Lithuania | intelNews.org

News you may have missed #0233

December 26, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Lithuanian report uncovers two CIA secret prisons. There was not just one, but two CIA secret prisons in Lithuania between 2004 and 2005, according to a Lithuanian parliamentary report that was concluded this week. The Lithuanian government continues to deny involvement.
Break the CIA in two? A veteran CIA analyst suggests breaking the CIA in two parts, because “covert action and analysis do not belong together in the same agency –never have, never will”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, Eastern Europe, extraordinary rendition, intelligence reform, Lithuania, News, news you may have missed, Ray McGovern, secret prisons, United States

Lithuania’s spy chief resigns over secret CIA prison probe

December 17, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Malakauskas

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The director of Lithuania’s intelligence service unexpectedly resigned on Monday, reportedly in connection with a parliamentary investigation into a reputed CIA secret prison site in the country. IntelNews regulars will remember that last November ABC News cited CIA officials in alleging that the Lithuanian government provided the CIA with an unmarked building located in Lithuanian capital Vilnius, with the understanding that it would be used as a so-called black site for secretly detaining high-value al-Qaeda suspects. Lithuanian government officials denied the allegation, but promised to set up a high-level probe into the matter. But the members of the parliamentary committee that was established to examine the ABC News revelations soon found themselves shunned by Lithuanian intelligence officials. According to the committee head, Arvydas Anusauskas, the parliamentarians were offered ambiguous answers or no answers at all by Lithuanian secret service agencies. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, Arvydas Anusauskas, CIA, Eastern Europe, extraordinary rendition, intelligence oversight, Lithuania, News, Paul Gimigliano, Povilas Malakauskas, resignations, secret prisons, State Security Department (Lithuania), United States, Vilnius (Lithuania), War on Terrorism

Ex-KGB agent shot dead in downtown Moscow

November 4, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

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

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, Cold War, double agents, espionage, informants, Israel, KGB, Lithuania, News, Russia, Shabtai von Kalmanovic, Shin Bet, USSR

News you may have missed #0151

October 24, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Musicians protest use of their songs in Guantánamo torture. A group of musicians, including Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, REM, Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Rise Against, Roseanne Cash, Billy Bragg, the Roots, and many more, have joined the National Campaign to Close Guantánamo.
More information on CIA’s interest in monitoring Internet sites. Noah Shachtman, contributing editor at Wired magazine and editor of Danger Room, speaks on the CIA’s funding of a private software company specializing in monitoring online social media, such as YouTube, Twitter and Flickr.
Lithuania to investigate CIA secret prison allegations. Dalia Grybauskaite, president of Lithuania, has called for an official investigation into recent allegations that the CIA housed a secret prison for al-Qaeda suspects in Lithuania for more than a year, beginning in 2004.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, Billy Bragg, black operations, CIA, Cuba, Dalia Grybauskaite, Fickr, Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, Jackson Browne, Lithuania, music, National Campaign to Close Guantánamo, News, news you may have missed, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, REM, Rise Against, Roseanne Cash, social networking, the Roots, Tom Morello, torture, Trent Reznor, Twitter, United States, War on Terrorism, YouTube

Dozens of MI5 agents to testify in Real IRA trial

October 23, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

RIRA gunmen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Over 30 agents of MI5, Britain’s primary domestic intelligence agency, will be anonymously giving evidence at a scheduled trial of three men arrested in connection with a Real IRA international gun smuggling operation. The men, Paul Anthony John McCaugherty, Dermot Declan Gregory, and Desmond Paul Kearns, all from County Armagh in Northern Ireland, were arrested after a yearlong infiltration operation by MI5, involving the use of informants and surveillance equipment. The latter resulted in nearly 90 hours of recorded conversations, which the court said will take “months to transcribe”. Additionally, 35 MI5 agents have so far applied to give evidence in court, their identity concealed behind screens. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with County Armagh, Dermot Declan Gregory, Desmond Paul Kearns, informants, lawsuits, Liam Campbell, Lithuania, MI5, Michael Campbell, Netherlands, News, Northern Ireland, Paul Anthony John McCaugherty, Real IRA, sting operations, surveillance, UK, Vilnius (Lithuania), weapons smuggling

News you may have missed #0105

September 14, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Trial of Serb former intelligence chiefs opens today. The trial of Jovica Stanišić, Director of Serbia’s State Security Service from 1990 until 1998, and Stojan Župljanin, commander of the Bosnian Serb police during the Bosnian war, opens today at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. As intelNews has reported before, at least two eponymous CIA agents have admitted that Stanišić was a CIA collaborator from 1991 until 1998.
Lithuanian Prime Minister was KGB agent, says board. A Lithuanian commission tasked with uncovering pro-Moscow informants and intelligence agents during the country’s communist period, has concluded that Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė, Lithuania’s first Prime Minister after the country’s 1990 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, secretly collaborated with the Soviet KGB.
Congo says it won’t execute Norwegian alleged spies. Norway’s foreign minister says he has been assured that the two Norwegians who were sentenced to death by a Congolese military tribunal last week on spying charges will not be executed.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bosnia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian War, CIA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, espionage, former Yugoslavia, informants, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Jovica Stanišić, Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė, KGB, Lithuania, News, news you may have missed, Norway, Serbia, State Security Service (Serbia), Stojan Župljanin

News you may have missed #0087

August 30, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Lithuania will probe claims of secret CIA prisons. Lithuania has promised to investigate recent allegations that it hosted a secret CIA prison for al-Qaeda suspects on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius.
Book Review: Spycraft. Science News has published a review of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, with Henry Robert Schlesinger.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, book news and reviews, CIA, H. Keith Melton, Henry Robert Schlesinger, Lithuania, News, news you may have missed, Robert Wallace, secret prisons, United States, Vilnius (Lithuania), War on Terrorism

Lithuania also hosted CIA black sites, says ABC News

August 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Dick Marty

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
After Poland and Romania, the former Soviet republic of Lithuania has been identified by US information outlet ABC News as another European nation that secretly hosted CIA prisons after 9/11. ABC News reporter Matthew Cole says former CIA officials told him that the Lithuanian government provided the CIA with a building located in suburban Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, with the understanding that it would be used as a so-called black site for secretly detaining high-value al-Qaeda suspects. The CIA reportedly used the building to detain up to eight suspects for over a year each, until December of 2005, when public rumors about the existence of the prison forced the CIA to abandon it. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, CIA, Dick Marty, Eastern Europe, extraordinary rendition, Lithuania, News, Paul Gimigliano, secret prisons, Switzerland, United States, Vilnius (Lithuania), War on Terrorism

News you may have missed #0074

August 20, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Captured Real IRA operative tried to buy weapons in Lithuania. An Irishman accused of attempting to buy weapons for the Real IRA in Lithuania appeared in court on Tuesday, in Lithuania’s first terrorist trial.
CIA lawyers accused of “deception” in contract dispute. Only three weeks after a federal judge ruled that CIA lawyers committed fraud in a lawsuit, another top agency lawyer is being accused of unethical conduct in another case.
Western spy agencies develop “terrorist Facebook”. Western spy agencies are turning to complex social network analysis. They plan to amass intelligence on a large range of people, even those who seem obscure or irrelevant, and feed it into a computer which will use an algorithm to investigate associations or connections that could be missed by a human.