Guatemala formally apologizes for Bay of Pigs invasion

February 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

Alvaro Colom

Alvaro Colom

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The President of Guatemala has issued a formal apology to the government of Cuba for his country’s role in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Speaking on Tuesday in a packed auditorium at the University of Havana, President Alvaro Colom said he wanted to “ask Cuba’s forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba” and to officially apologize “as president and head of state, and as commander in chief of the Guatemalan Army. It wasn’t us” who carried the operation, said President Colom, “but it was our territory”. Beginning in 1960, the Guatemalan dictatorship hosted nearly 1,500 Cuban anti-Castro exiles. They were transported from Miami, Florida, and trained in paramilitary tactics with CIA money. They invaded southern Cuba on April 17, 1961, by landing in the Bay of Pigs. Read more of this post

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Polish priest claims Soviets tried to kill Pope in 1987

February 19, 2009 by 4 Comments

Zdzisław Król

Zdzisław Król

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A Polish Catholic priest, who accompanied Pope John Paul II during his 1987 trip to Poland, has said he helped foil a Soviet attempt to assassinate the Pontiff. Zdzisław Król, who today heads the Warsaw Metropolitan Curia, Poland’s largest Catholic institute, claims that the Soviet Union’s foreign military intelligence directorate (GRU) had planned to assassinate the Pope during his speech at Pauline monastery of Jasna Góra, in the city of Częstochowa. The monastery houses the Black Madonna painting, a popular shrine to the Virgin Mary. Zdzisław Król, claims that GRU had supplied a Bulgarian operative living in Poland with precise information on the Pope’s travel itinerary, which had not been publicized for security reasons, as well as train tickets to Częstochowa. Read more of this post

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Lebanese officials claim arrest of Israeli spy

February 19, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star quotes unnamed official sources who report the arrest of an alleged Israeli spy in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh. The arrestee has been identified as Kamal Faqih, a Lebaneze citizen who lived for several years in France before returning to Lebanon to work in the oil retail industry. Lebanese security sources claim Faqih was recruited either by Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, or by Mossad, fifteen years ago while living in France. It is thought that Hezbollah, the Shia Islamic political and paramilitary organization that controls large parts of Lebanon, was initially alerted to Faqih’s “suspicious behavior” during the July 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. Read more of this post

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Austrian police officers arrested on Kazakh espionage charges

February 18, 2009 by 2 Comments

Rakhat Aliyev

Rakhat Aliyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last month we reported on Rakhat Aliyev, former Director of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) and former son-in-law to the country’s dictatorial president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2007, following his divorce with Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Aliyev was stripped of his government positions, issued with an arrest warrant, and now lives in exile in Vienna, Austria. Soon afterwards, Aliyev began exposing President Nazarbayev’s corrupt dealings with foreign oil companies operating in Kazakhstan. In January of this year, a Kazakh-employed public relations firm working to “exonerate” Nazarbayev was found to have received assistance from “two anonymous serving officers of MI6”, Britain’s external intelligence agency. Now a new scandal has erupted in Vienna, where two Austrian police officers have been arrested by the country’s authorities and charged with “spying for Kazakhstan”. The two officers were apprehended by counterintelligence agents while reportedly “gathering information from a computer about Rakhat Aliyev”. Read more of this post

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Former MI5 head warns UK turning into a police state

February 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Rimington

Rimington

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is one thing for the British government to be accused of exploiting anxiety over terrorism to restrict civil liberties. It is quite another for these accusations to be made by the former Director-General of MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence organization. Dame Stella Rimington, who headed the secretive agency between 1992 and 1996, recently gave an interview to Spanish daily La Vanguardia, in which she accused the British government of “scaring people to pass laws restricting freedoms”. She criticized the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of failing to strike the proper balance between civil liberties and security, thus gradually giving in to “one of the goals of terrorism”, namely living “in fear and under a police state”. She also criticized the US for going “too far with Guantánamo and torture, [which] has the opposite effect [to security]: there are more and more suicide bombers who find greater justification”, she said. Read more of this post

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Did CIA censor lawyer’s letter to President Obama?

February 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

Mohamed

Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A prominent British lawyer representing a Guantánamo detainee has said a letter he sent to Barack Obama was censored by US intelligence officials. The lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, represents Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is currently imprisoned by US authorities at the Guantánamo Bay camp. Mr. Mohamed was abducted in 2002 by Pakistani agents, who delivered him to US intelligence. US officials employed the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition and had Mr. Mohamed secretly imprisoned in Morocco and Afghanistan before taking him to Guantánamo. The Ethiopian-born Mohamed says he was brutally tortured while in Moroccan and US custody. Earlier this month, two British judges overseeing Mr. Mohamed court challenge in the UK, accused the British government of keeping “powerful evidence” about Mr. Mohamed’s torture secret, after being threatened by Washington that it would “stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK”. Read more of this post

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Ukrainian spies seek extended powers to operate abroad

February 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Malomuzh

Malomuzh

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Colonel General Mykola G. Malomuzh, the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (SZRU), has announced that his agents are seeking extended powers to perform activities abroad. The head of Ukraine’s premier intelligence organization said his operatives are in need of “new national legislation that will create the conditions necessary for [intelligence] work abroad”. Mr. Malomuzh said SZRU aims to extend its operations in areas of the world where “there are new threats”, including warzones and “terrorist-controlled territories”. He also said the initiative for expanded spy powers emerged after the capture last September of Ukrainian ship MV Faina by pirates off the Somali coast. The ship was recently released, after the pirates were given over $3 million in ransom money. However, the case led to international embarrassment for Ukraine, after the pirates publicized the captured ship’s freight manifest, which revealed that MV Faina was carrying military hardware for use by the genocidal government of Sudan, through Kenya. Speaking about the ship’s capture, the head of SZRU revealed that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had ordered SZRU agents and others to travel to the Somali coast and free the ship by any means necessary.

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Obama lawyers employ “state secrets” clause again, despite assurances for openness

February 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Judge Walker

Judge Walker

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Last week, US Justice Department officials employed a “state secrets” clause previously used by the Bush Administration, to block a lawsuit against CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The move surprised many observers, as only days earlier the new US Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, had ordered “a review of all claims of state secrets used to block lawsuits” in an attempt to stop hiding “from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know”. Remarkably, last Friday the Obama Administration tried using the same “state secrets” clause again, this time to prevent a lawsuit filed by a now defunct Islamic charity against the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping scheme. Read more of this post

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Disgraced CIA officer held far more important post than initially thought

February 15, 2009 by 10 Comments

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
On February 7, intelNews reported on the indictment of Steven J. Levan, a 16-year CIA operative who was caught using Agency credit cards to pay for over $75,000 in personal expenses, including luxury hotel stays and a $700 watch. It has now emerged that Levan was “a far more important official at the agency than previously reported”. His office is allegedly located at the CIA’s senior executive suite on the seventh floor of the Agency’s Langley, VA, headquarters, and he has also served as CIA station chief at an unidentified country. Investigative reporter Jeff Stein quotes an unnamed intelligence source who describes Steven Levan as a rising agent serving “in one of the high visibility staff aide positions which are usually reserved for folks expected to move on into top echelons”. Read more of this post

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Saudi spy chief brokers secret Afghan-Taliban talks

February 14, 2009 by 2 Comments

Prince Muqrin

Prince Muqrin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
British daily The Independent reports that the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai is now involved for the first time in direct secret talks with the Taliban. The negotiations are mediated by Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, a senior member of the Saudi Royal family, who heads Saudi Arabia’s main intelligence directorate, the Re’asat Al Istikhbarat Al A’amah (a.k.a. General Intelligence Presidency, GIP). Prince Muqrin, who knew Osama bin Laden personally in the 1970s and 1980s, has supervised the negotiations since last December, when envoys of the Afghan government and the Taliban insurgency met in the Kingdom during the Muslim observance of Ramadan. Read more of this post

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Taiwan says unwilling spies blackmailed by China

February 13, 2009 by 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The Taiwanese government has announced the arrest of four Taiwanese civil servants caught spying on behalf of China. Justice Ministry spokesperson, Luo Chi-wang, said the four were blackmailed by Chinese intelligence officers after they were photographed walking into a red-light-district bar in an unnamed city of mainland China. The Chinese officers warned the four civil servants that they would send copies of the photographs to their families unless they worked as operatives for the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence agency of the People’s Republic of China. Read more of this post

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Venezuela says it uncovered new coup attempt

February 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

Hugo Chávez

Hugo Chávez

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Venezuela has announced the arrest of five active duty soldiers whom it accuses of conspiring to storm the presidential palace and overthrow the government. The news was revealed on Wednesday by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The President said the country’s General Counterintelligence Office apprehended the soldiers, after intercepting messages they exchanged with “a soldier on the run in the US [and] protected by the US government”. The soldiers were allegedly conspiring to storm the Palacio de Miraflores, which houses the office of the President, under an operation codenamed “Operativo Independencia”. Read more of this post

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EU officials warned of increasing espionage

February 12, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has leaked an internal European Union (EU) memorandum, warning EU officials that “the threat of espionage is increasing day by day”. The memorandum, authored last December by the European Commission’s Director of Security, Stephen Hutchins, notes that an increasing number of “countries […] lobbyists, journalists [and] private agencies […] are continuing to seek sensitive and classified information” in Brussels. Commenting on the confidential memorandum, a European Commission spokesperson hinted that many of these entities use presentable female interns as agents, who often employ sexual attraction as a means of extracting classified information from EU officials. Several hundred interns descend on the Berlaymont –EU’s headquarters in Brussels– every year, most of whom are under the age of 25. Read more of this post

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Obama officials toe Bush Administration secrecy line in rendition lawsuit

February 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

Eric Holder

Eric Holder

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last Monday it emerged that the new US Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, ordered “a review of all claims of state secrets used to block lawsuits into warrantless spying on Americans and the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects”. US Justice Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, said the directive “will ensure the [state secrets] privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know”. Despite Mr. Holder’s review order, however, the Obama Administration has chosen to retain the previous government’s “state secrets” clause to block a lawsuit filed by victims of CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The case is Binyam Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, a Colorado-based Boeing Corporation subcontractor that provided logistical support to the CIA’s prisoner transfer scheme. Read more of this post

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UK Air Force deploys world’s most advanced spy plane

February 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has announced the official deployment of what it describes as “the most advanced long-range, airborne surveillance system of its kind in the world”. The aircraft-based system is called ASTOR (Airborne Stand-Off Radar) and is installed on Raytheon’s Sentinel R1 jets. The ASTOR radar is reportedly so advanced that it can detect target movement over “thousands of square miles, looking deep into valleys, picking out well-used enemy routes and mapping vehicle activity”, and can even perform during bad weather at night. What is more, the twin-engine aircraft can do all that while flying up to 7.5 miles above ground level, thus staying clear of any engagement by most air-defense systems, including surface-to-air missiles. Read more of this post

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