News you may have missed #464 (Mossad edition)

January 3, 2011 by 4 Comments

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News you may have missed #463

December 30, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Iranian spy minister admits hacking emails. Iran’s Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi has publicly admitted that the Iranian government has hacked into the emails of Iranian opposition members. He claimed the hacking, conducted by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, revealed messages exchanged between “foreigners and their elements inside Iran”.
  • Details on CIA officer killed in Afghanistan. An interesting article in The Washingtonian offers an interesting background story on Jennifer Matthews, a CIA officer who was killed nearly a year ago in Afghanistan in a suicide bombing by Taliban double-agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi.
  • China jails South Korean alleged spy. China is getting tougher with South Korean spies caught on Chinese soil collecting intelligence on North Korea, and has jailed one of them for more than a year, despite pleas from Seoul, according to news reports.

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News you may have missed #461

December 23, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • London expels Russian diplomat for spying. Britain’s troubled relations with Moscow suffered another blow on Tuesday, when London announced the expulsion of an unnamed Russian diplomat in London following “clear evidence” of spying. The request was communicated to the Kremlin on December 10, and was reportedly countered by Russia with a tit-for-tat expulsion of a British diplomat from the country.
  • Syria saw Israel behind aide’s assassination, leaked cables show. Syria suspected Israel of carrying out the murder of Brigadier General Mohammed Sleiman, a top security aide of President Bashar al-Assad, who was assassinated by a sniper in August of 2008, according to US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks. The killing empowered hardliners in Syria and put an end to moves by President al-Assad for rapprochement between Damascus and Tel Aviv, according to the cables.
  • Israel to publicly press for release of spy held in US. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to officially and publicly appeal to US President Barack Obama in the coming days for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American serving a life term in a US jail for spying on the US for Israel.

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News you may have missed #460

December 17, 2010 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #459 (Russia edition)

December 10, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Son of CIA double spy strikes deal with FBI. Nathan Nicholson, son of CIA officer Harold James Nicholson, who in 1997 was jailed for spying for Russia, has avoided a prison sentence after promising to help the FBI build a new case against his father. The latter has pleaded guilty to enlisting his son from prison to sell the Russians more secrets and collect money owed to him by the Russian spy services.
  • Moscow warns UK of tit-for-tat expulsions. Alexander Sternik, the Russian government’s senior official in Britain, has hinted that any attempt to deport parliamentary assistant Katia Zatuliveter, detained by MI5 for allegedly spying for Russia, could result in tit-for-tat expulsions.
  • Kim Philby honored by plaque at Moscow SVR HQ. Russia has honored British Cold War spy Kim Philby with a plaque at the headquarters of the country’s foreign intelligence agency. Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, is depicted in a sculptured portrait on the plaque as the two-faced Roman god Janus.

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News you may have missed #458

December 7, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • More arrests of alleged Russian agents in Georgia. The government of Georgia arrested six people suspected of being agents for Russia and accused them of staging a series of explosions, including one outside the US embassy in capital Tbilisi. At least 13 more people were arrested last month in Georgia, and are facing charges of spying for Moscow.
  • Iran defector says Tehran hosted N. Korean techs. Mohammad Reza Heydari, who resigned in January from his post as Iranian consul in Norway, and defected to the West, has told a conference in Paris that he saw North Korean technicians “repeatedly” travel to Iran.
  • Spy scandal MP helped second Russian woman stay in UK. British Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Mike Hancock, whose assistant, Katia Zatuliveter, is accused by MI5 of spying for Russia, helped 25-year-old Russian citizen Ekaterina Paderina stay in Britain after she ran into visa problems, in the late 1990s.

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News you may have missed #457

December 2, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • Belgium investigates Colombian spying allegations. Judicial authorities in Brussels have formally opened an investigation into the alleged spying activities of Colombia’s foreign intelligence agency, DAS, in Belgium. The investigation is in response to claims by human rights organizations that the DAS broke Belgium’s espionage laws and spied on European Union politicians.
  • Russia reshuffles foreign intelligence after spy scandal. Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is holding a “minor staff reshuffle” following last summer’s Russian-American spy scandal, in which 10 alleged deep-cover Russian spies were arrested in the United States.
  • Israel gets new spy chief amid big shuffle. Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has appointed Tamir Pardo, a veteran spy, as the new chief of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. Pardo, who was twice deputy director of the Mossad, will replace hard-charging former army general and black operations specialist Meir Dagan, who has run the agency since 2002.

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News you may have missed #456 (Israel edition)

November 25, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • US Senate intel committee ex-chief wants Israel spy free. Former Democratic Senator Dennis DeConcini, who used to chair the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has called for the release of Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy Intelligence Analyst who was found guilty in 1987 of spying on the US on behalf of Israel. Pollard “is guilty, but it’s time for this to be resolved in a better way”, said DeConcini.
  • Israel about to announce next Mossad chief. On Thursday, or at the latest, early next week, the Israeli Prime Minister will announce his pick for the top post at the Mossad. Despite widespread speculation, nobody really knows who will replace Meir Dagan, the current Mossad chief.
  • Mossad book authors accused of plagiarism. The Mossad, a new book on the major exploits of Israel’s storied spy agency, has been on the Israeli best-seller list for months. But if much of the text sounds familiar, it’s because the authors, Nissim Mishal and Michael Bar-Zohar, apparently relied on previously published material –without crediting the original sources.

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News you may have missed #455

November 24, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Israel says it did not kill German politician. Israel has rejected a claim by a Swiss chemistry professor that the 1987 murder of German politician Uwe Barschel had the hallmarks of a Mossad assassination. For more on Barschel see previous intelNews story here.
  • Foreign cyber spies targeted UK defense official. Foreign spies, probably working for the People’s Republic of China, targeted senior British defense official Joanna Hole, in a sophisticated spear phishing operation that aimed to steal military secrets. The plan was foiled last year when Hole became suspicious of an email she received from a contact she had met at a conference.
  • The 10 most interesting CIA-backed startups. America’s only federally funded venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, was created in 1999 during the tech boom. The company invests in startups developing technologies that could prove useful to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

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News you may have missed #454

November 19, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Georgia lets Russian envoy visit jailed spy suspect. Georgia says it has allowed a representative of the Russian consulate to meet with a Russian citizen detained on charges of espionage. The jailed man is one of 13 individuals suspected of spying for Russia, who were arrested by Georgian counterintelligence earlier this month. Four of the detained suspects are Russian citizens and nine are Georgian nationals.
  • Danish agency aware of CIA spying since 2004. The Danish security services have released a statement saying they have known since 2004 that the US Embassy in Copenhagen was collecting information on Danish citizens. Last week, several Scandinavian countries launched investigations into the activities of intelligence gathering networks employed by US embassies.
  • Iran charges German reporters with espionage. Iranian officers detained the journalists, who were pretending to be tourists, as they conducted an interview with the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, condemned to death by stoning.

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News you may have missed #453

November 18, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • France accuses Iran of violence at Tehran embassy. A diplomatic standoff between France and Iran has ensued, after Paris accused Iran’s security services of committing “unacceptable acts of violence” on French diplomatic personnel at the French embassy in Tehran. The alleged incident happened as guests gathered at the embassy for a traditional Persian music concert. Iranian plainclothes security forces and uniformed police stopped about two-thirds of 130 invited guests from entering the building, and an unknown number of people were seen being taken away in unmarked vans.
  • CIA picks Air Force general to lead military ops office. The CIA announced Monday that it has chosen an Air Force Lt. Gen. Kurt A. Cichowski, who has extensive experience in Predator drones, to head its military affairs office. In 2009, Cichowski called the CIA drone assassination program a “phenomenal […] success”.
  • Aussie spies spooked out by student filmmakers. Three media students filming a tourist site near the controversial new headquarters of Australia’s spy organization, ASIO, in Canberra, prompted a late-night police check, apparently over security concerns.

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News you may have missed #452

November 16, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Britain’s GCHQ turns to Google for help. GCHQ, Britain’s Cheltenham-based signals intelligence agency, is recruiting an expert on MapReduce, the patented number-crunching technique developed by Google to distribute the load of billions of web searches across its cluster of hundreds of thousands of commodity servers.
  • CIA double agent pleads guilty from prison. CIA officer Harold James Nicholson, who in 1997 was jailed for spying for Russia, has pleaded guilty to enlisting his son Nathan to sell the Russians more secrets and collect money owed to him by the Russian spy services.
  • Georgia offers to negotiate with Russia over spies. Tbilisi is ready for negotiations with Moscow on the repatriation of several alleged Russian spies arrested in Georgia, the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze has said.

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News you may have missed #451 (history edition)

November 12, 2010 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #450

November 10, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Nuke bomb material found in Georgia black market. Highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in the Republic of Georgia.
  • CIA Director warns against leaks. Asserting that lives have been endangered and sources compromised by “a damaging spate of media leaks” in recent months, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta reminded the spy agency’s employees Monday that unauthorized disclosures of classified information “cannot be tolerated”.
  • US issues new unclassified information policy. The White House has issued an executive order to establish a uniform policy for handling “controlled unclassified information” (CUI), which is information that is restricted from disclosure because it involves personal privacy, proprietary data or law enforcement investigations not relating to national security.

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News you may have missed #449

November 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Damning report on CIA attack on missionary plane. US Central Intelligence Agency officers involved with a secret counternarcotics mission in the Peruvian jungle routinely violated agency procedures, tried to cover up their mistakes, and misled Congress immediately after a missionary plane was accidentally shot down in 2001, according to a blistering CIA internal report released on Monday.
  • Israeli legislators call on US to release Jewish spy. Members of the Israeli Knesset are calling on US President Barack Obama to pardon American-born spy Jonathan Pollard, having been jailed in a maximum-security facility since 1985. George Bush refused to pardon Pollard in the last days of his presidency.
  • Analysis: Britain’s MI6 operates a bit differently than CIA. “Like the CIA, MI6 has a website, but while the U.S. agency site is only in English, MI6’s is also in Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese. Another sign of British sophistication: while the CIA site has games and quizzes for kids, the MI6 site gives short tests to allow potential recruits to assess their analytical and administrative skills”. Interesting comparative assessment by Walter Pincus.

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