Journalist talks about revealing NSA program whistleblower

December 18, 2008 by Leave a comment

Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek investigative correspondent who authored the recent article about Thomas Tamm, the whistleblower of NSA’s domestic spying program, has given an interview to Democracy Now. Isikoff, who wrote the article with Tamm’s consent, states in the interview that “Tamm’s lawyers have been told that US Department of Justice officials [are going to leave] the decision on whether to prosecute [Tamm] to the Obama Justice Department”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Indians arrest alleged Pakistani military intelligence agent

December 17, 2008 by Leave a comment

The Uttar Pradesh police force announced earlier today that its Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) has arrested an alleged Pakistani Military Intelligence operative in Lucknow. The ATS has released the alias (Sikandar) of the alleged operative, whose name is Abdul Jabbar, which prompts observers to speculate that Jabbar’s arrest was part of an elaborate counterintelligence sting, possibly involving Indian moles inside Pakistani Military Intelligence. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Scotland Yard urged to drop advisor with terrorist ties

December 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

Harrath

Harrath

For four years, the Scotland Yard, headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police Service, has employed Mohamed Ali Harrath as an “anti-terrorism advisor” while funding his London-based Muslim television station with tens of thousands of pounds. Last week The London Times discovered that Harrath is wanted by the Tunisian authorities and by Interpol “because of his links to an alleged terror organization”. The organization, known as the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT), is said to advocate “an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence”. The Tunisian government is not known for its democratic credentials, but British intelligence organizations seem to agree with its assessment of FIT. In 2003 an MI5 witness implicated “FIT [in] terrorism activities in France” before Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Israel pressuring Russia on sale of S-300 missiles to Iran

December 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports that Israel’s government is preparing to send Major General Amos Gilad, a senior Defense Ministry official, to Moscow, to pressure the Russians not to sell an advanced antiaircraft system to Iran. Gilad’s visit, which will include meetings with Russian senior defense and intelligence officials, is aimed at preventing the planned sale of Russia’s advanced S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Tehran. Military experts have warned Israel that, by purchasing and installing the S-300 system, Iran will effectively “rule out an Israeli war against Iran” by eliminating the possibility of a surprise Israeli air attack. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , ,

Tallinn government surveillance cameras reveal black bag operation

December 16, 2008 by 1 Comment

A surveillance camera monitoring the City Government building in Estonian capital Tallinn has recorded nighttime images of what appears to be a black bag operation by either Kaitsepolitseiamet (KPol), the country’s  Security Police, or by Russian intelligence. Black bag operations refer to covert, surreptitious entries into structures in the course of human intelligence missions. Responding to allegations by Tallinn mayor, Edgar Savisaar, the country’s public prosecutor disclosed that KPol officers had surreptitiously entered the building to “remove secret microphones” from the office of Ivo Parbus, an adviser to the city’s deputy mayor, who has been arrested in connection with a bribing scandal. However, Tallinn’s mayor says that he does not believe the break-in to have been authorized by KPol, and that “he has information that one [of the] person[s seen] entering the building is a former spy of the Russian army”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Russian government amends treason and spying definitions

December 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

Last week Russia’s State Duma passed a law abolishing the use of juries in terrorism trials, and replacing them with three-judge panels. This week the government has submitted yet another bill significantly revising legal definitions of spying and treason. Current Russian law defines spying and treason as “hostile” actions threatening “the foreign security of the Russian Federation”. The new bill, if enacted, will revise the definition to “[actions] against the security of the Russian Federation, including its constitutional order, sovereignty, territorial and state integrity”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , ,

US federal appeals court upholds National Security Letters

December 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

National Security Letters (NSLs) are types of warrantless subpoenas issued by US government agencies. They are typically used to force organizations or companies to surrender information pertaining to individuals or groups. In the late 1970s, NSLs were used in rare instances by the FBI during investigations. The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act marked an unparalleled expansion of the power of NSLs, allowing their use against American citizens even in cases when they are not targets of criminal investigations. The USA PATRIOT Act also ratified a gag order provision preventing NSL recipients from disclosing the letter’s existence. The CIA, FBI and the US Department of Defense are all known to have issued several NSLs in recent years. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Estonian sleeper agent may have been double spy, say Germans

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

Herman Simm

Herman Simm

Last month, Estonian counterintelligence agents arrested Herman Simm, a high-level official at the Estonian defense ministry, on charges that he spied on behalf of Russian intelligence for nearly 30 years. At the time, Western counterintelligence officials said Simm, who was in charge of handling all of Estonia’s “classified and top secret material on NATO”, was at the center of “the most serious case of espionage against NATO since the end of the Cold War”. But the complexity of this espionage affair has now increased, with German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reporting that Simm was also a paid informant of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Whistleblower who disclosed NSA domestic spying program comes forth

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

Exactly three years ago, New York Times journalists James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed NSA’s domestic warrantless spying program, which was secretly authorized by the Bush Administration in the wake of 9/11. Nearly a dozen undisclosed insiders helped the two journalists unravel the NSA scheme. But the initial tip came from what Lichtblau describes in his book, Bush’s Law, as a “walk-in” source with intimate knowledge of the US intelligence community’s practices. That “walk-in” source has now come forth. His name is Thomas M. Tamm, a former US Justice Department official who held a Sensitive Compartmented Security clearance (“a level above Top Secret”) issued by the US government. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Police spying revelation rocks New Zealand

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

IntelNews has paid particular attention to domestic intelligence operations conducted against law-abiding protest activity in the so-called “war on terrorism”. The US is hardly the only Western country where intensification of government spying on protest activity has been noted in recent years. During the past few days, political life in New Zealand has been stirred by revelations that the country’s police force has for years used “paid informants to infiltrate protest groups”, including “groups such as Greenpeace, animal rights and climate change campaigners and Iraq war protesters”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , ,

Moldovan politicians to undergo intelligence clearing before elections

December 15, 2008 by 1 Comment

A new bill requiring all Moldovan politicians to be cleared by the country’s intelligence services before running for office, has been approved in a first round of voting by the country’s communist-dominated parliament. The bill was proposed earlier this year by the governing Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, led by Vladimir Voronin. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , ,

Two US spies killed in Mumbai attack, Indian government sources claim

December 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

Yesterday, intelNews discussed the apparent zeal with which the US State Department is monitoring the Indian and Pakistani responses to the recent militant attack on Mumbai. Visiting New Delhi on Friday, US Deputy Secretary of State, John Negroponte, made sure to remind the Indian government that “there were United States casualties as well. So we are also victims of these attacks”. Today The Express adds another possible explanation for the State Department’s “unprecedented” interest in the attacks. The Indian newspaper cites “reliable sources in [the Indian] government” in asserting that “two senior espionage officials from the US were among the eight Americans killed in the […] attacks”. The newspaper alleges that the news of the two officials’ deaths, who were reportedly shot at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel on the night of November 27, “rankled the White House”. It is not clear from the report whether the two agents were staying at the hotel, were attending a meeting there, or rushed there from elsewhere in Mumbai in response to the attacks. [JF]

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , ,

British assisted abduction of Iranian police officers, says senior official

December 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

Last July, Jundullah, a separatist Sunni Islamic organization operating in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, abducted and subsequently murdered 16 Iranian police officers stationed in Saravan, Iran. Now Iran’s First Deputy Judiciary Chief, Ebrahim Raisi Ghraib, has said the Islamic Republic has “obtained information” that British forces helped Jundullah fighters abduct the police officers by providing them with “critical intelligence” during the operation. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , ,

Senate Committee report blames Bush Administration for detainee torture

December 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

In 2004, after the eruption of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, the US Department of Defense dismissed the torture practices as the work “of a few bad apples”. Now a report by a bipartisan Senate committee concludes that the abuses conducted by CIA and US military guards and interrogators were direct results of the Bush Administration’s detention policies and “should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators”. The report, detailing a two-year study by the US Senate Armed Services Committee, has yet to be made public and much of it will remain classified. This being the case, it is not expected to have any impact on the Bush administration, which “continues to delay and in some cases bar members of Congress from gaining access to key legal documents and memos about the detainee program”. [IA]

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Candidates currently considered by Obama for top intelligence posts

December 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

According to the Associated Press, some of the top candidates considered by US President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition team for Director of the CIA are: John Gannon (CIA’s Deputy Director of Intelligence during the Clinton Administration); Jami Miscik (CIA’s former chief analyst); Steve Kappes (current Deputy Director at the CIA); Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA, leader of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence); and John McLaughlin (former interim CIA chief). For the post of Director of National Intelligence, the top considerations are: Denny Blair (retired US Navy Admiral and former commander of the US Pacific Command); Don Kerr (currently Deputy Director of National Intelligence); Jami Miscik (see above); and former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-IN). IntelNews has previously reported on the possibility that Barack Obama may in fact retain the current CIA leadership “for a while”. [JF]

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →