News you may have missed #0152

October 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Madoff befriends Israeli-handled spy in prison. According to legal papers filed last Tuesday, Bernard Madoff, imprisoned for masterminding one of history’s largest financial frauds, is sharing a cell with Jonathan Pollard, an American convicted of selling military secrets to Israel over two decades ago.
  • Polish undercover agent has cover blown. An undercover agent of Poland’s controversial Anti-Corruption Agency (CBA), known simply as Tomek K. (a.k.a. Tomasz Malecki or Tom Piotrowski) has had his cover blown after seducing Polish television star Weronika Marczuk-Pazura during an anti-corruption investigation. Whoever said undercover work was boring?
  • Finnish former prime minister says KGB tried to recruit him. In his political memoirs published last week, Paavo Lipponen, who was Finland’s prime minister from 1995 to 2003, reveals the Soviet KGB tried unsuccessfully to recruit him in 1966 and again in the early 1970s.

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New documents point to innocence of convicted Swedish “spy”

September 29, 2009 by 1 Comment

Bertil Ströberg

Bertil Ströberg

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A man who was jailed in Sweden in 1983 for spying on behalf of the Eastern Bloc may be innocent, according to an investigation by Sweden’s TV4 channel. On May 20, 1983, Bertil Ströberg was arrested in Stockholm’s main post office, while picking up correspondence for a ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’. What he didn’t know is that Sweden’s Security Service (SAPO) was looking for Larsson after it had surreptitiously opened a letter addressed to the Polish embassy in Stockholm. The letter, which was signed by Larsson, contained a number of classified Swedish security documents and requested $25,000 Swedish kronor ($3,500) in return for further secret information. During his closed-door trial, Ströberg claimed he had made the acquaintance of someone calling himself ‘Sven-Roland Larsson’ in Stockholm, who later sent him a letter asking him to pick up a delivery in his name from the city’s main post office. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0113

September 22, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • US intelligence caused change in missile shield plans, says Gates. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the Obama administration’s decision to abandon the previous administration’s plans for a land-based missile defense system in Eastern Europe came about because of a change of the alleged threat posed by Iran in US intelligence reports. But he also said that the Bush administration plans will not be scrapped. The land-based missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic will be replaced by missile interceptors aboard US naval ships.
  • Canada preparing big balloon (?) to spy on Taliban. The Canadian armed forces are testing a large white balloon equipped with an on-board spy camera, which will be used in Afghanistan to detect improvised explosive devices. Depending on the exact camera used, the system could have a surveillance range of five to twenty kilometers.
  • Portugal’s secret services deny spying on president. Portugal’s SIS secret service agency was forced to issue a rare public statement last week, denying having spied on the country’s president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, of the Social Democratic Party, just 10 days before a closely-fought parliamentary election. Silva is Portugal’s first right-wing head of state since the end of the dictatorship in April 1974.

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News you may have missed #0111

September 20, 2009 by 2 Comments

  • Obama supports extending USA PATRIOT Act domestic spy provisions. The move confirms the US President’s support for the Act, whose warrantless communications monitoring provisions he approved with his Senate vote in 2008.
  • Poland jails alleged Belarusian spy. The man, known only as “Sergei M.” was sentenced Wednesday to five-and-a-half years in prison by a Warsaw district court for spying against Poland between 2005 and 2006. Meanwhile in Belarus four local army officers are still on trial, accused of spying for Poland.
  • Tolkien was trained as a British spy. Novelist JRR Tolkien, whose day occupation was in linguistics research, secretly trained as a British government spy in the run up to World War II, new documents have disclosed.

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News you may have missed #0097

September 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #0093

September 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Arab Israeli accused of spying for Hezbollah

August 31, 2009 by Leave a comment

Gabi Ashkenazi

Gabi Ashkenazi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israeli authorities have indicted an Arab Israeli for spying on the country’s military chief, on behalf of Lebanese group Hezbollah. In the indictment, presented earlier this morning, 23-year-old Rawi Sultani is accused of having informed Hezbollah of his membership in the same fitness club as Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, in the town of Kfar Saba, as well methods of access into the club. Sultani is said to have attended a pro-Hezbollah summer camp in Morocco in the summer of 2008, where he allegedly told Hezbollah operatives about his proximity to Ashkenazi. Israeli authorities accuse Sultani of having travelled to Poland, several months later, where he met another Hezbollah operative with the purpose of supplying him with information about security arrangements at the fitness club, as well as Ashkenazi’s training routine. Sultani’s defense team denies the charges, and claims that the 23-year-old Arab citizen of Israel did not realize he was volunteering the information to agents of Hezbollah.

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New clues in case of missing Polish intelligence officer

June 17, 2009 by Leave a comment

Stefan Zielonka

Stefan Zielonka

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last month we reported on the mysterious case of Stefan Zielonka, a senior signals officer with Poland’s Military Intelligence Services (SWW), who disappeared without trace in early May. We then stated as “certain” that Zielonka had “extensive knowledge of Polish agents working overseas, including their code names and contacts”. This is now slowly being confirmed by a number of Polish news outlets, who are coming to the realization that Zielonka’s job description at SWW far exceeded those of a typical SIGINT (signals intelligence) officer. Specifically, Polish newspaper Dziennik appears to have confirmed that the missing officer trained illegals –that is, elite Polish spies operating abroad independently of embassies and thus without diplomatic immunity. Read more of this post

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Suspicious silence continues in case of missing Polish signals officer

May 23, 2009 by 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
When we at intelNews first took note of the mysterious disappearance of Stefan Zielonka, on May 7, we decided to delay posting information about the case until more news came our way. Sadly, it hasn’t. The case of the disappearance of Stefan Zielonka, senior signals officer with Polish military intelligence, remains as mysterious as it was on May 7. Zielonka’s colleagues at Poland’s Military Intelligence Services (SWW, formerly known as Military Information Services or WSI) became suspicious after he failed to return to work following a two-week sick leave. News outlets have since reported that Zielonka “was suffering from depression and had trouble both at home and at the office”. Read more of this post

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Belarus puts on trial members of alleged Polish military spy ring

May 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Very little information has appeared in Western news outlets of an ongoing trial in Belarus of four army officers accused of spying for Poland. The four, all of whom are Belarusian, are accused by Belarus security officials of collaborating with Polish intelligence agents by providing them with classified data on Belarusian military technologies, as well as with information on Russia’s air defense system, of which Belarus is a partner. A fifth alleged member of the spy ring, who is a Russian military officer, is facing similar charges in Moscow. The four Belarusians were reportedly arrested several months ago by the KGB, Belarus’ intelligence service. The discovery of the alleged spy ring led to a major political scandal in Minsk, prompting the dismissal of KGB’s director, Stepan Sukhorenko, by Belarus’ longtime President, Alexander Lukashenko. If convicted of treason and espionage, the army officers could technically face the death penalty under Belarusian law.

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Walesa accused again of being intelligence collaborator

April 1, 2009 by Leave a comment

Lech Walesa

Lech Walesa

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last December, I reported on a book by two Polish academics, Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, titled Secret services and Lech Walesa: A Contribution to the Biography (SB a Lech Wałęsa: Przyczynek do Biografii). In it, the two historians discuss what they call “compelling evidence” and “positive proof” that the country’s anticommunist former President, Lech Walesa, was a paid collaborator of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), Poland’s Security Service, during the communist era. Now a new book by Polish historian Paweł Zyzak echoes these allegations. Citing sources “that prefer to remain anonymous”, the book, titled Lech Walesa: Idea and History (Lech Wałęsa. Idea i Historia), claims that the former Solidarność leader fathered an illegitimate child and collaborated with the SB in the 1970s. 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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CIA holds symposium on Polish Cold War asset Col. Kuklinski

December 13, 2008 by 1 Comment

As intelNews reported on December 10, Dariusz Jablonski’s documentary War Games, about the life of Polish spy Ryszard Kuklinski, was shown at the CIA headquarters during a “Symposium on the Polish Martial Law” held on December 11. Kuklinski, a Polish Army Colonel who spied for the US and NATO from 1972 until 1981, supplied his handlers with microfilms of over 40,000 documents detailing Soviet tactical plans for Poland and the rest of Europe. Read more of this post

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Comment: Was Poland’s Lech Walesa an Intelligence Operative?

December 11, 2008 by 1 Comment

The Warsaw-based Polish Institute of National Remembrance (INP) is a government-affiliated organization, whose main mission is to investigate, expose and indict participants in criminal actions during the Nazi occupation of Poland, as well as during the country’s communist period. It also aims to expose clandestine agents and collaborators of Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), Poland’s Security Service during the communist era. Earlier this year the INP published a book by historians Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, titled Secret services and Lech Walesa: A Contribution to the Biography (SB a Lech Wałęsa: Przyczynek do Biografii). Read more of this post

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Film on spy Col. Kuklinski premiered in Poland

December 10, 2008 by Leave a comment

Dariusz Jablonski’s eagerly awaited War Games documentary, about the life of Polish spy Ryszard Kuklinski, has been shown for the first time at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall in Poland. The film, whose first official screening was attended by a number of Polish government ministers, will be shown at the CIA headquarters on Thursday, Polskie Radio reports. Kuklinski, a Polish Army Colonel, was an instrumental US and NATO asset during the Cold War, thanks to his crucial post as Polish General Staff’s liaison to the Warsaw Pact. Read more of this post

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