Is CIA collaborating with Palestinian spy agencies?

December 23, 2009 by 1 Comment

West Bank

West Bank

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A British newspaper has alleged that Palestinian security agencies in the West Bank are working with the CIA so closely that CIA officials “consider them as their property”. London-based quality broadsheet The Guardian said that CIA agents routinely advise and supervise the work of the two main security agencies of the Fatah-aligned Palestinian National Authority, namely the General Intelligence service and the Preventive Security Organization. The trouble with this arrangement is that both services have been documented to resort to severe torture of West Bank members of rival Palestinian group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2006. And the CIA has had more than a little trouble with torture in recent times. So is the CIA guiding overzealous Palestinian National Authority security agents in extracting intelligence by torturing Hamas sympathizers? Read more of this post

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

News you may have missed #0219

December 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Kennedy considered supporting 1963 coup in S. Vietnam, documents show. New audio recordings and documentation unearthed by George Washington University’s National Security Archive, show that US President John F. Kennedy supported a military coup against the US-backed South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, even though he recognized the planned coup had no chance of a political success. See previous intelNews coverage for more Vietnam War-related declassified items.
  • Speak Farsi? Israel’s Shin Bet is interested. Israel’s Shin Bet internal intelligence agency is advertising jobs for speakers of the Iranian language Farsi. Israeli intelligence agencies appear to have similar problems with those faced by their US counterparts.

Bookmark and Share

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

News you may have missed #0206

December 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

Bookmark and Share

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

South Africa busts Shin Bet operation, expels Israeli agent

November 24, 2009 by 3 Comments

El Al logo

El Al logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The South African government has expelled an Israeli intelligence agent posing as an airline worker, after the discovery of a major Israeli undercover operation at the Oliver R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. The operation was uncovered by Carte Blanche, South African television’s most respected investigative news program, based on testimony by Jonathan Garb, a former guard at El Al, Israel’s national airline, who became a whistleblower after being fired from his job. Garb told Carte Blanche that El Al offices in South Africa and around the world have acted as fronts for Shin Bet, Israel’s General Security Service, for a long time. He also told the program that Shin Bet officers in Johannesburg used their El Al employee cover status to infiltrate the airport and gather information on black and Muslim South African travelers to Israel. Read more of this post

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

Israel reveals long-awaited Levinson spy case details

November 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As part of a move by Israeli intelligence agencies to adhere to elementary provisions of Israel’s declassification laws, Shin Bet has for the first time published details about the Shimon Levinson spy case. Levinson was a senior agent in Shin Bet (domestic intelligence) and the Mossad (external intelligence), who in 1991 was jailed for 12 years for spying on Israel on behalf of the Soviet KGB. Levinson’s career culminated with his appointment as head of the Mossad station in Ethiopia. This happened shortly before he voluntarily retired in1978, in frustration over an awaited promotion that failed to materialize. According to Shin Bet, it was Levinson’s business failures and financial instability, not ideology, that led him to contact the KGB and “offer his services to the Soviet Union” shortly after his retirement. Eventually the Soviets flew Levinson to the USSR, where he was trained in Soviet espionage techniques before being sent back to Israel. Read more of this post

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

News you may have missed #0174

November 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • West feared German reunification in 1989, documents show. The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago caused major anxiety in not only Eastern, but also Western capitals, to the point of outright opposition to a possible German unification, according to documents published last Friday by the National Security Archive.
  • Convicted CIA agents also in Norway. At least two of the 22 (not 23, as the article mistakenly states) CIA agents convicted last week for the 2003 abduction from Italy of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, were also active in Norway, according to Norwegian daily Stavanger Aftenblad.
  • Shin Bet tried to recruit alleged Israeli terrorist. Jack Teitel, an American-born Jewish settler who was recently arrested for allegedly having murdered two Palestinians, was asked by Israel’s internal intelligence agency to inform on extremist Israeli groups after the attacks, the agency said Friday.

Bookmark and Share

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

News you may have missed #0173

November 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Russia, Georgia, in secret border reopening talks. Russia and Georgia, whose borders have been shut since the 2006 South Ossetia War, are in secret negotiations to reopen their only common border checkpoint, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
  • Why Shin Bet is taking over Israeli domestic investigations. Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s domestic intelligence service, is overtaking the role of the police forces in solving criminal cases. The reasons are primarily political.
  • Interview with Bruce Schneier. A Q&A session with the cryptography legend, author of Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear. Interesting quote: “[W]e now know that the NSA vacuums up all sorts of electronic communications, e-mail included. So maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to routinely encrypt our e-mail”.

Bookmark and Share

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

News you may have missed #0171

November 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Court date for US couple accused of spying for Cuba. Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, who were arrested by the FBI last summer on charges of spying for Cuba for over 30 years, have a court appearance scheduled for Thursday. Meanwhile, the judge overseeing their case is trying to decide how to make evidence available for their trial while protect US intelligence sources and methods.
  • CIA responds to declassification request…20 years later. The CIA has finally released a small number of documents relating to Manucher Ghorbanifar, a shady weapons trader who mediated between Washington and Tehran during the Iran-Contra scandal. The declassification comes two decades after the Agency was asked to release the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.
  • Kalmanovic was Shin Bet informant, says Ha’aretz. It is well known that Shabtai von Kalmanovic, who was gunned down in downtown Moscow on Monday, had worked for the Soviet KGB. He confessed as much and was jailed in Israel in the 1980s for spying. But Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Kalmanovic was also “a Shin Bet [Israel’s internal security service] informant”. In a new article, the paper says Kalmanovic “was a low-level informer for the Shin Bet” before his arrest for spying for the KGB.

Bookmark and Share

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

Ex-KGB agent shot dead in downtown Moscow

November 4, 2009 by Leave a comment

Kalmanovic

Kalmanovic

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A former KGB agent, who was jailed in Israel in the 1980s for spying for the Soviet Union, was gunned down in downtown Moscow on Monday afternoon. Shabtai von Kalmanovic was shot repeatedly from close range in an apparent contract killing operation, as his chauffeur-driven Mercedes car was stopped at a red light a few blocks away from the Kremlin. Kalmanovic, 62, was a citizen of Lithuania, Russia and Israel. He was born in Soviet Lithuania in 1947, and permitted to emigrate to Israel with his Jewish parents in 1971. In 1987, Israeli authorities arrested Kalmanovic for allegedly giving Israeli military secrets to the KGB. Read more of this post

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

Mossad declassifies a document for the first time in its history

October 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

Mossad logo

Mossad logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
For the first time in its existence, the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, has released a document from its secret archive. The secretive spy agency agreed to release its official founding charter in the context of a year-long legal battle with two Israeli daily newspapers, Yedioth Ahronoth and Ha’aretz. Last year, the two papers filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice, claiming that the Mossad, as well as Israel’s internal spy agency Shin Bet, and the country’s Atomic Energy Commission, were not adhering to Israel’s archive laws. According to the petition, the three agencies were breaking the law by “maintaining their own archives and keeping them closed to the general public”. The High Court of Justice is still deliberating the case, but Mossad recently approached Ha’aretz and offered to voluntarily release its founding charter. Read more of this post

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

Israeli secret agents guarding Palestinian President, Prime Minister

August 24, 2009 by Leave a comment

Mahmoud Abbas

Mahmoud Abbas

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israeli agents of Shin Bet are guarding Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on their trips around some parts of the West Bank, Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz revealed last week. The report comes days after jeeps with agents from the VIP security unit of Israel’s secret service were observed escorting Abbas during his visits to Palestinian villages located in so-called “Area C”, a region of the West Bank that continues to remain under Israeli control, in accordance with the 1993 Oslo Accords. Both Palestinian and Israeli officials have confirmed this peculiar arrangement, which is bound to add to the animosity between the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government said that the same procedures are in effect when foreign officials visit Area C, and that it guards the Palestinian Authority President whenever he visits Israel.

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

Mossad deputy chief resigns amid internal strife

June 29, 2009 by Leave a comment

Meir Dagan

Meir Dagan

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
It emerged yesterday that the deputy director of the Mossad, Israel’s premier external intelligence agency, has stepped down. The official, known only as “T.”, appears to have resigned in protest over the Israeli government’s decision to extend the Mossad director’s tenure for an unprecedented eighth year. It has also emerged that  “T.” first warned the government two months ago that he would resign if the decision was made to retain Meir Dagan as Mossad director for yet another year. “T’s” resignation marks the fourth resignation of a Mossad deputy chief during Dagan’s directorship. There are rumors that Dagan refuses to leave his post until he agrees to a successor, which according to Israeli daily Ha’aretz, “will come neither from the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces nor Mossad”. Read more of this post

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

Presidential Guard member convicted of espionage in West Bank

January 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has announced a death sentence against a former member of the Presidential Guard who is said to have spied for Israel. Palestinian Authority prosecutors accused the unnamed 28-year-old man, resident of Hebron, of supplying sensitive information to Israeli intelligence agents since being recruited as an informant in 1997. The prosecution said that the information supplied to Israeli agents by the former Presidential Guard member resulted in –among other things– the capture by Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet) of Rateb Abayet and Adnan Abayat, both commanders of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the secular armed wing of Fatah. Read more of this post

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

Shin Bet arrests Israeli allegedly spying for Iran

January 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A spokesperson for Shin Bet, Israel’s General Security Service, announced yesterday the capture of an Israeli-Argentinean citizen, living in Buenos Aires, for offering to spy against Israel on behalf of Iran. The man, Mauricio Segel, was arrested by Shin Bet and Israeli police officers on December 22, while attempting to enter Israel. He is accused of having contacted the Iranian embassy in the Argentinean capital and offered to sell Israeli government documents to Iranian diplomatic officials. Israeli intelligence sources claim Segel first contacted the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires in 2006 and gained the Iranians’ trust by giving them access to copies of his Israeli national passport and identification card. Read more of this post

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

Israeli Attorney-General asked to investigate extrajudicial assassinations

December 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

Two Israeli attorneys representing the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel have sent a letter to Israel’s Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, demanding that he launches a criminal investigation into extrajudicial killings of Palestinians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet. In their letter, the attorneys, Avigdor Feldmand and Michael Sfard, request from Mazuz “to clearly and unconditionally prohibit assassinations when detention is an alternative and to prohibit giving advance approval to harming innocent bystanders”. The letter follows an investigation published last month in Israel’s most prominent newspaper, Ha’aretz, revealing that the IDF routinely assassinate wanted Palestinians in the West bank, even when detention “appears to be a viable alternative”. Read more of this post

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

← Older posts

Newer posts →