Iran monarchists, foreign spies, behind suspicious news reports

January 4, 2010 by 3 Comments

Mohammad Reza Madhi

M.R. Madhi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
There is no question that the domestic security situation in Iran is critical, and that we may soon witness crucial political shifts in the Islamic Republic. At the same time, however, observers should be cognizant of what Politico’s Laura Rozen calls “a notable uptick […] in very fishy stories” forecasting the immediate end of the Islamic government by supposed radical Western-aligned forces. IntelNews has detected several such stories in recent days, such as this unconfirmed December 31 report in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, which stated that the Iranian government was moving “[h]undreds of military forces and tens of armored vehicles towards Tehran”, something which never actually occurred. Two days earlier, a report in Dutch government-owned Radio Netherlands had suggested that members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, including Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei, were preparing to abandon the country and seek political asylum in Russia. Read more of this post

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Venezuelan-Dutch spat over Caribbean islands spying

December 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Antilles

Antilles

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A diplomatic rift between Venezuela and Holland that began three years ago has flared up again, after Caracas accused the Dutch government of helping the US spy on Venezuela. Speaking last week at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez said the US had been granted use of Holland’s Caribbean possessions to spy on Venezuelan communications and to “prepare a possible military attack against his country”. He was referring to Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire, the three Netherlands Antilles islands closest to the Venezuelan coast. The Dutch government has authorized the US military to use civilian airports on the islands, which form a self-governing overseas possession of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0185

November 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Article claims US employed cyberwar in 2007. A cover story in the Washington-based National Journal claims former US President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to “launch a sophisticated attack […] on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings”. IntelNews regulars will remember that we had suspected as much.
  • Somali suicide bomb recruiter had US residency. Somali Mohamud Said Omar, who was arrested a week ago in Holland on suspicion of recruiting youth in Minneapolis for suicide missions in Somalia, has a US green card, Dutch media reported Friday.
  • Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial a huge challenge for US judiciary. The alleged 9/11 mastermind’s case poses the question of how to deal with what is likely to be an extremely large body of classified evidence that the prosecution will want to present.

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Dozens of MI5 agents to testify in Real IRA trial

October 23, 2009 by Leave a comment

RIRA gunmen

RIRA gunmen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Over 30 agents of MI5, Britain’s primary domestic intelligence agency, will be anonymously giving evidence at a scheduled trial of three men arrested in connection with a Real IRA international gun smuggling operation. The men, Paul Anthony John McCaugherty, Dermot Declan Gregory, and Desmond Paul Kearns, all from County Armagh in Northern Ireland, were arrested after a yearlong infiltration operation by MI5, involving the use of informants and surveillance equipment. The latter resulted in nearly 90 hours of recorded conversations, which the court said will take “months to transcribe”. Additionally, 35 MI5 agents have so far applied to give evidence in court, their identity concealed behind screens. Read more of this post

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French former spy wanted in Dubai to be tried in Florida

September 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

Herve Jaubert

Herve Jaubert

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A French former spy who escaped secretly from the United Arab Emirates, where he is wanted for fraud and embezzlement, will face trial in the US, where he currently resides. Herve Jaubert left Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), France’s foreign intelligence agency, in 1993, to pursue a career in the luxury tourist market, first in Florida and then in Dubai. But less than a year ago, Emirates authorities accused the Frenchman of embezzling nearly $4 million from Dubai World, a company he helped found in the country. Jaubert says he was threatened with torture by Emirates authorities and decided to escape, despite having been forced to surrender his French passport. He allegedly left the country using an inflatable rubber dinghy to reach a sailboat located just outside UAE territorial waters, which he then used to sail to India. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0081

August 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Dutch double agent called “modern-day Mata Hari” in prison

August 11, 2009 by 2 Comments

Malika Karoum

Malika Karoum

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Malika Karoum, the 33-year old intelligence operative who has been described as the “modern-day Mata Hari” is in prison in Egypt, a Dutch news magazine has revealed. Karoum, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent, joined Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) in 2004, and worked as an undercover agent investigating Islamist groups operating on Dutch soil. In 2006, AIVD sent Karoum to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to aid an international investigation into money laundering with possible Islamist links. But Dutch intelligence sources say that Karoum, whose apparent cover was working as a real-estate agent, began “subcontracting” herself to Egyptian and United Arab Emirates intelligence services, and eventually utilized her real-estate cover to enter the murky business world of property development in Dubai. Read more of this post

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Dutch spy service sued for raiding journalist’s home

July 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

van der Graaf

van der Graaf

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) has been sued by the country’s largest newspaper for bugging telephones belonging to its journalists and editors and for raiding the house of a reporter. Last June, the home of Jolande van der Graaf, who works for De Telegraaf newspaper, was raided by security agents after she authored two investigative articles dealing with AIVD’s intelligence failures in the Iraq War. The raid followed the arrest of an AIVD worker and her partner, also an ex-AIVD agent, who allegedly leaked classified information to De Telegraaf. Following the raid, the newspaper discovered that the personal and work phones of van der Graff, as well as other De Telegraaf journalists and editors, including the paper’s chief editor, Sjuul Paradijs, were wiretapped by AIVD in the course of its investigation. Read more of this post

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Wikileaks publishes major RAND intelligence study

March 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Wikileaks, the public website that anonymously publishes leaks of sensitive documents, has aired a major US government study on intelligence and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study, titled Intelligence Operations and Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan, was initially published on a confidential basis in November of 2008 by the Research and Development (RAND) Corporation, the research arm of the US Pentagon. Originally prepared for the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command, the 318-page study is described by Wikileaks as the “Pentagon Papers” of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The RAND Corporation report findings are reportedly not as interesting as the “candid and revealing interview quotes” scattered throughout the document, which represent the views on the wars of nearly 300 intelligence officers and diplomats from the US, Britain and the Netherlands. Read more of this post

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French intelligence operatives’ trial resumes in Belgrade

January 30, 2009 by 3 Comments

Petrušić

Petrušić

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The trial of a three-member group of French intelligence operatives arrested in Yugoslavia in 1999, on charges of planning to assassinate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, has resumed for a fourth time in the Serb capital Belgrade. The sensational charges against the three are not unique. Although the intelligence history of NATO’s 1999-2000 war in Yugoslavia has yet to be written, the limited information currently available points to significant intelligence and espionage activity by several European nations in the former Yugoslavia. Most notably, in August 2000, the Yugoslav army captured a covert group of two British (Adrian Pragnell and John Yore) and two Canadian (Shaun Going and Liam Hall) operatives who were captured on Yugoslav soil reportedly without visas and in possession of materials for making sophisticated explosives. All four were eventually released by the post-Slobodan Milosevic Yugoslav government. In another case, a team of four Dutch undercover commandos was intercepted while attempting to cross into Serbia from Montenegro.  Read more of this post

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