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News you may have missed #447

October 29, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

UK MI6 chief speaks publicly for the first time. Sir John Sawers, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, has delivered what he said was the first public address by a serving chief of the agency in its 101-year history.
WikiLeaks to release secret Russia, China logs. Whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which has published hundreds of US war logs, is preparing to release secret files from Russia and China, Russian newspaper Kommersant said on Tuesday.
Renegade CIA agent’s papers acquired by NYU. The private papers of the late Philip Agee, the disaffected CIA operative whose unauthorized publication of agency secrets 35 years ago was arguably far more controversial than anything WikiLeaks has produced, have been obtained by New York University, which plans to make them public next spring.

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News you may have missed #444

October 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Kyrgyz leader says spies tried to kill him. Kamchybek Tashiev, head of Kyrgyzstan’s Ata-Jurt party, which won the most votes in the recent national parliamentary elections, has accused the country’s State Security Service chief, Keneshbek Dushebayev, of organizing an attempt to assassinate him on October 23.
Pakistan’s ISI organized Mumbai attacks, say Indians. A report by the Indian government, based on information provided by Pakistani-American informant David Headley, accuses Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Russian sleeper agents receive highest state honor. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has bestowed the country’s highest state honor on the Russian sleeper agents deported from the United States earlier this year as part of the countries’ biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

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Mysterious Russian spy goes on trial in Poland

October 25, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

V. Korabelnikov

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The trial has started in Warsaw, Poland, of an unnamed Russian citizen accused of working for Russian military intelligence. On October 22, the mysterious Russian, known only as “Tadeusz J.”, appeared before the Regional Court of Warsaw and pleaded not guilty to charges of collecting military intelligence on Poland on behalf of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The accused has a Polish-sounding name and is fluent in Polish, but is not a Polish citizen. Instead, he lived in Poland under permanent residency status for at least decade. His legal income appears to have come from his ownership of a hunting-rifle accessories store. But he was arrested last February, after a six-month surveillance operation by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW). He was subsequently charged of obtaining classified information on the Polish military through his patronage of elite Polish hunting clubs, whose members included several Polish military officials. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #439

October 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Book critical of Russian FSB published. In a new book entitled The New Nobility, Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan claim that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is less repressive but ultimately more dangerous than its predecessor, the Soviet KGB.
Senior-most North Korean defector dies. Hwang Jang-yop, the theoretician behind North Korea’s Songun and Juche state doctrines, who defected to South Korea in 1997, has died at his home in Seoul, aged 87. Last April, South Korea charged two North Korean government agents with attempting to assassinate Hwang.
‘Low morale’ leads MI6 spies to apply for Australian jobs. More than 50 spies at Britain’s MI6 have allegedly responded to a recruitment drive by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). According to insiders, there has been growing uncertainty among MI6’s 2,600 staff over looming budget cuts and inquiries into alleged complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects.

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News you may have missed #430

September 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Russians arrested outside US power plant. Police in the US state of Georgia have arrested one Kazakh and two Russian citizens, who were carrying “a machete, shovel, wire cutters and ski masks”, outside Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh, at 1:00 in the morning. Hmm….
MI6 spy could have climbed into sports bag before death. British detectives reportedly believe that someone else padlocked GCHQ and MI6 employee Gareth Williams into the sports bag where his body was found on August 23. But they remain open to the possibility that Dr Williams climbed into the bag as part of a sex game and then suffocated.
Tamils claim espionage behind Canada HQ break-in. The Canadian Tamil Congress believes that lists containing the names of hundreds of Tamil asylum-seekers were stolen from its Toronto headquarters by Sri Lankan government spies.

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CIA spies consider Mossad ‘most unfriendly’ agency

September 7, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Mossad seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This blog frequently considers the issue of US-Israeli intelligence relations, said to be undergoing a turbulent period in recent times. Indeed, the change of guard at the White House, the rearrangement of Washington’s policy priorities following the economic crash, as well as the dramatic rightwing shift in Israeli politics have rapidly altered the political playing field between the two nations. To this extent, it is worth noting that Meir Dagan, director of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, told a Knesset committee last July that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden”. How is this evident in intelligence relations between Washington and Tel Aviv? The Washington Post’s security correspondent Jeff Stein may be able to help fill in the picture. He wrote a few days ago that an internal poll, which was recently administered to CIA operatives, found that Israeli intelligence agencies are considered the world’s least friendly and most uncooperative with their US counterparts. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #424 (suspicious deaths edition II)

September 3, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Top Russian spy dead after ‘swimming accident. The body of Major General Yuri Ivanov, 52, who was the deputy head of Russian military intelligence (GRU), washed up on the Turkish coast earlier this month, after he disappeared close to a sensitive Russian naval facility in neighboring Syria. Russian media did not report Ivanov’s death until last Saturday when he was quietly buried in Moscow.
Russian spy visited base installation shortly before death. According to Israeli media, Ivanov was last seen visiting the building site for a new Russian military base in the Syrian coastal city Tartus. After his visit, he left for a meeting with Syrian intelligence agents, but went missing.
Ivanov’s body found in Turkey on August 16. Russian authorities have refused comment on why Ivanov’s death was only announced on Saturday, even though his body was found in Turkey on August 16.

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News you may have missed #423

September 1, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Mysterious Russian numbers station changes frequency. The output of a mysterious radio station in Russia, which has been broadcasting coded information to secret agents almost continuously for 20 years, has suddenly changed.
US contractor charged with leaking North Korea intel to Fox News. Steven Kim, who worked at the US Department of State as a federal contractor, is accused of passing classified US intelligence on North Korea to a Fox News reporter. The Obama administration appears determined to prosecute more such cases.
Israel using espionage balloons, says Lebanese army. The Lebanese army is claiming that Israel has begun using a new tool to collect intelligence above Lebanon’s skies, namely hot air balloons equipped with cameras, transmission capabilities and self-destruction mechanisms. The US has been using spy balloons in Afghanistan for almost a year.

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News you may have missed #422 (suspicious deaths edition)

August 31, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Self-described CIA assassin dies in gun accident. Roland W. Haas, a senior intelligence officer in the US Army Reserve who claimed in a 2007 memoir that he was a CIA assassin, died over the weekend when he accidentally shot himself, police in the US state of Georgia said.
Russian military intel chief in mystery death. General Yuri Ivanov, 52, deputy head of Russia’s powerful military intelligence agency, the GRU, died mysteriously in a swimming accident “several days ago”, Russian media has reported. No further details have been released on the circumstances or the location of Ivanov’s death.
David Kelly inquest calls ‘outrageous’, says friend. Professor Christian Seelos, was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq alongside British biological weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, who was found dead four days after appearing before a UK Parliament committee investigating claims about Iraq’s purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Seelos now says that calls for a fresh examination into Dr. Kelly’s death are “totally politically motivated”.

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News you may have missed #421 (‘not news’ edition)

August 30, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Not news: Senior Afghan officials on CIA payroll. The New York Times‘ Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins are right to air this story, but the real news here is the media industry’s collective gasp of fake shock and horror. Really?
Not news: Pentagon breached by foreign hacker. US Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn has disclosed that an undisclosed foreign spy agency carried out a serious cyberattack on US military networks with the help of a tainted flash drive that was inserted into a laptop in the Middle East. Ah, the old memory-stick gift trick…
Not news: Sex-obsessed coverage of Russian espionage continues. Russian and US media keep avoiding serious analysis of post-Cold-War Russian intelligence operations by focusing on Anna Chapman. This is no surprise, since pursuing the real story behind Russian deep-cover espionage in the United States takes hard work.>response to Le Carre’s comments.

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News you may have missed #418

August 25, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

US military pays for intel widely available online. Experts say that the vast majority of the ‘intelligence’ needed by the United States is freely available on the Internet. But that has not stopped a company called Military Periscope from selling its subscription services to the US government, on things such as updates on foreign militaries, peacekeeping missions, weapons databases and terrorist organizations “via monthly CD-ROM delivery”.
Son of Russian spies could return to US for school. Tim Foley, the elder son of Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley, the two deported US residents who were living a double life as Russian spies, may be trying to return to study in the United States, but his younger brother plans to stay in Moscow.
German spy chief notes cyberattack surge. Cyberattacks against German corporate and government computers have been on the rise since 2005, according to Heinz Fromm, Director of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He said the attacks “come mainly from Asia, often from China”, and that often “state agencies are involved”.

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News you may have missed #417

August 24, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

US Senators question Chinese telecom hardware bid. Senior Republican senators have called for an investigation on whether US national security will be compromised by the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei seeking to sell equipment to Sprint Nextel, which provides services to the US military and law enforcement agencies.
Pakistan environmental chaos causes security concerns. The catastrophic floods in Pakistan, which have displaced millions of persons over the last several weeks, when combined with the other socioeconomic and political stresses on Pakistan, have the potential to further weaken an already weak Pakistani state, according to a new US Congressional Research Service report.
Russian base in Armenia to stay through 2044. Russia has secured a long-term foothold in the energy-rich and unstable Caucasus region by signing a deal with Armenia that allows a Russian military base to operate until 2044 in exchange for a promise of new weaponry and fresh security guarantees.

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‘Lord of War’ weapons smuggler enjoys Russian protection

August 24, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Viktor Bout

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The case of notorious arms smuggler Viktor Bout is well known. Born in Dushanbe, Soviet Tajikistan, in 1967, Bout served in the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) until the collapse of the USSR, at which point he began supplying weapons to shady groups, ranging from Congolese rebels and Angolan paramilitaries to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. In March of 2008, Bout, known as ‘Lord of War’, was finally arrested by the Royal Thai Police, after a tip by US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers. The latter had managed to lure Bout to Thailand by pretending to be Colombian FARC arms procurers. Recently, Washington scored a second victory by convincing Thai authorities to extradite Bout to the United States on terrorism charges. Presumably, Bout will be tried as an arms smuggler acting on his own accord. But is this right? Read more of this post

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Russia, Romania, expel diplomats in spy tit-for-tat

August 23, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Gabriel Grecu

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Russian and Romanian governments have expelled each other’s diplomats in a spy scandal that made headlines in both countries last week. The spy affair began last Monday, August 16, when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced the arrest of a Romanian diplomatic official, who was allegedly caught in the act of espionage. The official was later named as Gabriel Grecu, who was First Secretary of the Political Department of the Romanian embassy in Moscow. According to a laconic FSB press release, Grecu was detained while “attempting to solicit classified military information from a Russian national”. According to Russian media, the Romanian official was found “in possession of various pieces of espionage equipment”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #415

August 20, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

GCHQ tech arm adopts new personnel evaluation tests. The Communications Electronics Security Group is the information assurance arm of the General Communications Headquarters –Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. CESG has now adopted a new testing method of verifying the competency of its IT security professionals, because apparently there are “not enough security professionals in the public and private sectors to go around”.
Swapped Russian insists he was no CIA spy. Of the four jailed Russians the US received from Moscow in exchange for the 11 Russian illegals in July, only one is talking. But Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear proliferation expert, who was convicted of links with a CIA front-company, insists he was no CIA spy. However, if that is so, why was he on Washington’s swap list in the first place?
Militants target Yemen spy officials. Two officers in Yemen’s Political Security Organization, Colonel Ali Abdul Kareem al-Ban, and Juman Safian, have been shot dead in recent days. Al-Qaeda militants, who assumed responsibility for the attacks, warned they will be stepping up operations inside neighboring Saudi Arabia.