New spy tech agency developing advanced biometrics systems

February 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was developed by the US Pentagon in 1958, following the shock caused by the successful launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik, is well known. What is much less well known is the corresponding agency for the US intelligence community: IARPA. Its initials stand for Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, and its mission is to work under the Director of National Intelligence to create hi-tech applications for America’s intelligence agencies. Established quietly in 2007, IARPA is currently located at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL), but is projected to move to a new facility at the University’s College Park before the end of 2009. Read more of this post

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Another CIA agent gone wild, denied bail

February 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Just hours after intelNews examined the growing number of cases of out-of-control CIA agents, another incident has been added to the long list. Steven J. Levan, a 16-year CIA veteran, pleaded guilty last Thursday to fraud charges, after he was caught using CIA credit cards to pay for over $75,000 in personal expenses, which included pricey hotel stays and a $700 Raymond Weil watch. Levan was a high-paid CIA case agent residing in Virginia, and participated in several overseas CIA tours in the 1980s and 1990s. Recently, however, he was arrested and terminated from the Agency on January 12, after he was caught using credit card accounts customarily used by the CIA for undercover purposes, to fund unauthorized expenses. Interestingly, Levan has been refused bail since his arrest, to prevent him from “peddling national security secrets to foreign powers to raise more money”. Read more of this post

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Suspicious FSB inquiries preceded Politkovskaya assassination

February 6, 2009 by 2 Comments

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) filed several inquiries about journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s place of residence in the days before she was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment block, a Moscow district court heard yesterday. The allegation, made several days ago by former FSB officer Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov, appeared to corroborate information discovered in an archived written request by the FSB to Russia’s Federal Migration Service, inquiring as to Mrs. Politkovskaya’s residence address in Moscow. The FSB request, dated September 18, 2006, 19 days prior to the journalist’s assassination, sought to clarify an apparent discrepancy between Mrs. Politkovskaya’s registered address and actual residence in the Russian capital. Read more of this post

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US threatened to end UK spy cooperation, say judges

February 5, 2009 by 1 Comment

David Miliband

David Miliband

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Two British judges published scathing criticism yesterday of the British government’s decision to withhold documents on the case of a Guantánamo detainee who says he was tortured, thus giving in to alleged pressure by the US to keep the information secret. The two high court judges, Justice Lloyd Jones and Lord Justice Thomas, accused the British government of keeping “powerful evidence” secret after being threatened by Washington that it would “stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK”. The judges also dismissed claims by the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that “the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk” if the American threats were to materialize. The court case involves allegations of torture by 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 authorities, who delivered him to US intelligence agents. The latter 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. Read more of this post

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France’s former spy chief refuses to testify in Angolagate trial

February 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

Yves Bertrand

Yves Bertrand

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
France’s former spy chief has refused to testify as a defense witness in the infamous Angolagate trial, which probes illegal arms shipments from France to Angola in the early 1990s. The arms scandal, which was uncovered in 1995 by the French authorities, involved unauthorized shipments of over $600 million-worth of weapons to the MPLA-dominated government in post-civil-war Angola. Forty-two people are implicated in the case, some of whom are facing charges of money laundering, tax evasion, as well as bribery of French government officials responsible for overseeing commercial shipments to Angola. The 42 include Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late French President Francois Mitterrand, former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, and two businessmen, Pierre Falcone, from France, and Israeli-Russian tycoon Arkady Gaydamak. Interestingly, Falcone and Gaydamak stated during the trial that they planned the illegal weapons shipments to Angola with the secret approval of the French government, which was hoping to gain access to Angolan oil in return for the weapons handout. Read more of this post

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Obama insiders already in secret talks with Iran, Syria

February 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
French news agency AFP is reporting that individuals associated with the Administration of US President Barack Obama have held several secret meetings with Iranian and Syrian officials during the past several months. The Agency describes the clandestine meetings as “high-level” and notes that the Obama team approved them “even before winning the November 4 election”. Some of the meetings appear to have been coordinated by the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a Nobel Prize-winning anti-nuclear proliferation group. The Executive Director of the group’s US branch, Jeffrey Boutwell, describes the US-Iranian contacts, which took place in The Hague and in Vienna, as “”very, very high-level”, and notes that they covered issues beyond Iran’s nuclear program, including “the Middle East peace process [and] Persian Gulf issues”. Read more of this post

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Belgian intelligence concerned about increasing spy presence

February 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

Alain Winants

Alain Winants

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Despite Belgium’s strategic location and central role in the Cold War, the Belgian secret services have historically had a very limited presence in the country. Their postwar function has been primarily one of information analysis, and it was not until 2006 that they were given powers to intercept communications, conduct authorized breaking-and-entry operations, or detain and question suspects. This situation is changing, however, as the Belgian Federal Parliament prepares to consider a bill on “special intelligence methods” that will further expand the powers of Belgian intelligence services. Last week, Alain Winants, Director of Belgium’s State Security Service (SV/SE) said his agents required expanded investigative powers to combat the increasing presence of foreign spies in the country. Read more of this post

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British MPs to consider torture allegations of MI5 detainees

February 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In 2007, British newspaper The Guardian disclosed that several Pakistani “war on terror” detainees in Pakistan were severely tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being interrogated by British security officers. Nearly two years after the revelations, a joint British Parliament committee has agreed to consider the allegations. On Tuesday, February 3, the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights will hear evidence that interrogators with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) brutally tortured a number of prisoners before handing them over to interrogators working for MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency. In exposing the story in 2007, The Guardian suggested that the MI5 agents were aware of the torture, which involved severe beatings, fingernail extractions, and even physical threats with electric drills. Read more of this post

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South Korea military intelligence caught spying on citizens

February 2, 2009 by Leave a comment

Yongsan

Yongsan

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Since last December, a residential building scheduled for redevelopment in the Yongsan district of South Korean capital Seoul had been the site of a mass occupation campaign. Dozens of protesters, all building residents, were refusing to leave unless they were offered improved compensation and relocation packages. On January 20, however, Seoul’s riot police and SWAT units stormed the building using tear gas and water cannons. During the operation, parts of the building were engulfed in a huge blaze, which caused the deaths of five protestors and one police officer, and injured 23 people, one of whom is reportedly in a coma. On the evening of Saturday, January 31, protestors who had gathered in and around Seoul’s Myeongdong Cathedral for a candlelight memorial service for the victims of the fire spotted a group of plainclothes military intelligence officers with South Korea’s Capital Defense Command (CDC) clandestinely observing the vigil. The six-member group appeared to be directed by a number of commanding officers who were also in the proximity of the vigil, though detached from the crowd. Organizers of the vigil isolated the six intelligence officers and proceeded to search them, but discovered no surveillance equipment. Witnesses said, however, that one of the intelligence officers appeared to be reporting on the movements of vigil participants on his cell phone. Read more of this post

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Confirmed: CIA extraordinary renditions to continue under Panetta

February 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

Leon Panetta

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 22, I examined the possibility that Leon Panetta, Barack Obama’s nominee for CIA Director, may favor the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition. The Los Angeles Times has now confirmed that the new US President has authorized the CIA to continue its policy on renditions under Mr. Panetta –a Clinton-era administrator who has publicly come out against the use of torture in interrogations. Extraordinary rendition involves extrajudicial kidnappings of wanted terrorism suspects by CIA or FBI paramilitaries, often abroad, followed by extrajudicial transfers of same suspects to third countries, such as Egypt or Syria, where they are usually tortured. The extracted information is then utilized by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies in their pursuit of the “war on terrorism”. This notorious practice became widespread under the first George W. Bush Administration, but it was first implemented under former US President Bill Clinton. As White House aide to Mr. Clinton at the time, Leon Panetta was reportedly  “a consumer of intelligence at the highest level”. It follows that he must have known about the practice, though he apparently failed to speak out against it. 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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MI6 agents accused of assisting corrupt Kazakh oil propaganda effort

January 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

Rakhat Aliyev

Rakhat Aliyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Until recently, Rakhat Aliyev was deeply embedded in Kazakhstan’s corrupt governing establishment. Having served for years as the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister and Director of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (the intelligence service, also known as KNB) he is uniquely aware of the annals of sleaze and fraud that dominate Kazakh political culture. In 2007, following his divorce with Dariga Nazarbayeva, eldest daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Aliyev became estranged from the Kazakh leadership. He was stripped of his government positions, issued with an arrest warrant, and now lives in exile in Vienna, Austria. Soon after his estrangement from the Kazakh leadership, Aliyev began accusing President Nazarbayev of regularly receiving secret commissions from foreign oil companies operating in Kazakhstan, and of illegally expropriating state assets worth billions of US dollars. Read more of this post

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Gates confirms CIA deal with Pakistan on missile strikes

January 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On November 16, 2008, intelNews cited a report in The Washington Post, which revealed that the CIA unmanned drone airstrikes and military incursions in Pakistan are part of a secret US-Pakistani high-level deal. According to the agreement, “the US government refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks while Pakistan’s government continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes”. Last Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared to break Washington’s part of the deal, by publicly admitting that Islamabad was indeed aware of the missile strikes. Mr. Gates was asked by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) during an open-door hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whether the CIA decisions to fire missile missiles on Pakistani territory were “conveyed to the Pakistani government”. The Defense Secretary replied “[y]es, sir”. It is unclear whether he intended to acknowledge Islamabad’s cooperation. The Pakistani government responded on Wednesday through Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq, who denied the existence of a deal on the CIA missile strikes. The US Pentagon has so far refused to comment on Secretary Gates’ admission.

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Unprecedented German tax scandal has intelligence connection

January 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

Heinrich Kieber

Heinrich Kieber

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Klaus Zumwinkel was until recently the CEO of Deutsche Post, Germany’s now-privatized postal company, which is said to be the world’s largest logistics corporation. Early yesterday morning, Zumwinkel was given a two-year suspended sentence and fined €1 million for systematically evading taxes “with criminal energy”, as the presiding judge put it. The disgraced former CEO is thus far the highest-profile offender in what has become the largest financial crime scandal in German history. The affair involves nearly 1,000 names of wealthy investors, celebrities, and business executives, linked to illegal fund deposits at LLB and LGT Group, two “no-questions-asked” banks owned by the Royal family of the tiny alpine tax haven of Liechtenstein. What is perhaps less known is that the investigation, which now incorporates thousands of individuals in at least a dozen countries, began through a tip received by Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Read more of this post

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DNI nominee advocates major overhaul of US intelligence classification rules

January 27, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Confirmation hearings for retired US Navy Admiral Dennis Cutler Blair, who is expected to succeed Mike McConnel as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), have already begun on the Hill. Last week, Admiral Blair was questioned by several Senators about the classification system for intelligence records, which is frequently the subject of criticism by open government advocates. In responding, Mr. Blair conceded that “[t]here is a great deal of over-classification, some of [which] is done for the wrong reasons, to try to hide things from the light of day”. His remark prompted Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to relay his personal experience, which “is that over and over and over again, we have seen official secrecy used not for national security purposes, but to mislead the public”. Read more of this post

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