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News you may have missed #0114

September 23, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

US Senate Democrats seek stronger wiretap law. Led by Russ Feingold (WI) and Dick Durbin (IL), the Senate group proposes stronger safeguards and higher standards of judicial oversight for surveillance activity, including withdrawing immunity to telecom companies that participated in warrantless communications surveillance during the Bush Administration.
South Korean spy agency in trouble over expenses. The scandal-prone National Intelligence Service of South Korea is being scrutinized again for spending billions of wons in unaccounted “special activities”.
Movie script tells story of British police detective turned KGB spy. Daniel Craig and Jude Law are said to be in the running to play the lead role in a new film about the story of John Symonds, a British former police detective who worked for the KGB from 1972 until 1980. In 1981, when he approached MI5 and MI6 and offered to turn into a triple agent for the UK spy services, he was dismissed as a fantasist.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bush Administration, Cold War, communications interception, corruption, Dick Durbin, double agents, espionage, honey traps, intelligence budget, John Symonds, KGB, MI5, MI6, National Intelligence Service (South Korea), News, news you may have missed, operation STELLAR WIND, Russ Feingold, South Korea, telecommunication service providers, Terrorist Surveillance Program (STELLAR WIND), UK, United States, USSR, warrantless communications interception

British police investigating secret services in torture cases

September 15, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

MI6 HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Britain’s attorney general has asked London’s Metropolitan police to investigate the role of the country’s external intelligence agency in the torture of a foreign detainee. MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service, is the second British intelligence organization to be investigated by police, since MI5, the country’s main domestic intelligence service, is already under investigation for its alleged role in the torture of Binyam Mohamed. An Ethiopian resident of Britain, Mohamed said he was severely tortured with MI5’s collaboration, after he was renditioned to Morocco. According to MI6 sources, the police investigation into SIS activities is not related to the Binyam Mohamed case, but rather to a yet unnamed foreign detainee of an unnamed country. The MI6 investigation marks the first time in British history that the two main arms of the country’s intelligence establishment, MI5 and MI6 are the subject of simultaneous police investigations.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Binyam Mohamed, London Metropolitan Police, MI5, MI6, Morocco, News, torture, UK

Latest developments in ongoing Kazakh intelligence war

September 4, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Alnur Musaev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In September of 2008, a Kazakh spy, identified by Austrian authorities only as “Ildar A.”, tried to kidnap from Austria former Kazakh National Security Committee (KNB) chief Alnur Musaev (photo), who has lived in self-imposed exile in Vienna since 2007. Apparently, Musaev, who has fallen out with the Kazakh dictatorship, knows too many secrets about corrupt Kazakh rulers. One can see why the latter consider him a national security threat: last week, Musaev gave an interview to Washington-owned Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in which he said that Rakhat Aliyev, also former KNB director and former son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, might have been involved in the kidnapping of two high-ranking bankers in Kazakhstan. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Alnur Musaev, Austria, corruption, energy resources, Ildar A., Kazakhstan, KNB (Kazakhstan), MI5, News, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Rakhat Aliyev, renegade spies, Vienna

Document release offers new clues on MI5 activities

September 2, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

S. Wanamaker

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A batch of intelligence documents from the immediate post-World War II period released this week by Britain’s National Archives offer glimpses into previously unknown activities by MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence service. One set of documents shows that the MI5 closely monitored liberal Americans who escaped McCarthyism by emigrating to the isles in the 1940s and 1950s. Among such targets was Sam Wanamaker, father of actor Zoe Wanamaker, who played in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone among other films. Her father left the US shortly before being called to testify in Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. He became an important figure in British theater, but was monitored by MI5, who at one point considered including him in a list of domestic radicals to be “interned” during a possible military confrontation with the USSR. Another set of documents shows that British spies spent years looking for Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, in places such as Switzerland, Italy and Brazil. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Adolf Hitler, declassification, domestic intelligence, espionage, Germany, House Un-American Activities Committee, Iceland, Joe McCarthy, Martin Bormann, McCarthyism, MI5, News, Sam Wanamaker, UK, World War II, Zoe Wanamaker

News you may have missed #0080

August 26, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

UN human rights commissioner rejects immunity in CIA abuse cases. Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said there should be no immunity from prosecution for torture of terror suspects by CIA agents.
Iran accuses popular reformist of links to British intelligence. Iran says that Saeed Hajjarian twice met MI5 spy John Keane. Iran’s former intelligence minister, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i, who was purged earlier this month, is the chief prosecutor in the case.
Sri Lankan army chief’s cook was LTTE spy. Sri Lankan authorities have said that the cook of former Sri Lankan army chief, General Sarath Fonseka, was secretly working for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, espionage, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, human rights, informants, Iran, lawsuits, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, MI5, Navi Pillay, News, news you may have missed, Saeed Hajjarian, Sarath Fonseka, Sri Lanka, torture, UK, United Nations, United Nations High Commission for Human Rights

News you may have missed #0059

August 6, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Torture report says UK government ministers shielded MI5, MI6. A new report from Britain’s parliamentary human rights committee accuses senior cabinet ministers of “hiding behind a wall of secrecy” to avoid being held to account over allegations of British intelligence agents’ collusion in torture.
US cyber czar resigns. Senior intelligence official Melissa Hathaway, who was US President Barack Obama’s choice to monitor America’s online security, said in an interview that she is leaving “for personal reasons”.
South Korean opposition skeptical of request for new intelligence powers. Opposition parties in South Korea are critical of the National Intelligence Service’s (NIS) recent request to gain access to information on financial transactions amounting to 20 million won or more without a warrant.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with cybersecurity, economic espionage, Melissa Hathaway, MI5, MI6, National Intelligence Service (South Korea), News, news you may have missed, South Korea, terrorism, torture, UK, UK House of Commons, United States

Al-Qaeda may have infiltrated Britain’s MI5, says lawmaker

August 3, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Patrick Mercer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The chairperson of Britain’s House of Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism has raised the possibility that MI5, the country’s premier domestic intelligence agency, has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda operatives. MP Patrick Mercer (Con.) revealed on Saturday that he had been told MI5 had expelled as many as six British Muslim recruits after red flags were raised about their backgrounds. He has since called upon Home Secretary Alan Johnson “to detail how far down the recruitment process the men had got before they were weeded out” by MI5 vetting officers. There are allegations that some of the six potential recruits had been trained in al-Qaeda-run camps in Pakistan, while others had “unexplained gaps in their curricula vitae”. No response has so far been issued by the British government, but The Daily Telegraph has quoted an “unnamed senior security source”, who has denied the allegations.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Alan Johnson, British Muslims, double agents, intelligence vetting, MI5, News, Pakistan, Patrick Mercer, UK, UK House of Commons, UK House of Commons Subcommittee on Counterterrorism

News you may have missed #0042

July 26, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Postcards containing Cold War spy messages unearthed. The postcards, containing chess moves, were posted in 1950 by an unidentified man in Frankfurt, thought to have been an undercover agent, to Graham Mitchell, who was then deputy director general of MI5. The problem is, researchers are not quite sure whether the cryptic text on the postcards is based on British or Soviet codes, because Mitchell was suspected of being a secret Soviet agent at the time.
Is NSA actively mapping social networks? There are rumors out there that NSA is monitoring social networking tools, such as Tweeter, Facebook and MySpace, in order to make links between individuals and construct elaborate data-mining-based maps of who associates with whom.
US Senate bill would disclose intelligence budget. The US Senate version of the FY2010 intelligence authorization bill would require the President to disclose the aggregate amount requested for intelligence each year. Disclosure of the budget request would enable Congress to appropriate a stand-alone intelligence budget that would no longer need to be concealed misleadingly in other non-intelligence budget accounts.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with cloud computing, Cold War, cryptology, data mining, double agents, espionage, Facebook, Frankfurt (Germany), government secrecy, Graham Mitchell, intelligence budget, intelligence funding, MI5, MySpace, News, news you may have missed, NSA, social networking, Twitter, UK, United States, US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, USSR

Cambridge spy ring member’s memoir reveals motives behind actions

July 24, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Anthony Blunt

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The British Library kept its promise and released yesterday the closely guarded, incomplete autobiographical manuscript of Anthony Blunt, fourth member of the Cambridge spy ring. The group of British spies, which worked secretly for the Soviet Union from the 1930s until the 1960s, included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and H.A.R. “Kim” Philby, all of whom eventually defected to the Soviet Union. In his 30,000-word memoir, Blunt, an art history professor who in 1945 became Surveyor of the King’s Pictures and was knighted in 1954, describes his recruitment to spy for the Soviets as “the most important decision of my life”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Anthony Blunt, Cambridge Five, Cold War, counterintelligence, defectors, Donald Maclean, espionage, Guy Burgess, H.A.R. "Kim" Philby, Margaret Thatcher, Melita Norwood, MI5, News, The British Libary, USSR

News you may have missed #0033

July 20, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

China says US media exaggerates Chinese espionage threat. China’s state-owned People’s Daily newspaper dismisses claims that there are over 3,500 Chinese spy operatives currently in the US. Chinese authorities have also dismissed as fabrication the espionage charges in the US against former Boeing engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung.
“Adoptive father” of Israeli intelligence dies. Meir Amit, who revolutionized Israeli intelligence in the 1960s, has died at the age of 88.
China to drop espionage charges in Rio Tinto case. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says Beijing is “not interested in what we would regard as espionage” in the Rio Tinto case.
New books on MI5, NSA, reviewed. Writing for The Washington Times, Joseph Goulden reviews Chapman Pincher’s Treachery (on whether MI5 head Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet agent) and Matthew Aid’s Secret Sentry: The Untold Story of the NSA, which intelNews first mentioned here.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Australia, Boeing Corporation, book news and reviews, China, Dongfan Chung, espionage, Greg Chung, Israel, Matthew M. Aid, Meir Amit, MI5, News, news you may have missed, NSA, Rio Tinto, Sir Roger Hollis, Stephen Smith, Stern Hu, UK, United States

News you may have missed #0006

June 22, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Former spy chief “shocked” to learn MI5 bugged people. Remarkably, Lady Manningham-Buller, former director general of MI5, told Britain’s House of Lords on June 19 that she did not realize MI5 engaged in bugging when she joined the service over 30 years ago.
Man behind Canadian Nazi Party was Jewish spy, claims new book. In 1965 the Canadian Jewish Congress hired a spy to infiltrate the Canadian Nazi Party. The CJC tasked John Garrity with “build[ing] up the fledgling Canadian Nazi Party”, but he ultimately ended up helping turn the Canadian Nazi Party into a media sensation. This allegation is made in Shakedown, a new book by Canadian lawyer and journalist Ezra Levant.
An interesting podcast with CIA’s former station chief in Kabul. Graham E. Fuller talked for over an hour to George Kenney, of Electric Politics, on what is really happening in Afghanistan.
Russians declassify archives on valuable Soviet asset in WWII Germany. The files of Willi Lehmann, (codename Breitenbach) have been declassified by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Lehmann notified the Soviets of the exact time of the German invasion in 1941. He was arrested by the Gestapo and shot in 1942 [article in German].

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Breitenbach, Canadian Jewish Congress, Canadian Nazi Party, Eliza Manningham-Buller, Ezra Levant, Gestapo, Graham E. Fuller, John Garrity, Kabul (Afghanistan), MI5, News, news you may have missed, SVR (Russia), Willi Lehmann, World War II

IntelNews reviews Secret Wars, by Gordon Thomas

May 29, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Secret Wars

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
IntelNews is pleased to present a review of Gordon Thomas’ book Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), a useful historical narrative of MI5 and MI6, the publication of which coincides with the centennial year of Britain’s intelligence and security services. The book’s strength rests on Thomas’ skilled storytelling, which, coupled with some interesting new information, will appeal to both popular enthusiasts and scholarly devotees of intelligence history. Please click here to read the review. IntelNews is interested in reviewing both popular and academic publications on the politics of espionage and intelligence, intelligence history, analysis, terrorism and counterterrorism, as well as foreign policy, among other subjects. Authors, editors and publicists may contact intelNews for more information.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with book news and reviews, Gordon Thomas, MI5, MI6

UK report concludes security services not to blame for 7/7 attacks

May 25, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The second installment of an extensive evaluation of the intelligence background to the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, has been published by Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). The parliamentary committee, whose cabinet-appointed members have access to highly classified material, have concluded that Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, MI5, which is also known as the Security Service, as well as the Special Branch, lacked the resources necessary to detect and foil the 7/7 attacks. The report, which is publicly available online in a heavily censored version, reveals that MI5’s resources enabled it to provide “reasonable” intelligence coverage of no more than one in every 20 militant suspects . Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2005 London Bombings, 7/7 Inquiry, counterterrorism, Intelligence and Security Committee (UK), MI5, News, Operation Crevice, Special Branch, UK

MI5 looking for new chief scientific adviser

April 18, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The MI5 is openly advertising for a chief scientific adviser for the first time. Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, which is also known as the Security Service, has posted the job advertisement on its website, and is asking interested individuals to submit applications by April 24. It also urges them to exercise discretion by discussing the application “only with [their] partner and/or immediate family”. The brief advertisement describes the “unique and challenging” mission of the new position as “lead[ing] and co-ordinat[ing] the scientific work of the Security Service”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with counterintelligence, counterterrorism, intelligence recruitment, MI5, MI5 Chief Scientific Advisor, News, UK

“Unprecedented” history of MI5 to be published in October

March 21, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Dr. Andrew

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence organization, made headlines in 2002, when it appointed Cambridge University history Professor Christopher Andrew to produce an authorized account of its long history. Now book publishers Penguin Group have announced that the book, titled Defense of the Realm, is to be published by Allen Lane in October 2009, in time to mark the agency’s centennial. Professor Andrew is well known for his considerable contributions to intelligence history scholarship, which include Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions (1991, with Oleg Gordievsky), For The President’s Eyes Only (1995), and of course The Mitrokhin Archive (1991, with Vasili Mitrokhin). Penguin has described Defense of the Realm as “unprecedented” and claims that “no major intelligence organization in the world has ever let an independent historian into its archives in this way” (though James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets may object to this). Read more of this post