Retired US colonel charged with smuggling weapons to Somalia

July 6, 2010 by 5 Comments

Somalia

Somalia

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A retired US Air Force colonel, who was charged with weapons smuggling during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, has been indicted again, this time for trying to smuggle automatic weapons into Somalia. US federal authorities accuse Joseph O’Toole, now 79, of conspiring with Israeli citizen Chanoch Miller, formerly an aeronautics engineer with Israeli defense firm Radom Aviation, to transport nearly 2,000  AK-47s from Bosnia to Banderal, Somalia. The smuggling operation, which employed forged end-user certificates issued in Chad, violated US weapons export control regulations, which are in compliance with a United Nations weapons embargo to war-ravaged Somalia. This is the second time O’Toole has been indicted with conspiring to smuggle weapons. In 1989, he was charged of working with fellow-American Richard St. Francis and Israeli alleged ex-Mossad operative Ari Ben-Menashe, to sell several US C-130 cargo airplanes to the Iranian government. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #379

June 30, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Lebanon arrests Palestinian for spying for Israel. Lebanese police have arrested a Palestinian refugee from the Burj al-Shemali refugee camp on suspicion that he was spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, a police spokesman said last week. More than 70 people have been arrested in a nationwide crackdown on alleged Israeli spy rings in Lebanon, launched in April 2009, some of them policemen and security officials.
  • US spy agency chief nomination held up by Congress. US Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein says she won’t hold confirmation hearings for James Clapper, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the next Director of National Intelligence, until she completes her top priority, namely congressional passage and presidential signature on the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill. 
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Germany refuses to drop Mossad prosecution, despite Israeli pressure

June 24, 2010 by 5 Comments

Uri Brodsky

"Uri Brodsky"

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
German-Israeli relations sunk to a new low this week, after the German government rejected Israel’s call to drop a public investigation into the actions of a suspected Israeli spy. The alleged spy, whose travel documents identify him as “Uri Brodsky”, was arrested upon arriving in Poland on June 4. He is wanted by German prosecutors, not for directly participating in the assassination by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of senior Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, as had been previously reported, but for procuring a forged German passport for the assassins. “Brodsky” appears to have traveled under the cover name of “Alexander Verin” to Cologne, Germany, where he employed the services of a lawyer to acquire the forged passport. It was later used used by Israeli Mossad agents to travel to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #376

June 21, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Dubai plans more cameras after Mossad operation. Dubai will beef up its surveillance capability by installing more cameras around the city-state after the Israeli hit squad that murdered a senior Hamas operative was caught on a hotel video. As intelNews has reported before, Mossad has really helped the Gulf surveillance industry.
  • Iran hangs ‘spy’ with alleged US connections. Iran hanged Sunni militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi last weekend for allegedly having connections with foreign secret services, including “intelligence officers of the US and Israel working under the cover of NATO and certain Arab countries” as well as “anti-revolutionary expatriate groups such as the MEK”, the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran.
  • Analysis: FBI use of Muslim informers now part of daily life. Gathering information on people in Muslim communities in the United States has become part of daily life. After 9/11, all data is considered useful. But, Stephan Salisbury of The Philadelphia Inquirer asks, is that how America should be?

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Alleged Mossad agent arrested in Poland

June 14, 2010 by 6 Comments

Uri Brodsky

"Uri Brodsky"

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Poland have detained an alleged Israeli agent who may be connected with the assassination of a senior Hamas operative last January. German newsmagazine Der Spiegel quoted anonymous government prosecutors in Berlin, who said the man works for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and was arrested upon arriving in Poland on June 4. The alleged agent, whose travel documents identify him as “Uri Brodsky”, is wanted by German prosecutors for using a forged German passport to enter Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in January of this year. He then joined a team of Mossad assassins to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas weapons procurer, who was found dead in his luxury hotel room on January 20. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Israel Suffers Strategic Blowback in Flotilla Raid

June 12, 2010 by 4 Comments

Gaza Freedom Flotilla raid

Flotilla raid

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Speaking before a parliamentary committee about last month’s Israeli raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which killed nine and injured over 60 international volunteers, a senior Israeli intelligence official warned  that “[e]vents [like this] are likely to go out of control and the situation could deteriorate to extreme scenarios”. The official was no other than Meir Dagan, director of the Mossad, Israel’s foremost external intelligence agency. As I explain in an article published yesterday in Daily News Corner, to some extent, Dagan’s “extreme scenario” has already materialized. The raid’s outrageous death toll has further-worsened Israel’s deteriorating relations with Australia and has caused the outright termination of the Jewish state’s diplomatic contacts with several non-Western countries that used to be among its closest international friends, such as Turkey, South Africa, Ecuador and Nicaragua. More importantly, the flotilla attack has even stigmatized Israel’s relations with the United States, a development that fits into the broader pattern of steadily worsening US-Israeli relations in recent years. It is no coincidence that, on the day after the raid, Mossad chief Dagan said that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden”. Read article →

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Analysis: Israel’s Flotilla Raid Involved Espionage, Sabotage

June 8, 2010 by Leave a comment

MV Mavi Marmara

Mavi Marmara

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The intense worldwide debate about last Monday’s Israeli raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has concentrated relatively little on the operation’s intelligence facets. As I explain in an article published yesterday at Daily News Corner, this is puzzling, considering that the intelligence aspects of the attack are largely responsible for its bloody outcome. The Gaza-bound ships had drawn minor international attention prior to the first media reports of the raid in international waters by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). But the effort by the Israeli security services to prevent the flotilla from reaching its intended destination did not begin in the Mediterranean Sea. It started several months before the fleet of ten vessels was even chartered by the Humanitarian Aid Foundation (ÍHH). Indeed, despite the revered image that is often projected by the Israeli security services, faulty intelligence may be at the root of the debacle on the MV Mavi Marmara, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s largest ship, where IDF commandos killed nine and injured over 60 passengers and crew. Read article →

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Comment: Aussie ex-spies comment on Israeli forged passports affair

June 5, 2010 by 7 Comments

Australian passport

Australia passport

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Regular IntelNews readers are aware of the current crisis in Israeli-Australian relations, which broke out as a result of the use of several forged Australian passports by the Israeli intelligence services. The passports were among several Western identity documents employed by Israeli Mossad agents in targeting Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in a luxury Dubai hotel last January. The revelation prompted Canberra to announce the expulsion of Israel’s senior Mossad representative in the country. The dust has yet to settle, and the recent shooting of an Australian citizen onboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla during last Monday’s bloody raid by the Israeli Defense Forces has the potential to worsen Australian-Israeli relations even further. What is the view of all this from Australia? IntelNews asked two Australian former intelligence officers, who offered their input on an anonymous basis. Read more of this post

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Israel becoming a burden to the US, says Mossad chief

June 2, 2010 by 1 Comment

Meir Dagan

Meir Dagan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The director of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has publicly stated the agency’s concerns that Israel is gradually turning from an asset to a burden for American foreign policy. Speaking before the Israeli Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Meir Dagan said it was obvious to him that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden”. The former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander, who has led the Mossad since 2002, remarked that every year since the end of the Cold War there are progressively “fewer Israeli assets in the US”. The importance of Israel in US foreign policy was “greater when there was conflict between the blocs”, said the Mossad chief, “while this year there has [again] been a decrease” in Israel’s significance. He went on to lament the 2008 election success of US President Barack Obama, which was “a declaration that [the US] was adopting a softer approach and did not want to use force to solve conflicts”. Read more of this post

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Former Mossad officer calls Israel’s flotilla raid ‘stupid’

June 2, 2010 by Leave a comment

Victor Ostrovsky

Victor Ostrovsky

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A former officer in Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has criticized Monday’s raid by Israeli forces on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as a failure “on every level”. Victor Ostrovsky, who worked as a case officer for the Mossad during the 1980s, described the raid as an act that was “so stupid it is stupefying”. Speaking to The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, the former Mossad operative suggested that the early-morning operation, which killed at least 10 and wounded nearly 100 aid volunteers of various nationalities, was probably carried out by Shayetet 13, an elite commando unit of the Israeli Navy. He described Shayetet 13 as “one of the top units in the Israeli military”, which nevertheless failed in its mission to take over the ship convoy without resorting to a bloody mayhem. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #363

May 31, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • Who killed ex-Mossad agent Ashraf Marwan? Dr. Marwan, son-in-law of the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who spied for Israel after 1969, fell to his death from the balcony of his London home in June 2007. British investigators have now announced a new inquiry into the circumstances of his death.
  • Ex-CIA agent accused of rape says he was set up. Andrew M. Warren, the CIA’s former Algiers station chief, who is accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women at his official residence, says the Algerian government set him up in a honey trap.
  • US Senate candidate admits false military intel award. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Navy reservist who was elected to Congress in 2001, and is currently a Republican candidate for Barack Obama’s old Senate seat, has admitted to falsely claiming he received the US Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award in 2000.

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We use false passports too, Australians admit

May 27, 2010 by 1 Comment

Julie Bishop

Julie Bishop

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli intelligence agencies are not alone in using false passports. In fact, intelligence and law enforcement agencies in Australia, the country that is currently involved in a diplomatic spat with Israel due to the latter’s use of forged Australian passports in spy operations, also use forged travel documents. This admission was made yesterday by Australian senior opposition politician Julie Bishop during a live session in the Australian parliament. The parliamentary debate concerned recent revelations that agents of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad used forged Australian passports during an assassination operation against Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found murdered in a luxury Dubai hotel last January. Australian government officials were quick to condemn Ms Bishop’s revelation as “a grievous breach of national security”. But Australian daily newspaper The Age reports that the opposition politician “merely made public an inconvenient truth”. Read more of this post

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Israeli envoy ‘in alarm’ after Australia expels Mossad agent

May 25, 2010 by 3 Comments

Yuval Rotem

Yuval Rotem

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Israeli ambassador to Australia, who was in Israel on business, expedited his return to Canberra yesterday, immediately after Australia announced the expulsion of Israel’s senior Mossad representative in the country. Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports that ambassador Yuval Rotem decided to cut short his trip to Israel “in alarm”, as the “escalated crisis” between Israel and Australia appears to be deepening. As intelNews readers read on April 14, Australia had announced the pending expulsion after official investigations by Australian law enforcement and intelligence authorities revealed beyond doubt that the Israeli spy agency Mossad had forged at least four Australian passports. The passports were among several Western identity documents employed by Mossad agents in targeting Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in a luxury Dubai hotel last January. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #353

May 18, 2010 by 2 Comments

  • Name of British Mossad agent handed to Interpol. Dubai police have identified another suspect in the January murder of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He is reportedly a 62-year-old British citizen, who is believed to be currently hiding in western Africa.
  • Russia jails man for spying for the US. Gennady Sipachyov, a Russian whose age and profession have been kept secret by Moscow, has been sentenced to a four-year sentence for allegedly emailing secret military maps identifying classified Russian military infrastructure to the US Pentagon in 2008. Earlier this month, a Russian court rejected an appeal by another alleged US spy, Igor Sutyagin.
  • Bulgarian government wants to copy CIA. Bulgaria’s Defense Minister, Anyu Angelov, has proposed the merging of intelligence services to create a mega-structure of the CIA type. Meanwhile, a panel investigating Bulgaria’s communist-era police files has exposed two of the country’s former counterintelligence heads as former communist state security agents.

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CIA ‘used fake British passports’ in kidnap operation

May 17, 2010 by 1 Comment

UK passport

British passport

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities are looking into allegations that a team of CIA agents made use of forged British passports during an abduction operation in 2003. The allegations surfaced last week in Spain, where a team of prosecutors is currently investigating the activities of 13 CIA agents (11 men and two women) who appear to have used the Spanish tourist resort of Majorca as a base for conducting various operations around Europe. Following the example of Italy, which last year convicted several CIA operatives for illegally abducting a Muslim cleric in Milan, Spanish authorities are now considering issuing arrest warrants for the 13 CIA agents. They are all believed to have been involved in the abduction and rendition of German citizen Khaled El-Masri. El-Masri was abducted in Skopje, Macedonia, in 2003, and later transferred on a secret CIA flight to a Syrian prison, where he says he was brutally tortured. He was later released without explanation, once US authorities realized they had the wrong man. Read more of this post

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