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News you may have missed #0153

October 26, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

More on Nozette’s 2009 mystery trip abroad. The affidavit of Stewart David Nozette, who was arrested last Monday for attempting to sell classified US government information to an undercover FBI agent, reveals that “[o]n or about January 6, 2009, [the scientist] traveled to a different foreign country”, carrying with him two thumb drives, which he failed to bring back with him. Where did he go, and why?
Armenia charges former army officer with spying for Azerbaijan. Armenian Army officer Gevorg Airapetian and a “foreign national” were arrested in a “special operation” by Armenian authorities earlier this week, and charged with spying for Azerbaijan. Some suspect Russian involvement, believing the Azerbaijanis to have acted as intermediaries between Airapetian and Moscow.
US spy chief Blair calls for spy cooperation. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dennis Blair called Wednesday for a better-coordinated effort within the US intelligence community. But he said nothing about recent reports that intelligence officials shut down a Web-based unclassified e-mail system, which had been heralded as an important step in information sharing between members of the US intelligence community.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dennis Cutler Blair, DNI, espionage, FBI, Gevorg Airapetian, intelligence cooperation, News, news you may have missed, nuclear espionage, Russia, scientific intelligence, Stewart David Nozette, United States

FBI targets US nuclear scientist who contacted Venezuelan official

October 25, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

P.L. Mascheroni

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A team of FBI agents has raided the house of a former Los Alamos nuclear scientist who has spent two decades criticizing Washington’s nuclear weapons and energy agenda. The agents seized several computers, cameras, cell phones and paper files from the home of Dr. P. Leonardo Mascheroni, a 74-year-old Argentinean-born nuclear scientist who became a US citizen while working at the US Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. After leaving Los Alamos, in 1988, Dr. Mascheroni has campaigned in favor of inertial confinement fusion (commonly known as laser fusion) as a means of producing low-cost energy and of testing nuclear weapons without resorting to underground explosions. Following the FBI raid at his house, Dr. Mascheroni held a press conference where he claimed he was told by the FBI that he was suspected of possible involvement in “nuclear espionage”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Argentina, espionage, FBI, Hugo Chávez, inertial confinement fusion, laser fusion, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, News, nuclear espionage, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, scientific intelligence, United States, US Department of Energy, Venezuela

News you may have missed #0150

October 23, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Israel’s inside intelligence. If only Israeli security services were as open as the CIA and other US spy agencies, lament Israelis.
Nozette and nuclear rocketry. Here are some of the reasons why the case of scientist Stewart D. Nozette, who was arrested and charged earlier this week under the US Espionage Act, is distressing on several levels.
Perle calls DoD spying whistleblower “a nutcase”. Richard Perle, chairperson of the US Defense Advisory Board under the Bush administration, has called Sibel Edmonds “a nutcase; certifiable”. Last August, Edmonds, a former FBI translator, alleged that Turkish spies had bugged, blackmailed and bribed US politicians, her FBI unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, espionage, FBI, intelligence oversight, intelligence reform, Israel, MİT (Turkey), News, news you may have missed, nuclear espionage, President's Defense Advisory Board (US), Richard Perle, scientific intelligence, Sibel Edmonds, Stewart David Nozette, Turkey, US Congress, US Department of State, US DoD, whistleblowing

News you may have missed #0132

October 7, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Emirates to deport Syrian ex-spy and witness in Hariri assassination probe. A Syrian former spy was on Monday sentenced to six months in jail and deportation for entering the United Arab Emirates on a forged Czech passport. Interestingly, Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, was a prosecution witness in the inquiry into the assassination of Lebanon’s ex-premier Rafiq Hariri. In 2005, Siddiq claimed that Lebanon’s former pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, gave the order to kill anti-Syrian Hariri. It is not clear to which country Siddiq will be deported.
US national security advisor insists Iran cannot currently build the bomb. US National Security Advisor General James Jones has rejected claims by The New York Times that Iraq has enough information to design and build a functional nuclear bomb. Jones also stood by the conclusions of the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, which said Iran’s nuclear arms program is inactive.
Book claims CIA-linked network killed anti-drugs campaigner. A new book by Australian researcher John Jiggens claims that a CIA-linked drug smuggling network was responsible for the 1977 murder of Australian anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2007 NIE, assassinations, Australia, Bashar al-Assad, CIA, deportations, Donald Mackay, Emile Lahoud, espionage, General James Jones, Iranian nuclear program, Lebanon, Mohammed Zuhair Siddiq, narcotics trade, NIE, nuclear espionage, nuclear proliferation, political activism, Rafiq Hariri, Syria, United Arab Emirates, war on drugs

Analysis: Spy agencies disagree on status of Iran’s nuclear program

October 5, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

M. Ahmadinejad

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran’s ultimate aim is to fortify its military posture with nuclear weapons. Putting aside, however, the broad concurrence of opinion about Iran’s long-term goal, very little is clear about the immediate status of the country’s nuclear program. Iran maintains that its goal is peaceful; namely to invest in nuclear energy so as to free up large quantities of oil for exports. It is important to stress that the consensus among America’s intelligence agencies is that this is in fact Iran’s immediate goal. This was pronounced in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a publicly available annual report cooperatively authored by the heads of all 16 US intelligence agencies. The 2007 report stated “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”. The reality is that the existence of Iran’s second uranium enrichment plant –of which, incidentally, Western and Israeli intelligence agencies have been aware for years– does not necessarily contest the findings of the 2007 NIE. IntelNews editor Dr. Joseph Fitsanakis explains why this is so on the website of the Research Institute for European and American Studies. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2007 NIE, France, Germany, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Joseph Fitsanakis, NIE, nuclear espionage, nuclear proliferation, Qum (Iran), RIEAS, UK, United States

News you may have missed #0083

August 28, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Indonesian police denies plan to spy on mosques. Indonesian authorities have denied the rumored existence of a plan to monitor religious sermons during Ramadan.
Reiss was nuclear spy, claim Iranians. Clotilde Reiss, a French student who was arrested in Iran last July, was involved in nuclear espionage, according to Iran’s ambassador to Paris, Seyyed Mehdi Mirabutalebi.
Canada still trying to deport Indian spy. Canada has been trying since last December to deport an Indian man for espionage, since he arrived at Vancouver International Airport under a false identity.
Somali militants use many tactics to woo Americans. Details are emerging about how Somali militants have lured young American men, including as many as 20 from Minnesota, back to their homeland to join the jihad.

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Oak Ridge employee admits espionage charges

February 9, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

Roy Oakley (court illustration)

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On February 6, Roy Lynn Oakley, of Harriman, Tennessee, pleaded guilty to espionage charges under the US Atomic Energy Act. From 2006 to 2007, Oakley worked for Bechtel Jacobs, a contractor at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) in Oak Ridge. He had apparently been granted a security clearance and thus had access to a host of classified materials and data relating to uranium enrichment. In 2006, US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (OIC) officers in Oak Ridge were tipped that “Oakley may have been in possession of protected materials that belonged to the DOE and was offering to sell the materials to a foreign government”. Along with FBI agents, they initiated a counterintelligence sting operation. Read more of this post

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Former KGB officer to publish “new data” on nuclear espionage

January 24, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Alexander Vassiliev, who worked in the American Division of the KGB from 1987 to 1990, is well known to intelligence historians. His first book, Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (1999) included information the author claims to have copied from internal KGB records. Among several critics of the book was Rutgers University professor John Lowenthal, who dismissed it as containing a “plethora of errors, and […] strategic omissions [that] leave it demonstrably untrustworthy [and] far below minimal standards of scholarly or journalistic rigor for any serious consideration”. Now Vassiliev is preparing his return with a second book, entitled Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which he co-wrote with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. The book, which is scheduled for publication by Yale University Press in March, is also based on internal KGB “files, copied by Mr. Vassiliev into notebooks” before he resigned from his post at the KGB. Read more of this post

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World’s most prolific nuclear arms smuggler admits CIA link

January 23, 2009 by intelNews 8 Comments

Urs Tinner

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On October 4, 2003, Italian authorities, acting on a tip by the CIA, inspected a Libya-bound German ship anchored at Taranto, Italy. The ship was found to be carrying several centrifuges for use in Libya’s uranium enrichment program. The discovery led to the uncovering of the role of Dr. Abdul Qadeer (A.Q.) Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, in subcontracting his nuclear knowhow to North Korea, Iran and Libya. It also led to the uncovering of Urs Tinner, a Swiss engineer who worked under A.Q. Khan, and was said at the time to be leading “the world’s biggest nuclear smuggling ring”. Tinner was eventually arrested along with his father Friedrich and brother Marco, both members of Tinner’s ring, and extradited to Switzerland. Strangely, however, he was never charged and was in fact released from detention last December, with the blessings of the CIA, who did not wish to see him prosecuted. Now Swiss TV station SF1 has announced the scheduled airing of a documentary, in which the freed Tinner will acknowledge that he tipped the CIA about the German ship in Taranto and A.Q. Khan’s nuclear subcontracting. Read more of this post