Kim Philby’s granddaughter describes memories of her grandfather

July 30, 2009 by 3 Comments

Charlotte Philby

Charlotte Philby

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Charlotte Philby, daughter of John Philby, H.A.R. “Kim” Philby’s oldest son, has penned an extensive account of her memories of her grandfather. In her article, published yesterday in British daily The Independent, she describes Kim Philby as “a proud man, and one who chose to publicly stand by his actions”. Kim Philby was probably the most successful double spy in history. While working as a senior member of British intelligence, he spied on behalf of the Soviet KGB and NKVD from the early 1930s until 1963, when he defected to Moscow. Two years later he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. The Soviet authorities buried him with honors when he died in 1988. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0045

July 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Ex-CIA, -NSA director defends warrantless wiretapping. Michael Hayden, who was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009 and of the NSA from 1999 to 2005, has penned an article in The New York Times, in which he says that the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program helped the US intelligence community “connecting the dots, something for which we were roundly criticized after Sept[ember] 11 as not sufficiently doing”.
  • US House intelligence panel member calls for new Church Committee. Rush Holt (D-NJ) a senior member of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has called for a resuscitation of the Church and Pike investigations into intelligence practices of the 1970s.
  • BBC radio launches series on MI6. The BBC’s Radio 4 has launched today a new three-part series examining the 100-year history and operations of MI6, Britain’s foremost external intelligence agency. The programs, which can also be listened to online, include interviews with senior intelligence officers, agents and diplomats.

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News you may have missed #0023

July 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #0020

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Social media is ruining spy industry, says IT security group. IT security consultancy NCC Group says that intelligence “agencies are concerned that Facebook and other social networking tools are ruining the spy industry”. The comments come just hours after British newspaper The Mail on Sunday revealed that personal details about the future head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, had been accessible to 200 million online users through his wife’s Facebook account.
  • Pakistan’s nukes face insider threat, says ex-CIA official. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, argues in Arms Control Today that “[t]he greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb […]. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats”, claims the retired US intelligence agent.
  • Hamas says Israeli spy cell in Ramallah busted. Hamas says it has dismantled an Israeli spy network, which served through the West Bank-based administration of Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas. The group claims that the network “channeled […] false information to Ramallah [in the Fatah-dominated West Bank] and then to the Israeli occupation”, in order to create “target bank” in Gaza.

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Facebook reveals personal details of future MI6 chief

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sir John Sawers

Sir John Sawers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Facebook, the Internet social networking site with over 200 million registered users worldwide, has made intelligence headlines once again. Last April, intelNews reported on revelations by Sweden’s armed forces that Swedish soldiers serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan were approached on Facebook and asked to provide details on NATO’s military presence in the country. Last weekend, Facebook did it again: British newspaper The Mail on Sunday argued that “potentially compromising” personal details about Sir John Sawers, who has been appointed to the post of Director of MI6, Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, were revealed by his wife on her Facebook account. The paper accused Lady Shelley Sawers of “a major personal security breach” upon discovering that “she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account”, which made it accessible to all of Facebook’s 200 million users. Read more of this post

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Is new MI6 head really an outsider?

June 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sir John Sawers

Sir John Sawers

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Soon after Downing Street announced the pending appointment of Sir John Sawers to the post of Director of MI6, Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, many hurried to call the choice a “break with tradition”. This is because Sir John’s official career description is that of a diplomat. It is true that appointing anyone other than a seasoned intelligence professional to the helm of MI6 or MI5 is highly unusual. The last time this happened was in 1968, when Sir John Rennie, also a diplomat, was tasked to head MI6. But how much of an intelligence outsider is Sawers, really? The truth is that he will actually be rejoining MI6, where he began his career in 1977, serving in Syria and Yemen, among other places. The question that nobody in Whitehall will answer is when exactly Sawers left the service. The London Times claims he did so “in the 1980s”, when he joined the diplomatic service. The question is, of course, did he actually leave MI6? Or did he linger in one of the agency’s many desks that overlap with Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service? Read more of this post

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IntelNews reviews Secret Wars, by Gordon Thomas

May 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

Secret Wars

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.

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“Unprecedented” history of MI5 to be published in October

March 21, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dr. Andrew

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

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Ex-KGB agent, wanted for murder in Britain, to run for mayor

March 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Lugovoy

Lugovoy

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Andrey Lugovoy, who is wanted in Britain for the 2006 murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, is poised to run for mayor in the Russian city of Sochi. British authorities believe that Lugovoy, who served in the KGB and in Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO) from 1987 to 1996, carried out the radioactive poisoning of Litvinenko, a former intelligence officer who had defected to the UK. Litvinenko, who was a vocal critic of former Russian President Vladimir Putin, came down with radioactive poisoning soon after meeting Lugovoy in a London restaurant. The latter is believed by British authorities to have acted “with the backing of the Russian state”. A victory by Lugovoy in next month’s mayoral race could potentially pose a diplomatic challenge for London, as Sochi will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. If he wins, therefore, the prime murder suspect will be expected to lead local officials in “welcoming the British team to the Games”. Britain’s Daily Telegraph notes that such a possibility could ultimately “lead to the first ever British boycott of an Olympic Games”. Read more of this post

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Austrian police officers arrested on Kazakh espionage charges

February 18, 2009 by 2 Comments

Rakhat Aliyev

Rakhat Aliyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last month we reported on Rakhat Aliyev, former Director of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) and former son-in-law to the country’s dictatorial president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2007, following his divorce with Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Aliyev was stripped of his government positions, issued with an arrest warrant, and now lives in exile in Vienna, Austria. Soon afterwards, Aliyev began exposing President Nazarbayev’s corrupt dealings with foreign oil companies operating in Kazakhstan. In January of this year, a Kazakh-employed public relations firm working to “exonerate” Nazarbayev was found to have received assistance from “two anonymous serving officers of MI6”, Britain’s external intelligence agency. Now a new scandal has erupted in Vienna, where two Austrian police officers have been arrested by the country’s authorities and charged with “spying for Kazakhstan”. The two officers were apprehended by counterintelligence agents while reportedly “gathering information from a computer about Rakhat Aliyev”. Read more of this post

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MI6 agents accused of assisting corrupt Kazakh oil propaganda effort

January 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

Rakhat Aliyev

Rakhat Aliyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Until recently, Rakhat Aliyev was deeply embedded in Kazakhstan’s corrupt governing establishment. Having served for years as the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister and Director of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (the intelligence service, also known as KNB) he is uniquely aware of the annals of sleaze and fraud that dominate Kazakh political culture. In 2007, following his divorce with Dariga Nazarbayeva, eldest daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Aliyev became estranged from the Kazakh leadership. He was stripped of his government positions, issued with an arrest warrant, and now lives in exile in Vienna, Austria. Soon after his estrangement from the Kazakh leadership, Aliyev began accusing President Nazarbayev of regularly receiving secret commissions from foreign oil companies operating in Kazakhstan, and of illegally expropriating state assets worth billions of US dollars. Read more of this post

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MI6 informant found guilty of murder in secret trial

January 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews |
A Chinese anti-communist dissident who worked for years as a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) informant has been found guilty of murdering an elderly British author and attempting to steal his identity. The British external intelligence agency admitted to have hired Wang Yam as a “low-level informant” since the mid 1990s, after the well-known anticommunist campaigner moved to London from Hong Kong. MI6 gave Yam British citizenship and tasked him with gathering information about Chinese expatriates living in Britain. In addition to working for MI6, however, Yam launched a number of fraudulent schemes, including online credit card fraud networks and several shady business ventures. Read more of this post

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Corporate intelligence firms seeing business boom

December 9, 2008 by Leave a comment

Fortune magazine reports that corporate intelligence firms, such as Control Risks in London and Kroll in New York, represent a sector of the economy that “stand[s] to gain from the financial crisis”. In fact, such “specialized consultancy” firms, largely staffed by former MI6 and CIA agents, are already “seeing a dramatic uptick in business from a surge of banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds that need to make sure those pesky multimillion-dollar investments they made when times were good will hold up”. Read more of this post

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