Dutch spies identified Russian hackers who meddled in 2016 US election

January 29, 2018 by 1 Comment

Cozy BearDutch spies identified a notorious Russian hacker group that compromised computer servers belonging to the Democratic Party of the United States and notified American authorities of the attack, according to reports. In 2016, US intelligence agencies determined that a Russian hacker group known as Cozy Bear, or APT29, led a concerted effort to interfere in the US presidential election. The effort, which according to US intelligence agencies was sponsored by the Russian government, involved cyber-attacks against computer systems in the White House and the Department of State, among other targets. It also involved the theft of thousands of emails from computer servers belonging to the Democratic National Committee, which is the governing body of the Democratic Party. The stolen emails were eventually leaked to WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, and other online outlets. Prior descriptions of the Russian hacking in the media have hinted that US intelligence agencies were notified of the Russian cyber-attacks by foreign spy agencies. But there was no mention of where the initial clues came from.

Last Thursday, the Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur, which airs daily on Holland’s NPO 2 television, said that the initial tipoff originated from the AIVD, Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service. On the same day, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant published a detailed account of what it described as AIVD’s successful penetration of Cozy Bear. According to these reports, AIVD was able to penetrate Cozy Bear in mid-2014, before the hacker group intensified its campaign against political targets in the US. Citing “six American and Dutch sources who are familiar with the material, but wish to remain anonymous”, De Volkskrant said that the AIVD was able to detect the physical base of the Cozy Bear hackers. The latter appeared to be working out of an academic facility that was adjacent to Moscow’s Red Square. The AIVD team was then able to remotely take control of security camera networks located around the facility. Eventually, the Dutch team hacked into another security camera network located inside the buildings in which the hackers worked. They soon began to collect pictures and footage of Cozy Bear members, which they then compared with photos of “known Russian spies”, according to De Volkskrant.

The paper said that the AIVD team continued to monitor Cozy Bear’s activities until at least 2017, while sharing intelligence with the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency in the US. The intelligence was allegedly instrumental in alerting US spy agencies about Russian government-sponsored efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. Several newspapers, including The Washington Post in the US and The Independent in Britain, contacted the AIVD and the MIVD —Holland’s military intelligence agency— over the weekend. But the two agencies said they would not comment on reports concerning Cozy Bear.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 29 January 2018 | Research credit: E.J. & E.K. | Permalink

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Headstone for unmarked grave of Nazi spy who died undetected in wartime Britain

July 11, 2017 by 3 Comments

Jan Willem Ter BraakThe unmarked grave of a Dutch-born Nazi spy, who killed himself after spending several months working undercover in wartime Britain, will be marked with a headstone, 76 years after his death by suicide. Born in 1914 in The Hague, Holland, Englebertus Fukken joined the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands, the Dutch affiliate of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party led by Adolf Hitler, in 1933. In 1940, shortly after the German invasion of Holland, Fukken, who had been trained as a journalist, was recruited by the Abwehr, Nazi Germany’s military intelligence. Abwehr’s leadership decided to include Fukken in the ranks of undercover agents sent to Britain in preparation for Operation SEA LION, Germany’s plan to invade Britain.

Between October 31 and November 2, 1940, the 26-year-old Fukken was secretly parachuted over the Buckinghamshire village of Haversham in central England. British authorities found his discarded parachute a few days later, but by that time Fukken had made his way on foot to the city of Cambridge. Fukken’s precise mission remains unknown. Speculation that he was sent to Britain to assassinate the country’s wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill, is dismissed as fantastical by most historians. What is known is that Fukken carried with him false Dutch papers identifying him as Jan Willem Ter Braak, and a suitcase that contained a radio transmitter supplied to him by the Abwehr.

In Cambridge, Fukken took lodgings with a local family, posing as a member of the Free Dutch Forces, anti-Nazi Dutch officials who had fled to London after the German invasion of Holland and formed a government in exile. Fukken spent the next four months living undercover in Cambridge, and did not register with the authorities, as required. He traveled on most days to locations in England bombed by the Luftwaffe, inspecting the damage and reporting back to his Abwehr handlers in Hamburg by radio or by mail, using secret writing techniques. But his failure to register with the authorities meant that he had no access to ration cards, which were required to purchase food in wartime Britain. He then attracted the attention of the local authorities, after presenting them with a forged ration card that was detected during inspection by a police officer. Fearing arrest, he quickly moved lodgings, but was unable to solve the problem of access to food. Repeated attempts to get the Abwehr to exfiltrate him failed, and his calls for money and usable ration cards were not facilitated, as the Nazi leadership in Berlin had begun to shelve Operation SEA LION. Read more of this post

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Holland suspends its ambassador to China due to suspected honey trap

October 19, 2016 by Leave a comment

Holland Embassy in ChinaThe Dutch government has suspended its ambassador to China and has launched an official investigation into an alleged secret relationship between the ambassador and a female Chinese employee at the Dutch embassy. The ambassador, Ron Keller, is a career diplomat and senior member of the Dutch foreign service corps, who has served in Russia and Turkey among other international posts. He assumed duties as Holland’s ambassador to China in late 2015. In December of that year, he arrived in Beijing and took command of one of the largest Dutch embassies in the world.

Last weekend, however, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Keller had been suspended from his post after it was alleged that he had a secret affair with an employee at the embassy. The employee, whose name has not been released, is reportedly a female Chinese national. Her position at the embassy is not known, but is thought to be of a clerical nature. Foreign diplomats stationed in China —whether married or single— are routinely warned to avoid having intimate relationships with Chinese nationals due to concerns that the latter may be in the service of Chinese intelligence. Some refer to this practice as a ‘honey trap’.  In 2011, Taiwan suffered its most serious espionage case in over half a century when it was revealed that the director of the Taiwanese military’s Office of Communications and Information fell for a “tall, beautiful and chic” Chinese female operative, who held an Australian passport, but later turned out to be a Chinese intelligence officer. In 2014, a leaked British military report warned United Kingdom government officials of attempts by Chinese intelligence services to compromise them using sexual entrapment.

De Telegraaf said it contacted the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs about Keller’s suspension. In a statement, the ministry confirmed the diplomat’s suspension but said that it could not comment on the case. The newspaper reported that Keller is currently back in Holland and that his return to Beijing in an official capacity is not likely.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 19 October 2016 | Permalink

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Dutch technical experts helped US bug foreign embassies in Cold War

January 6, 2016 by 2 Comments

Great Seal bugA tightly knit group of Dutch technical experts helped American spies bug foreign embassies at the height of the Cold War, new research has shown. The research, carried out by Dutch intelligence expert Cees Wiebes and journalist Maurits Martijn, has brought to light a previously unknown operation, codenamed EASY CHAIR. Initiated in secret in 1952, the operation was a collaboration between the United States Central Intelligence Agency and a small Dutch technology company called the Nederlands Radar Proefstation (Dutch Radar Research Station).

According to Dutch website De Correspondent, which published a summary of the research, the secret collaboration was initiated by the CIA. The American intelligence agency reached out to the Dutch technical experts after interception countermeasures specialists discovered a Soviet-made bug inside the US embassy in Moscow. The bug, known as ‘the Thing’, had been hidden inside a carved wooden ornament in the shape of the Great Seal of the United States. It had been presented as a gift to US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman by the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union in 1945, in recognition of the US-Soviet alliance against Nazi Germany in World War II. But in 1952, the ornament, which had been hanging in the ambassador’s office in Moscow for seven years, was found to contain a cleverly designed listening device. The bug had gone undetected for years because it contained no battery and no electronic components. Instead it used what are known as ‘passive techniques’ to emit audio signals using electromagnetic energy fed from an outside source to activate its mechanism.

Wiebes and Martijn say the CIA reached out to the Dutch in 1952, soon after the discovery of ‘the Thing’, in fear that “the Soviets were streets ahead of the Americans when it came to eavesdropping technology”. According to the authors, the approach was facilitated by the BVD, the Cold War predecessor of the AIVD, Holland’s present-day intelligence agency. In the following years, technical specialists in the Netherlands produced the West’s answer to ‘the Thing’ —a device which, like its Soviet equivalent, used ‘passive techniques’ to emit audio signals. Moreover, the Americans are believed to have used the Dutch-made device to but at least two foreign embassies in The Hague, the Soviet Union’s and China’s, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The work by Wiebes and Martijn was initially published in Dutch by De Correspondent in September of last year. An English-language version of the article, which was published in December, can be read here.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 January 2016 | Permalink

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Dutch crime investigator charged with spying for organized criminals

October 20, 2015 by Leave a comment

AIVD HollandA 28-year-old criminal investigator of the Dutch National Crime Squad was arrested by Dutch police on September 29 over allegations of corruption, neglect of duty, and money laundering. The man, named as Mark M., applied for a job at the Dutch police in 2009. According to an online résumé, M. dropped out of professional college in journalism after several years of being self-employed as a freelance reporter covering crime issues.

According to Dutch media, M. did not pass the security screening carried out by the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) as part of the job application. But he was hired nonetheless as trainee in a less sensitive position that is not subject to security screening by the AIVD. The reported reason for M.’s failure to pass the screening process is that he is married to a Ukrainian woman. The AIVD has no intelligence-sharing relationship with its Ukrainian counterpart agency concerning security screenings.

M. is reported to have access to the files “of all large national criminal investigations”, and allegedly sold information on a large scale to drug organizations and criminal biker gangs. He is reported to have close ties with leaders of the biker gangs Satudarah and No Surrender.

Newspaper NRC Handelsblad, which first reported about M., states that the screening involved an investigation into M.’s social environment and personal finances. Television news service RTL Nieuws, which was the first to publicly name the man, reports that M. stood out for his luxurious lifestyle: driving a Porsche Cayenne, frequenting Curaçao and the Dominican Republic for holidays, and wearing expensive watches. During a search of his residence, the police found €235.000 ($266,266), as well as confidential police information that M. allegedly intended to sell.

The police is investigating the extent of the damage caused by M., as well as the precise investigations that he may have compromised. The question of why M. was hired despite not having passed the security screening is part of the investigation. It is, so far, believed that M. acted alone.

Addendum, Nov. 4, 2015: Pending a security clearance from the AIVD, M. was granted access to BlueView, a confidential police data search engine. When the AIVD refused to issue a security clearance, M. was transferred to the traffic department, but superiors failed to revoke his access to BlueView. In 2007, BlueView contained 55 million documents containing data about suspects, transcripts of interrogations and police reports. M.’s authorization level included access to information from the Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIE), that works with informants. M. was able to access BlueView for close to four years.

► Author: Matthijs Koot | Date: 20 October 2015 | Permalink

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Germany and Holland investigated Russian physicist for espionage

July 28, 2015 by Leave a comment

Eindhoven University of TechnologyThe German and Dutch governments allegedly joined forces to investigate a Russian supercomputer specialist, who studied in Germany and Holland, suspecting him of passing technical information to Russian intelligence. German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which published the report in its current issue, identified the physicist only as “Ivan A.” and said that the 28-year-old man was a member of a physics laboratory affiliated with the Max Planck Institute in the western German city of Bonn. According to Spiegel, Ivan A. studied in Bonn between 2009 and 2011, conducting research on quantum physics and nanophotonics, an area of study that examines the behavior of light on the nanometer scale. Much of the research in this specialized field relates to supercomputers and cutting-edge quantum computing applications.

Citing unnamed government sources, Spiegel said that Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is the country’s top counterintelligence agency, started to monitor the scientist once he began meeting regularly with a Russian diplomat. The diplomat, who was stationed at the consulate of the Russian Federation in Bonn, had been identified by German intelligence as a member of the Russian secret services. German counterintelligence officials thus began suspecting Ivan A. of channeling restricted technical information to Moscow via the Russian diplomat.

However, in 2013 Ivan A. relocated to the Dutch city of Eindhoven to study at the Eindhoven University of Technology, at which point German counterintelligence officers reached out to their Dutch colleagues. During one of his trips from Germany to Holland, Ivan A. was detained for several hours along with this wife at the Düsseldorf International Airport. He was questioned and his personal electronic devices were confiscated. Upon his release Germany and Holland jointly launched against him a formal investigation for espionage. Eventually his European Union residence visa was cancelled and he was expelled by the Dutch government as a danger to national security. Der Spiegel said Ivan A. returned to Russia and today denies that he was a spy.

Espionage scandals frequently rock German-Russian relations. In 2013, a German court convicted a married couple, Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, of having spied for the Soviet Union and Russia since at least 1990. The two had used forged Austrian passports to enter West Germany from Mexico in 1988 and 1990.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 July 2015 | Permalink: https://intelnews.org/2015/07/28/01-1744/

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Analysis: New Dutch spy bill proposes changes in approval, oversight

July 7, 2015 by 1 Comment

AIVD HollandOn July 2, 2015, the Dutch government released for public consultation a long-awaited bill that overhauls the Dutch Intelligence and Security Act of 2002. Known also as Wiv2002, the Act is the legal framework for the operations of the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and the Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD). The bill is a complete rewrite of the present law, and includes expansions of power, as well as changes to the approval regime and oversight. The below provides a brief overview focused on the interception and hacking powers.

The services’ special powers, such as interception and hacking, can only be used for a subset of their legal tasks. That subset includes national security,
foreign intelligence and military intelligence. The government annually determines the intelligence needs of itself and other intelligence consumers; the outcome is used to focus and prioritize strategic and operational plans and activities.

The services have and hold a specific interception power, i.e., interception of communication of a specified person, organization and/or technical characteristic (e.g. IMEI, phone number, IP address, email address). This requires approval from the minister in charge. The services also have and hold a non-specific interception power —i.e., ‘bulk’ interception— but the bill expands that power from ether-only to “any form of telecommunications or data transfer”, thus including cable networks. Furthermore, the bill no longer limits the non-specific power to communication that has a foreign source and/or foreign destination, meaning that domestic communication is in scope. Like the specific power, the non-specific power requires approval from the minister in charge. The services can retain raw bulk intercepts not just for one year, as is presently the case, but for three years. Encrypted raw intercepts can be stored indefinitely, as is presently the case; the three year retention period is triggered when bulk-intercepted encrypted data is decrypted.

Certain categories of “providers of communication services” will be required, in consultation with the services, to provide access to their networks, if so requested by the services on the basis of approval from the minister. Those categories will be determined by governmental decree. The term “provider of a communication service” is derived from the term “service provider” in the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime of 2001, and is defined so as to include public telecommunication networks, non-public telecommunications networks, hosting providers and website operators. The services have and hold the right to, under certain conditions and after approval from the Minister, compel “anyone” to decrypt data or hand over keys. The approval request for that must include an indication of the conversations, telecommunications or data transfers that are targeted.

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Former spy sues Dutch state for ‘abandoning’ him in Afghanistan

March 24, 2015 by 1 Comment

MIVDBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A former agent for Holland’s military intelligence agency has sued the Dutch state, alleging that it abandoned him in Afghanistan, after he had spent years providing support services to Dutch operatives there. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported last week that the former agent, identified only as I.A., is a former police officer who relocated to Afghanistan while working for a Western contractor. He then stayed on in the Afghan capital Kabul, where he imported and sold cars. According to I.A., he was eventually approached by Holland’s Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) and secretly hired as an agent.

Dutch researcher Dr. Matthijs Koot, who translated De Telegraaf’s article into English, reports that I.A. claims he was tasked by the MIVD to acquire local cars with forged license plates, as well as provide forged travel documentation, for Dutch Special Forces in Afghanistan. He also says he supplied Dutch intelligence officers with weapons that “fit what was usually seen on the streets” of Kabul, thus helping them blend in with the local population.

According to De Teelgraaf, I.A. is now suing the Dutch government, alleging that the MIVD “left him to his fate” in Afghanistan, a move that allegedly cost him extensive financial damage. He wants the MIVD to acknowledge that he worked for them and furthermore that he should not have been abruptly fired when his services were no longer needed. According to the paper, I.A. threatened to release to the media details of his work for MIVD, including recorded conversations with MIVD officers. This prompted the agency to give him €500,000 ($700,000) in an attempt to unofficially settle his case. This was allegedly confirmed in a court in The Hague by Marc Gazenbeek, legal affairs director for the Dutch Ministry of Defense. However, I.A. claims the money he was given is insufficient and is suing for millions in damages. The Telegraaf says that Pieter Cobelens, who was director of MIVD at the time of I.A.’s employment, denies he was aware of his employment as a spy. The case continues.

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Aruba releases Venezuelan ex-spy despite US calls to detain him

July 30, 2014 by 3 Comments

Hugo Carvajal BarriosBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The former director of Venezuela’s military intelligence, who had been arrested in Aruba following a request by the United States for his capture, has been released, sparking protests from Washington. On July 24, authorities in the Dutch-controlled Caribbean island announced the arrest of Hugo Carvajal Barrios, former director of Venezuela’s Dirección General de Inteligencia Militar (DGIM). Carvajal, a close associate of the country’s late president Hugo Chavez, was accused by the US Department of the Treasury in 2008 of weapons and drugs smuggling. According to the US government, Carvajal was personally involved in illegally providing weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftwing guerrilla group engaged in a decades-long insurgency war against the government of Colombia. It also accused the Venezuelan official of helping the FARC smuggle cocaine out of the country, in a bid to help them raise funds to support their insurgency against Colombian authorities. In January of this year, Caracas appointed Carvajal consul-general to Aruba. Aruban officials told reporters last week that, although Carvajal held a Venezuelan diplomatic passport, he had not yet received his official diplomatic accreditation from the Aruban authorities at the time of his arrest, and was therefore not an accredited diplomat. By the end of last week, it appeared almost certain that Carvajal would be extradited to the US. But the Dutch government suddenly reversed its position on Monday and decided to release Carvajal, who has reportedly been expelled from Aruba and declared persona non grata (unwanted person). Some observers, including Venezuela’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Milos Alcalay, opined that the Dutch territory reversed its decision following “diplomatic threats” by Venezuela, “entailing severe economic relations”. Read more of this post

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Aruba arrests ex-head of Venezuelan intelligence, after US request

July 25, 2014 by Leave a comment

Hugo Carvajal BarriosBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The former director of Venezuela’s military intelligence, who was a close associate of the country’s late president Hugo Chavez, has been arrested in Aruba following a request by the United States. Authorities in the Dutch-controlled Caribbean island announced on Thursday the arrest of Hugo Carvajal Barrios, former director of Venezuela’s Dirección General de Inteligencia Militar (DGIM), which is Venezuela’s military intelligence agency. A close comrade of Venezuela’s late socialist leader, Carvajal was accused by the US Department of the Treasury in 2008 of weapons and drugs smuggling. According to the US government, Carvajal was personally involved in illegally providing weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a leftwing guerrilla group involved in a decades-long insurgency war against the government of Colombia. It also accused the Venezuelan official of helping the FARC smuggle cocaine out of the country, in a bid to help them raise funds to support their insurgency against Colombian authorities. But the government of Venezuela rejects all charges and has been sheltering Carvajal. In January of this year it appointed him consul-general to Aruba, a Dutch colony in the Caribbean located just 15 miles off Venezuela’s coast. Caracas reacted strongly to Carvajal’s arrest, saying the detention of the diplomat was a violation of the Vienna Convention, which grants international diplomats immunity from arrest or detention. But Aruban officials told reporters on Thursday that, although Carvajal holds a Venezuelan diplomatic passport, he has not yet received his official diplomatic accreditation from the Aruban authorities, and is therefore not an accredited diplomat. A spokesperson for the Aruban prosecutor’s office told the Associated Press that Carvajal “does not have any function here in Aruba. He is not the consul-general. Therefore he has no immunity”. Read more of this post

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Announcement: Conference on social media and intelligence

January 22, 2014 by 3 Comments

Social networkingBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
During the past four years, this blog has reported several incidents pointing to the increasing frequency with which spy agencies of various countries are utilizing social networking media as sources of tactical intelligence. But are we at a point where we can speak of a trend? In other words, is the rapid rise of social networking creating the conditions for the emergence of a new domain in tactical intelligence collection? Some experts now contend that the growth of social networking has given rise to a new form of intelligence-gathering: social media intelligence (SOCMINT). There are even some who believe SOCMINT should become a separate entity altogether in the intelligence process. On March 7, 2014, the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association (NISA) will be holding a one-day conference in Amsterdam, to discuss this new phenomenon and consider some of the practical, ethical and political dilemmas involved in SOCMINT. The conference will open with a keynote speech by Sir David Omand, former director of Britain’s’ signals intelligence agency, the GCHQ, who currently teaches at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London. Other speakers come from intelligence and security services in Holland and Belgium, as well as from a variety of academic centers and non-governmental organizations in Europe and the United States. Longtime readers of this website will be familiar with NISA. The group was founded in 1991 with a mission to help focus and streamline academic work on intelligence, security and law enforcement. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #855

October 22, 2013 by

Jean-Claude JunckerBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►Russian spy agency seeks to expand internet surveillance. Under an order drafted by Russia’s Communications Ministry, communications service providers would have to install equipment that would record and save all internet traffic for at least 12 hours and grant the security services exclusive access to the data. The draft order, made public on Monday, has been drafted with the help of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the Soviet-era KGB spy agency. It would take effect in July if it receives final government approval.
►►World War I spy Mata Hari’s birthplace gutted by fire. A fire in the Netherlands has gutted the birthplace of exotic dancer and World War I spy Mata Hari, Dutch media said on Sunday. Mata Hari was born as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle on August 7, 1876, the daughter of a local shopkeeper. She was arrested and executed by firing squad in October 1917, aged 41, after being accused of being a German spy during the First World War. The fire consumed the hair salon that now occupies the place of Mata Hari’s birth, the only remainder untouched by the flames was a small statuette of her dancing, erected outside the shop.
►►Luxembourg PM survives spy scandal in elections. Luxembourg’s Christian Democrat party of long-serving Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker easily remained the biggest party and the first choice to form a new coalition government following yesterday’s elections. Luxembourg was shocked into snap elections this summer after Juncker failed to contain a spying scandal centering on allegations of eavesdropping and wiretapping on politicians, and the keeping of files on ordinary citizens and leading figures dating back to the Cold War.

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Diplomat jailed in biggest Dutch spy affair in recent times

April 24, 2013 by 4 Comments

Raymond PoeterayBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A court in the Netherlands has sentenced a diplomat to 12 years in prison for spying for Russia, in what security observers have called one of the worst espionage scandals in recent Dutch history. Raymond Poeteray, who had worked for Holland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1978, was convicted on Tuesday of spying for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Poeteray was arrested in June of 2012 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport, following an extensive investigation by German counterintelligence. The diplomat was captured as he was boarding a flight to Vienna, Austria, the first leg in a return journey to Bangkok, Thailand. Dutch prosecutors claimed during Poeteray’s trial that he had arranged to meet his Russian handlers in Bangkok and give them three USB drives loaded with classified information, which were found on in his possessions upon his arrest at Schiphol. The three-judge panel that sentenced Poeteray at The Hague said he had spied on Holland “for years [while] on assignment from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service”, in the course of which he damaged the interests of his home country in a “substantial” way. The Dutch prosecutor’s office said Poeteray had provided Moscow with sensitive information, including military and political intelligence on the European Union, inside material on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as documents belonging to the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry. The court heard that, in recent years, the diplomat had given the SVR information about Dutch involvement in the Libyan Civil War, classified data from European-Union-sponsored fact-finding missions in the Republic of Georgia, as well as intelligence on Dutch peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and elsewhere. Read more of this post

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Dutch diplomat arrested for spying for Russia

June 27, 2012 by 14 Comments

Anna ChapmanBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Authorities in Holland have arrested a Dutch diplomat who is said to have worked for the same Russian intelligence unit that handled a group of Russian sleeper agents captured in the United States in 2010. The 60-year-old diplomat, who has been publicly identified only as Raymond P., was arrested over the weekend in The Hague following an extensive investigation by German counterintelligence. According to German newsmagazine Focus, which first aired the story on Saturday, the diplomat is believed to have given nearly 500 classified documents to Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, two Russian intelligence officers operating in Germany. The Anschlags, who are married to each other, and are believed to be Mexican-born, were arrested in October of 2011 in the university town of Marburg in central Germany. They are thought to have moved to Germany from Mexico in 1990, using false Austrian passports supplied to them by the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. At the time of the Anschlags’ arrest, Russian media claimed that the couple had “effectively retired” from the SVR several years ago and were being utilized mostly as message couriers. It now appears that Raymond P. was one of their informants, and that the three operated as part of the same espionage ring in Germany. Interestingly, the Anschlags were also said to be in frequent contact with Russian intelligence agent Anna Chapman (pictured), who was arrested by the FBI in the US in 2010. Chapman was part of a group of 11 Russian sleeper agents who were arrested on the same day by the FBI, and were later expelled to Russia. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #747

June 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich OlympicsBy TIMOTHY W. COLEMAN | intelNews.org |
►►Dutch media reportedly spied on China. Dutch media participated in a clandestine intelligence collection effort on behalf of the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. According to Dutch sources, at least seven reporters attending the Olympics were coaxed into, and were paid for, collecting information and taking photos of targeted Chinese officials interested in speaking with Dutch company and industry representatives. The AIVD did not comment on the allegations but did remark that Dutch law allows them to contact anyone who could provide or has access to intelligence.
►►Nicaragua arrests Colombian national for espionage. According to the Spanish-language weekly newspaper Semana, General Julio Cesar Aviles, the head of Nicaragua’s Army, announced the arrest of Colombian national Luis Felipe Rios, for seeking to “obtain Nicaraguan state documents about defense and national security”. The 34-year old Rios was apparently captured in Managua on Tuesday after having been under the surveillance of Nicaraguan counterintelligence officials for over a year. Rios was in Nicaragua under the guise of being a Spanish national working for a media outlet. The lead prosecutor in Nicaragua, Armando Juarez, claimed that there was “sufficient proof” to prosecute Rios. Colombian officials, including President Juan Manuel Santos, have stated they are investigating the matter.
►►Neo-Nazi linked to 1972 Munich Olympic terrorists. Recently released files by Germany’s security service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), links neo-Nazi Willi Pohl to forged passports provided to Black September terrorists who perpetrated the 1972 attack at the Munich Olympics. The attack resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes. According to German magazine Der Spiegel, over 2,000 documents were released in which the BfV asserts that Pohl assisted and even chauffeured one Black September member around Germany in the weeks leading up to the attack. German police arrested Pohl in 1972 for “unauthorized possession of firearms” and sentenced him to two years’ incarceration for possessing grenades and weapons. He was released only a few days after his conviction and he fled the country, ending up in Lebanon.

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