Russia says it traced Ukraine fighter jet near downed Malaysia plane

July 22, 2014 by Leave a comment

General Kartopolov (left) speaking in MoscowBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
Russian government officials have made a presentation in Moscow showing alleged evidence of a Ukrainian fighter jet, which they claim was trailing a civilian airliner that crashed on Thursday in eastern Ukraine. All 295 people onboard the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, which came down in a field east of the city of Donetsk, were killed. Last week, Ukrainian intelligence sources released telephone intercepts said to contain direct admissions by pro-Russian rebels that they shot down the civilian airliner. But Russian defense officials fought back on Monday with a hi-tech news conference in Moscow, which included several slides, charts and images relating to the airline disaster over Donetsk. The media briefing, which was specifically called to showcase Moscow’s take on the incident, featured two senior-ranking officials from the Russian general staff. One of the presenters, Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartopolov, told the gathered reporters that the government of Ukraine was most likely behind the plane’s downing. He said Russian radars showed the Malaysian Airlines plane had been forced to “deviate from its route to the north” for up to “14 kilometers” (10 miles). He added that the plane was all the while being trailed by an SU-25 fighter jet belonging to the Ukrainian government, which Russian radars indicated was flying at a distance of “three to five kilometers” (3 miles) from the civilian airplane. Kartopolov stressed that the SU-25 fighter jets are typically armed with air-to-air missiles. Pointing to a series of graphs showing radar activity around Donetsk, the Russian general stated that Ukrainian radar stations had also displayed “unusual activity” in the hours preceding the attack on the civilian airliner. He told reporters that the Russian Ministry of Defense had evidence that “the intensity of the operation of Ukrainian radar stations increased to the maximum” during the time period surrounding the fateful attack on the plane. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Ukraine rebels ‘admit downing Malaysia plane’ in phone intercepts

July 18, 2014 by 15 Comments

Malaysia Airlines crash site near DonetskBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Ukrainian intelligence has released telephone intercepts said to contain direct admissions by pro- Russian rebels that they shot down a civilian airliner that crashed on Thursday in eastern Ukraine. All 295 people onboard the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200, which came down in a field east of the city of Donetsk, are presumed dead. An American intelligence official told the Associated Press, on condition of anonymity, that Washington is certain the airliner was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Late on Thursday, Valentyn Nalivaichenko, director of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), said in a press conference that his agency had conclusive evidence showing that pro-Russian rebels had shot down the plane. Nalivaichenko said the evidence included recordings of telephone conversations between rebel commanders and Russian intelligence officers, which were intercepted just minutes after the plane was brought down. During Nalivaichenko’s press conference, the SSU published the intercepted conversations on YouTube with subtitles in English, French, German and Polish. The videos identify some of the participants in the conversations, including Igor Bezler, a leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and Vasily Geranin, who is said to be a Colonel in Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, known commonly as GRU. In one phone call, allegedly made at 4:40 Kiev time, 20 minutes after the Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down, Bezler appears to tell Geranin: “We have just shot down a plane […]. It fell down beyond Yenakievo”. In a subsequent intercept, another rebel commander calls a Russian intelligence officer from the site of the crash to report that the downed plane appeared to be civilian, not military, as originally thought, and that the crash site was filled with casualties. “It’s 100 percent a passenger aircraft”, he reports, adding that there are no weapons visible on site: “absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper”, he says. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News you may have missed #874

April 1, 2014 by Leave a comment

Hamid AboutalebiBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►Intel involvement in flight MH370 sparks terrorism speculation. Malaysian authorities have revealed secret services from the UK, the US and China have been involved in the investigations into the disappearance of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, adding to speculation that the plane’s disappearance could be down to terrorism.
►►Iran picks former US Embassy hostage-taker as UN envoy. The Iranian government has applied for a US visa for Hamid Aboutalebi, Iran’s former ambassador to Belgium and Italy. Aboutalebi was a member of a group calling itself “Muslim Students Following the Imam’s Line”, a group of radical students controlled by Ayatollah Khomeini, who seized the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. A controversy over Aboutalebi’s appointment could prompt the Obama administration to take the unusual step of denying a visa to an official posted to the UN.
►►Analysis: Ukrainian Navy devastated by Russian move into Crimea. Ukraine’s maritime forces have been dealt a heavy blow by the Russian intervention in Crimea with 12 of its 17 major warships, nearly 40 support vessels, and much of its naval aviation assets now falling under Moscow’s control. Almost every Ukrainian naval base and ship on the peninsula has been seized by Russian forces or local pro-Moscow self-defense units. Over the past three weeks, the majority of the Ukrainian military personnel in Crimea have defected to the Russian military or resigned from military service.

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

NSA ‘high-target’ list includes names of 122 world leaders

March 31, 2014 by Leave a comment

NSA headquartersBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A list of high-priority intelligence targets published over the weekend includes the names of over a hundred current and former heads of state, who were systematically targeted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). The list appears to be part of a wider “Target Knowledge Base” assembled by the NSA in order to help produce “complete profiles” of what the NSA calls “high-priority intelligence targets”. The list is contained in a classified top-secret briefing created by the NSA in 2009. It was published by German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which said it acquired it from American intelligence defector Edward Snowden. Snowden, a former computer expert for the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, is currently living in Russia, where he has been offered political asylum. The leaked briefing explains the function of an extensive NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection program codenamed NYMROD. The computer-based program is allegedly able to sift through millions of SIGINT reports and collate information on individual targets from the transcripts of intercepted telephone calls, faxes, as well as computer data. The list provided to Der Spiegel by Snowden contains 122 names of international political figures, said the newsmagazine, adding that all of them were “heads of foreign governments”. It includes the name of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Ukraine’s Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko. Colombia’s former President, Alvaro Uribe, and Malaysia’s Prime Minster from 2003 to 2009, Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi, also figure on the list. Interestingly, the leaders of Malaysia, Somalia, the Palestinian Authority and Peru top the NSA’s list of high-value executive targets. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Australia fears Asia backlash over PRISM surveillance revelations

June 26, 2013 by 8 Comments

David IrvineBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The government of Australia is concerned that American whistleblower Edward Snowden may leak classified information that could damage Australia’s relations with its Asian neighbors, including China and Malaysia. Early this month, Snowden, a former technical assistant for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), disclosed the existence of PRISM, a clandestine electronic surveillance program operated by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Information provided by Snowden to British newspaper The Guardian suggests that Washington routinely shares PRISM intelligence with Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia. These four countries, along with the United States, are signatories to the so-called UKUSA agreement, a multilateral accord for cooperation in signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection, which was established secretly in 1946. Australian media reported on Wednesday that the Australian Parliament’s Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security had been briefed by senior intelligence officials on Australia’s role in PRISM. The Sydney Morning Herald said that David Irvine, Director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and Ian McKenzie, who heads Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate, were among those who briefed the parliamentary Committee. Its members were reportedly told that the disclosures about PRISM were likely to damage Canberra’s relations with several Asian countries, in ways that are difficult to predict. One unidentified Australian intelligence official told The Herald that Snowden had “very wide access” to classified information held by the NSA, and that some of it probably includes “much detail of communications intelligence cooperation between the US and Australia”. One source went as far as to say that Snowden’s disclosures have already “damaged […] Australia’s intelligence capabilities”. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Iran arrests dozens in connection with alleged CIA spy ring

May 23, 2011 by 1 Comment

Iran

Iran

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Iranian intelligence services have announced the arrest of at least 30 individuals accused of being part of an elaborate CIA “espionage and sabotage network” operating in the country. According to Iran’s Fars News Agency, spy ring members, which include government administrators, were handled from abroad by as many as 42 CIA operatives, whose identities are allegedly known to Iranian counterintelligence investigators. Iran’s Intelligence Ministry claims that spy ring members, who are believed to be Iranian, were recruited by CIA officers operating out of US embassies in several predominantly Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Malaysia. They were then trained and sent into Iran to gather intelligence on energy projects, academic research, as well as telecommunications installations and border control systems. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comment: Bin Laden’s Alleged ‘Magazine Stash’ May be CIA PsyOp

May 15, 2011 by 12 Comments

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Rumors of an alleged discovery of “a stash of pornography” in Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan have spread like wildfire since Friday, when Reuters published an “exclusive” report on the subject. The report, written by Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria, cites “current and former US officials […] who discussed the discovery […] on condition of anonymity”. According to the allegations, “[t]he pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive”. The report was almost immediately picked up by several news outlets, including The New York Times, which notes that the disclosure “will be welcomed by counter-terrorism officials because it could tarnish [the al-Qaeda founder’s] legacy and erode [his] appeal”. Indeed. It appears that only Danger Room‘s Spencer Ackerman thought it wise to air a brief disclaimer to the effect that the “welcomed disclosure” may in fact be “a CIA information operation”. He has a point. Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Was release of French ‘spy’ part of Iranian-French deal? [updated]

May 18, 2010 by Leave a comment

Majid Kakavand

Majid Kakavand

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This blog has closely monitored the case of Clotilde Reiss, a French language assistant who was arrested in Iran last year on accusations of being a ‘nuclear spy’. Despite the obviously nonsensical nature of the allegations, Reiss, a 25-year-old Farsi-speaking French-language assistant at the University of Isfahan, was forced to confess to her ‘crime’ on Iranian television. Last August, however, after spending nearly two months in the notorious Evin prison complex, Reiss was released on bail, on condition that she would remain confined inside the walls of the French embassy compound in Tehran. Then, last weekend, her ten-year prison sentence was suddenly commuted to a fine of $285,000, and she was able to return home to France on Sunday. Why the sudden change of heart on the part of Tehran? Read more of this post

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Newer posts →

%d bloggers like this: