News you may have missed #0127

October 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Is China using Nepal as a base to spy on India? India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has accused Beijing of using the so-called Nepal-China study centers in Nepal to spy on India. The centers, which are located all along the Indo-Nepal border, are being used to clandestinely gather information on Indian activities, says RAW. It also rumored that RAW is monitoring around 30 Chinese firms which have set up base in Nepal and may be involved in spying on India.
  • Italian lawyers seek jail for CIA agents. Public prosecutors in Italy have urged a court in Milan to jail 26 Americans for the kidnapping of a terrorism suspect in a 2003 CIA operation on Italian soil. They also want a 13 year prison sentence for the former head of Italy’s secret service, Nicolo Pollari. Last week the US government moved for the first time to officially prevent Italian authorities from prosecuting American citizens involved in the CIA operation.
  • CIA director meets Pakistani spy chief. The director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Ahmed Shuja Pasha, has met with CIA director Leon Panetta in Washington. Last week, Lieutenant General Pasha yelled at a US journalist for daring to utter the CIA’s allegations that the ISI is withholding crucial intelligence information on al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

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Pakistani spies “visibly angry” at US charge of Taliban links

September 30, 2009 by 2 Comments

A.S. Pasha

A.S. Pasha

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Recently, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s secretive spy service, gave Washington Post’s associate editor, David Ignatius, a rare look inside its Islamabad headquarters. However, the first known visit to the ISI by a Western journalist in recent years failed to impress the Pakistanis. The latter became “visibly angry” when Ignatius asked them whether they are withholding information about al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as the CIA and other US intelligence agencies claim. The charges, which are disputed by Pakistani officials, led to “a long and animated conversation” with ISI Director, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who forbade the US journalist from quoting him directly. Read more of this post

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Comment: Daring US Raid in Somalia is Risky Policy

September 17, 2009 by 2 Comments

Saleh Nabhan

Saleh Nabhan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The political aftereffect of a recent raid by US Special Forces in southern Somalia may be more significant than its outcome. The operation, which took place in the early hours of Monday, killed a number of al-Qaeda-linked militants and captured at least two, according to local witnesses. Unnamed US officials said that among the dead is Saleh Ali Nabhan, a 30-year-old Kenyan al-Qaeda operative who is said to have participated in the 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned resort in his homeland, among other acts. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0107

September 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • CIA invests with low-power Wi-Fi company. The CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, has announced a strategic investment and technology development agreement with GainSpan. The company makes single-chip wireless sensor networks and other embedded applications, with the aim of enabling portable devices to run for up to 10 years on a single AA battery. In-Q-Tel has invested with more than 140 companies in recent years, including relatively unknown software startups Lingotek and Lucid Imagination.
  • Indian spies released from Pakistani prison seek compensation. Three Indian intelligence agents, who were in recent years released from captivity in Pakistani jails, have said that the Indian government has not honored its commitment to take care of them and their families.

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Former agent reveals aspects of CIA’s bin Laden hunt

September 10, 2009 by 1 Comment

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Arthur “Art” Keller, a retired CIA agent who spent several years looking for Osama bin Laden in the Afghan-Pakistani border areas has given a rare interview to The London Times. Until his recent retirement, Keller participated in the 50- to 100-strong covert CIA force in the region, whose primary task since 9/11 has been to capture or kill senior al-Qaeda commanders. He told the paper that the failure to find bin Laden has led the agency to start bringing back retired members of “The Cadre”, a close-knit group of Pashto- and Dari-speaking CIA agents, who spent many years in Afghanistan in the 1980s, during America’s proxy war with the Soviet Union. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0101

September 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Red Army Faction member was on German spy service payroll. German media report that Verena Becker, a former member of the militant student organization Red Army Faction, who was arrested last week in connection with a murder committed thirty years ago, worked as an informant for the German secret services.
  • Pakistanis worried about US embassy expansion. In a rare article in the English-speaking press, The Washington Post examines the Pakistani population’s opposition to the planned expansion of the US embassy in Islamabad.
  • A.Q. Khan tells all about Pakistani nuclear program. Recently released from house arrest, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb has given an interview to a Pakistani television station, in which he reveals that Pakistan was able to detonate a nuclear device within a week’s notice in as early as 1984.

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News you may have missed #0100

September 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Iran says US is forging nuclear intelligence. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the US government is using forged intelligence to make the case to the UN’s nuclear watchdog group that Iran is pursuing an atomic weapons program. What is arguably missing in the Iranian nuclear debacle is conclusive IAEA confirmation of the existence of Iran’s nuclear arms program, as in the case of Syria.
  • Pakistanis call for intelligence dialogue with India. Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s former national security adviser, has called for a “frank dialogue” between Pakistani and Indian security services. As intelNews reported earlier this year, Durrani was fired for his dovish stance vis-à-vis India and for being “too pro-American”.
  • US official was investigated for espionage. Alberto Coll, a Cuban-American who lost a senior job at the Navy War College after he was convicted of lying about a 2004 trip to Havana, was also investigated for espionage, according to an FBI document.

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Diplomat sees Pakistani spies behind Afghan intel chief’s killing

September 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bhadrakumar

Bhadrakumar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Indian diplomat has authored an editorial suggesting that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may be behind the recent assassination of an Afghan senior intelligence official. Abdullah Laghmani, who headed Afghanistan’s National Directorate for Security (NDS), appears to have been specifically targeted earlier this week in a suicide attack that killed 23 people in the town of Mehtarlam. The Taliban have formally assumed responsibility for the attack. But M.K. Bhadrakumar, a longtime Indian diplomat who has served as India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, suggests that Laghmani may have been targeted by the ISI. The diplomat says that the ISI, whose deep links with the Afghan Taliban have long been established, has been “stalking” Laghmani ever since the late 1990s, when he was active in Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0094

September 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

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CIA deployed agents disguised as journalists, says ex-NSA analyst

September 4, 2009 by 1 Comment

Wayne Madsen

Wayne Madsen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Former NSA analyst and US Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen has said that the CIA deployed at least two operatives posing as journalists in several world hotspots after 9/11. The two operatives, both US Special Forces veterans, were subcontracted to the CIA by private mercenary company Blackwater, and were accredited as journalists by Korean-owned United Press International (UPI). Madsen, who authors the daily Wayne Madsen Report, says the two operatives were active in Uzbekistan shortly after 9/11. One of them secured a travel visa to enter Iran in 2003, where he allegedly “engaged in target analysis and spotting for a planned US attack on Iran” (this was presumably before Washington decided to axe the rumored plan to launch a direct military attack on Iran in favor of an intensive plan of covert sabotage, as detailed by The New York Times last January). Read more of this post

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Former spy chief reveals CIA operations against Pakistani nuclear program

September 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

Imtiaz Ahmad

Imtiaz Ahmad

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This news is currently making headlines all over the Arabic and Muslim world, but is not reported on any US news site: retired Pakistani ISI officer and former Intelligence Bureau (IB) director, Imtiaz Ahmad (a.s. Ahmed), has said he was personally involved in foiling two CIA operations targeting Pakistan’s nuclear program. Speaking on Tuesday to Pakistan’s News International, Imtiaz revealed details about the ISI’s operation RISING SUN (1979), which involved the alleged unmasking of Rafiq Munshi, a US-trained Pakistani nuclear scientist, who Ahmed says was a CIA agent. The operation also resulted in the exposure of several undercover CIA agents, posing as diplomats, stationed in the US embassy in Islamabad and the consulate in Karachi. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0092

September 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #0078

August 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Indian police claims busting of Pakistani spy ring. Punjab Police claims to have arrested a member of a spy ring allegedly handled by Pakistani intelligence (ISI). The arrestee was reportedly trying to leave India for Pakistan at the time of his arrest.
  • Iraq intelligence chief retired before major blasts. Mohammed al-Shehwani, the head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, went into retirement days before huge bombings in Baghdad killed almost 100 people in the deadliest day of violence this year.
  • Backlash over plan to spy on Indonesian mosques. Indonesian religious leaders are warning that the Indonesian National Police’s plan to monitor religious sermons during Ramadan will offend and anger Muslims, and be viewed as a repeat of tactics employed during the hated Suharto regime.

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Taliban execute Mehsud’s family members on espionage charges

August 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Baitullah Mehsud

Baitullah Mehsud

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Four relatives of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were reportedly arrested last week by Taliban militants, who suspect them of having informed Pakistani and US intelligence about Mehsud’s whereabouts. Pakistani and US officials say they are almost certain that Mehsud was killed in an unmanned drone air strike (probably remotely operated by the CIA) earlier this month. Mehsud’s family members arrested by the Taliban include his father-in-law, Ikramuddin Mehsud, his son, Ziauddin Mehsud, his brother, Saeedullah Mehsud, and his nephew, Iqbal Mehsud. Earlier today, Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, told reporters that the Taliban have executed Mehsud’s family members, listed above, after “confirming” their espionage activities. Read more of this post

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Comment: Blackwater’s role in CIA ops runs deep

August 21, 2009 by 3 Comments

Blackwater/Xe HQ

Blackwater/Xe

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
North Carolina-based military and intelligence contractor Xe had a major role in the CIA’s rumored post-9/11 assassination program and is active today in the Agency’s Predator drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The New York Times and The Washington Post cited “government officials and current and former [Xe] employees” in revealing that the CIA worked briefly with Xe –formerly known as Blackwater– in the context of a top-secret program to locate and murder senior al-Qaeda leaders. According to The Washington Post, Blackwater’s role in the operation was far from consultative, and included “operational responsibility for targeting terrorist commanders [and awards worth] millions of dollars for training and weaponry”.  The New York Times alleges that Blackwater’s central role in the operation was “a major reason” in CIA director Leon Panetta’s decision last June to inform Congress about the program, which CIA had kept hidden from Congressional oversight for seven years. Read more of this post

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