News you may have missed #446

October 28, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • American pleads guilty to spying for China. Glenn D. Shriver acknowledged on Friday that he accepted $70,000 from Chinese spies as he attempted to secure jobs with the CIA and US Foreign Service that would have allowed him to expose US government secrets. He apparently spent two years going through the CIA hiring process and reached the final security screenings. But US intelligence sources say Shriver was discovered very early in the hiring process.
  • Obama widens CIA operations in Pakistan. The US is pushing to expand secret CIA operations in Pakistan. But Islamabad is so far rebuffing US requests to allow additional CIA officers and special operations military trainers to enter the country.
  • US spy balloons blew towards Iran. The latest WikiLeaks revelations show that on two occasions in 2006 American JLens spy balloons broke from their moorings in Iraq and drifted toward the Iranian airspace. No information on the balloons’ fate is reported in the war logs. Did Iran get hold of them?

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Proposed US-Chinese telecom deal worries US legislators

October 28, 2010 by 1 Comment

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Three US Congress members have raised security concerns about a proposed deal between American and Chinese telecommunications companies, claiming that it could facilitate Chinese espionage in the United States. The proposed collaboration is between US-based Sprint-Nextel and Cricket Wireless, and Chinese hardware manufacturers ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies. But three US Senators, Jon Kyl (R-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), have written to US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski, claiming that the ZTE and Huawei are effectively controlled by China’s civilian and military intelligence establishment. According to the legislators, if the proposed deal goes through the Chinese government may be able to use ZTE and Huawei to “manipulate switches, routers, or software embedded in American telecommunications networks so that communications can be disrupted, intercepted, tampered with, or purposely misrouted”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #445

October 27, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • WikiLeaks files show Iranian involvement in Iraq. The latest WiliLeaks release of nearly 392,000 US military reports from Iraq shows, among other things, that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq War. According to the documents, Tehran’s elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported weapons like Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and US troops.
  • WikiLeaks founder on the run. Julian Assange’s fate seems as imperiled as that of Private Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old former Army intelligence operative under detention in the US for leaking Iraq and Afghan war documents to WikiLeaks. Last Monday, Mr. Assange’s bid for a residence permit in Sweden was rejected. His British visa will expire early next year.
  • Money problems of US spies may threaten US security. Elizabeth Bancroft The executive director of the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers, has suggested that government agencies should monitor intelligence service employees with security clearances, who may have fallen into bankruptcy during the ongoing economic crisis. Spy agencies are worried that financial problems might leave these employees open to bribery or blackmail.

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Greek-Cypriot spies behind largest document theft in UN history, report claims

October 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

Alexander Downer

Alexander Downer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Agents of the Greek-Cypriot government were behind the largest document theft in the history of the United Nations, according to reports in the Cypriot and Turkish press. In 2009, Greek-Cypriot newspaper Fileleftheros published extracts of what the paper claimed was a treasure trove of 6,500 UN documents containing sensitive information on the organization’s negotiations with Turkish-Cypriot leaders. The negotiations concerned ongoing talks over a possible reunification of the island, which has been divided for decades between the Greek-majority southern part, and the predominantly Turkish northern part. According to the newspaper’s New York correspondent, the documents were leaked by a source inside the UN. But Cypriot and Turkish media now claim that an internal UN report has concluded that the documents were stolen by Greek-Cypriot intelligence agents, who subsequently leaked some of it to the Greek-Cypriot press. The operation was reportedly headed by a Cyprus Intelligence Service (CIS) agent who befriended Sonja Bachmann, senior aide to Alexander Downer, former Australian Foreign Minister, senior advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Mon, and the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Cyprus negotiations. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #444

October 26, 2010 by Leave a comment

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Mysterious Russian spy goes on trial in Poland

October 25, 2010 by Leave a comment

Valentin Korabelnikov

V. Korabelnikov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The trial has started in Warsaw, Poland, of an unnamed Russian citizen accused of working for Russian military intelligence. On October 22, the mysterious Russian, known only as “Tadeusz J.”, appeared before the Regional Court of Warsaw and pleaded not guilty to charges of collecting military intelligence on Poland on behalf of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The accused has a Polish-sounding name and is fluent in Polish, but is not a Polish citizen. Instead, he lived in Poland under permanent residency status for at least decade. His legal income appears to have come from his ownership of a hunting-rifle accessories store. But he was arrested last February, after a six-month surveillance operation by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW). He was subsequently charged of obtaining classified information on the Polish military through his patronage of elite Polish hunting clubs, whose members included several Polish military officials. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #443

October 25, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • First budget cuts in a decade for UK spy agencies. Spending on Britain’s intelligence agencies is set to fall by 7%, for the first time in more than a decade. This is be expected to force MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to cap staff numbers, merge some of their operations, and scrap plans to modernize some of their buildings. Looks like even more British spies will be moving to Australia.
  • South Koreans arrested for trying to defect to North. Three South Koreans, including a medical doctor, are being investigated after allegedly trying to defect to North Korea from China. It is extremely unusual for South Koreans or other nationals to attempt to defect to the North.
  • Plame calls Fair Game movie ‘accurate portrayal’. CIA agent Valerie Plame has said the movie Fair Game, based on her book, is a “really good, accurate portrayal of what we went through, both personally and in the political maelstrom that we live through”. The Bush administration was accused of blowing Plame’s cover as retaliation after her diplomat husband openly challenged the reasoning behind the Iraq War.

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Iran admits some of its nuclear scientists spied for the West

October 22, 2010 by Leave a comment

Ali Akbar Salehi

Ali Akbar Salehi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A top-level Iranian government official has admitted that some scientists and technicians in Iran’s nuclear energy program were successfully lured into spying for Israeli and Western intelligence agencies in the past. The disclosure, which was characterized as “stunning” by the Associated Press, marked the first-ever open admission by the Iranian government that the country’s nuclear energy program has been penetrated by foreign spies. It was made last weekend by Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Vice President and Director of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization. According to the Iranian government-controlled Fars News Agency, Vice President Salehi told an audience that individual scientists and technicians working in Iran’s nuclear program had used their access to classified relevant information to benefit from “foreign purchases and commercial affairs”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #442

October 21, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Israeli lobby intensifies Pollard release effort. As convicted spy Jonathan Pollard approaches 25 years behind bars, Israelis and others are renewing efforts to secure freedom for the former US Navy intelligence analyst, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for relaying military documents to Israel.
  • No compromise in WikiLeaks expose, concludes Pentagon. Much ado about nothing. The US Pentagon has concluded that no US intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs by the WikiLeaks website. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks is preparing to publish more revelations.
  • Niger ex-spy chief arrested. Seini Chekaraou, head of counterintelligence at the uranium-rich nation of Niger, has been arrested along with four senior members of the West African country’s ruling junta, allegedly on suspicion that they were “attempt[ing] to destabilize the [military] regime” that took power in the country last February.

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CIA sues former officer for publishing unauthorized book

October 21, 2010 by Leave a comment

The Human Factor book cover

The Human Factor

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The US Central Intelligence Agency has announced a lawsuit against a former officer who authored a book without the Agency’s prior approval. The book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (published in 2008), was written by a former CIA deep cover operative going by the pseudonym Ishmael Jones. Jones first submitted the book’s manuscript, which offers a highly unsympathetic account of the CIA, to the Agency’s review board. However, when it became clear that the board’s decision would have been unfavorable, he published the book without approval, thus breaking what the CIA claims is his legal obligation to abide by the review board’s decisions. The CIA filed a lawsuit against Jones in July, but only announced it this week. It seeks access to the financial proceeds of The Human Factor, as well as to prohibit further exposés from Jones. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #441

October 20, 2010 by 2 Comments

  • US officials admit terrorist suspect was DEA informant. US government officials have told The Washington Post what the world’s media has been saying for almost a year, namely that Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley, who was arrested by the FBI in October for plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper, was working as a Drug Enforcement Administration informant while training with Islamist insurgents in Pakistan.
  • Ex-CIA officer decries Israeli policies. Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer at the CIA, has said in an interview that Israel’s policies in Palestine “are manifestly evil”.
  • Bomber who killed seven at CIA base was not vetted. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian al-Qaeda sympathiser who killed himself and seven CIA agents at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan in January had not been properly vetted, the CIA has said.

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British citizen among Mossad assassins intrigues investigators

October 20, 2010 by Leave a comment

Christopher Lockwood

Lockwood

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Only a handful of the 33 members of an Israeli assassination squad, who killed a senior Hamas member in Dubai last January, carried non-fraudulent passports. Most of the assassins, who in all probability worked for Kidon, an elite assassination unit within Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, used forged British, Irish, German, Australian, and other passports. Dubai officials investigating the murder of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh have identified at least one British citizen among non-fraudulent passport holders in the Mossad assassination team: he is 62-year-old Christopher Lockwood (photo), who helped facilitate al-Mabhouh’s assassination by transporting some of the Mossad members around Dubai “in a [rented] white minivan with tinted windows”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #440 (USA edition)

October 19, 2010 by Leave a comment

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CIA sued for allegedly discriminating against covert officer

October 19, 2010 by Leave a comment

CIA HQ

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who served the Agency in a covert capacity, has sued his former employer claiming he was discriminated against because he is married to an Asian woman. According to the lawsuit, filed recently at a San Francisco court, covert CIA employee Walter Roule claims the his CIA supervisor favored junior officers with Caucasian wives for overseas postings, thus giving them more opportunities for promotion. Roule also claims that his supervisor threatened the careers of other CIA officers of Asian background, or with Asian partners, if they supported Roule’s discrimination complaint. In his court filing, the former covert CIA officer alleges that the discriminatory behavior started in 2006, when he was covertly posted in “the Northern District of California in a hybrid position”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #439

October 18, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Book critical of Russian FSB published. In a new book entitled The New Nobility, Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan claim that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is less repressive but ultimately more dangerous than its predecessor, the Soviet KGB.
  • Senior-most North Korean defector dies. Hwang Jang-yop, the theoretician behind North Korea’s Songun and Juche state doctrines, who defected to South Korea in 1997, has died at his home in Seoul, aged 87. Last April, South Korea charged two North Korean government agents with attempting to assassinate Hwang.
  • ‘Low morale’ leads MI6 spies to apply for Australian jobs. More than 50 spies at Britain’s MI6 have allegedly responded to a recruitment drive by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). According to insiders, there has been growing uncertainty among MI6’s 2,600 staff over looming budget cuts and inquiries into alleged complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects.

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