

Analysis: Is Latvia Turning into a Security State?

December 9, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment

Seventeen years after gaining its formal independence from the USSR, Latvia has been admitted to the Council of Europe, NATO and the European Union. It has even joined Washington’s visa waiver program, which gives all Latvians the right to travel to the US without a visa. George W. Bush says he “love[s] the fact that [Latvia is] a free nation and willing to speak out so clearly for freedom”. And yet last month a law-abiding Latvian economist and a pop singer were summarily arrested by the Latvian Security Service, an agency normally responsible for counterespionage and antiterrorism operations. Their crime? Daring to publicly express doubts about the Latvian government’s handling of the economy. Joseph Fitsanakis explains some strange goings on in the tiny Baltic state. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Eastern Europe, Joseph Fitsanakis, Latvia, Latvian Security Service, Russia, United States, US Department of State, USSR

Comment: Declassified documents shed light on closing Cold War stages

December 8, 2008 by intelNews 2 Comments

The National Security Archive has posted a brief analysis of declassified documents relating to the last official meeting between Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan. The meeting, which took place at Governor’s Island, New York, in December 1988, was also attended by then US President-Elect George Bush, Sr. The released documents consist of three separate batches, namely previously secret high-level Soviet memoranda, CIA reports and estimates, as well as detailed transcripts of the meeting. According to the report’s editors, Soviet memoranda reveal that at the time of the meeting “Gorbachev was prepared for rapid arms control progress leading towards nuclear abolition”. The extent of the Soviet leader’s commitment stunned even the CIA, whose estimates had not anticipated such massive unilateral offer to disarm. The Archive’s press release blames the then President-Elect George Bush, Sr., for failing “to meet Gorbachev even half-way”, thus essentially preventing “dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons, fissile materials, and conventional armaments, to the detriment of international security today”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, Cold War, George Bush Sr., history, Joseph Fitsanakis, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, United States, USSR

Comment: A message to Obama from Israel

December 4, 2008 by intelNews 2 Comments

The usual periodic report is making the rounds today in the world’s news media, suggesting that Israel is working on plans to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. The reports, which are clearly based on controlled leaks by the Israeli Ministry of Defense to friendly media outlets, such as The Jerusalem Post, claim that Israel is prepared to “launch a strike [against Iran] without backing from the US” and is thus “preparing options that do not include coordination” with its American ally. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Barack Obama, Iran, Israel, Joseph Fitsanakis, nuclear proliferation

Analysis: Political policing in the war on terrorism

December 1, 2008 by intelNews 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 domestic intelligence, informants, Joseph Fitsanakis, political policing, Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee, surveillance, United States, War on Terrorism

Analysis: German intelligence in Kosovo

November 29, 2008 by intelNews Leave a comment

The epicenter of the latest round of intelligence positioning in the Balkans is the tiny Albanian-dominated region of Kosovo, which declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008. In the early hours of November 14, Kosovo Police arrested three individuals suspected of detonating an explosive device at the International Civilian Office, an urban landmark in capital Pristina that houses the office of the European Union’s (EU) special envoy to Kosovo. The three turned out to be German Federal Intelligence Service agents, employees of Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. What is more, all of them appeared to be working in deep cover (“in private capacity”, as the Kosovo Police spokesperson put it), having no affiliation with the German Embassy in Pristina, no diplomatic passports and no diplomatic immunity. Would the BND really instruct its agents to place a bomb at the EU mission in Pristina? And what is the BND doing in Kosovo anyway? Joseph Fitsanakis explains. [JF]

REFERENCES CITED IN THIS REPORT:

Fitsanakis, J. (2008) “German Intelligence Active in Kosovo”, intelNews, November 29

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