News you may have missed #0010

June 26, 2009 by 1 Comment

  • Kim Jong Il’s son to head North Korea secret police. Since 1987, Kim Jong Il has been the official leader of the State Security Department of North Korea. However, South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo reports that Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s third son, has now been named as the agency’s head. There are rumors in South Korea that the move could signify that a handover of power in Pyongyang may be imminent.
  • First US economic espionage trial winds down. A US court is preparing to sentence Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a Chinese-born engineer accused of passing critical trade secrets on the US space program to China for three decades. 
  • US and Venezuela to restore expelled ambassadors. The move appears to be a thawing gesture toward the new leadership in Washington by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The Latin American leader has toned down his criticism of US foreign policy since Barack Obama took office in January, partly because the US president is popular in Latin America in contrast to his predecessor George W. Bush. 
  • US to send ambassador to Damascus. Washington has confirmed it is to send an ambassador to Damascus, ending a four-year diplomatic absence in Syria. The US envoy in Syria was withdrawn in 2005, following the assassination of Lebanon’s former PM Rafiq Hariri. 
  • Cuban Five spy case an obstacle to US-Cuban thaw, says Havana. The Cuban Five were arrested in 1998 and convicted of spying on anti-Castro exile groups on behalf of Havana. Cuba regards them as political prisoners and has lobbied intensively for their release. Cuban President Raúl Castro has said he would be willing to swap jailed political dissidents for the Five, but the US government has rejected the idea.

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Analysis: Early Thoughts on Medhat’s Assassination

March 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

Kamal Medhat

Kamal Medhat

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Kamal Medhat, 58, was a senior Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) official. He was assassinated on March 23 by a roadside bomb that struck a PLO convoy outside the entrance to the Mieh Mieh refugee camp, located near Sidon in southern Lebanon. Since Medhat’s assassination, intelNews has received several emails from readers pointing the finger at Israel’s intelligence services. There is no doubt that Medhat’s assassination is a significant setback for the broader secular Palestinian movement, and especially for Fatah, of which Medhat was a senior member. A former aide to the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Medhat had previously served as Fatah’s director of intelligence in Lebanon, and was a key supporter of Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. To my knowledge, Medhat was the most senior Palestinian official (of any faction) assassinated in Lebanon in nearly 30 years. Nevertheless, although an Israeli role in his assassination should not be ruled out, it would be premature to conclude at this stage that Israeli intelligence services were behind the operation. Read article →

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Britain says at least 20 countries spying on it

February 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper has revealed a government report, which states that the UK is a “high priority espionage target” for “at least 20 foreign intelligence services”. The report, issued to UK government departments on January 19, 2009, warns against overlooking traditional espionage threats while focusing almost solely on the activities of al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. Authored by a group of British Army Intelligence Corps officers, the report identifies Chinese and Russian espionage networks as the most active on British soil, and discloses that “[t]he number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since the Soviet times”. Read more of this post

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Obama insiders already in secret talks with Iran, Syria

February 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
French news agency AFP is reporting that individuals associated with the Administration of US President Barack Obama have held several secret meetings with Iranian and Syrian officials during the past several months. The Agency describes the clandestine meetings as “high-level” and notes that the Obama team approved them “even before winning the November 4 election”. Some of the meetings appear to have been coordinated by the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a Nobel Prize-winning anti-nuclear proliferation group. The Executive Director of the group’s US branch, Jeffrey Boutwell, describes the US-Iranian contacts, which took place in The Hague and in Vienna, as “”very, very high-level”, and notes that they covered issues beyond Iran’s nuclear program, including “the Middle East peace process [and] Persian Gulf issues”. Read more of this post

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Russian naval bases in the Mediterranean “a matter of time”

January 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last October, when Libyan head of state Muammar al-Gaddafi visited Moscow, observers speculated that the possibility of a Russian naval base in Libya would be high among the subjects for discussion. Now the ITAR-TASS news agency has quoted an “unidentified” Russian military official as saying that the establishment of Russian naval bases in Libya, Syria, and possibly Yemen, is a matter of time. The official suggested that “[t]he political decision [to lease the bases] has been taken” and “this will be done without question”. Responding to a request for comment by The Moscow Times, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, Colonel General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, simply confirmed that Moscow is conducting negotiations “with foreign governments”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Former CIA clandestine officer paints bleak picture of Agency

December 15, 2008 by Leave a comment

In a brutally honest exposé, a 25-year veteran of the CIA has publicly described the Agency as an organization mired in failure, mediocrity and incompetence. Art Brown, who headed the Asia division of the CIA’s Clandestine Service from 2003 to 2005, has called the Agency’s seven-year, multi-billion operation to find Osama bin Laden a “failure” that “no amount of ‘rendition’ of bin Laden lieutenants can mask”. Writing in The New York Times, the CIA veteran has revealed that Syria’s alleged construction of a nuclear reactor in the country’s eastern desert came “as a surprise” to the Agency. Read more of this post

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Israeli intelligence alleges Syrian nuclear program resumed

December 5, 2008 by Leave a comment

In September 2007, Israel launched an air attack against Syria, destroying a facility in Al Kibar that both the Israelis and the Americans claimed was a nuclear military installation. Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed the US and Israeli allegations. The Israelis now claim that the Syrians have resumed their nuclear program. Read more of this post

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Strange phone calls in Syria point to Israeli intelligence services

December 4, 2008 by Leave a comment

In late October, 2008, thousands of seemingly random telephone subscribers in Syria received strange calls in which an automated message in Arabic asked them for information about missing Israeli soldiers. The recorded message guaranteed the safety of potential tipsters and offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the soldiers’ whereabouts. It then prompted them to call a telephone number starting with a British country code. Read more of this post

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IAEA confirms US allegations of Syrian nuclear reactor

November 21, 2008 by Leave a comment

Fourteen months ago, Israel launched an air attack against Syria, destroying a facility that both the Israelis and the Americans claimed was a nuclear military installation. When Syria denied the claim, US intelligence officials released visual evidence —some from the interior of the installation— arguing that the bombed building was in fact a plutonium production reactor. After undertaking its own investigation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has now confirmed the US and Israeli allegations that Syria was covertly constructing a nuclear reactor. Interestingly, the IAEA reportedly based its investigation on “other evidence, not on the photos released by Washington”. [JF]

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