Taiwan | intelNews.org

News you may have missed #569

August 17, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

China & Taiwan

►►Taiwan begins to deal with its amateur spies caught by China. We have written before about the army of businessmen recruited by Taiwan’s Military Information Bureau (MIB). Many of these amateur spies were sent to collect intelligence in mainland China, often with minimal training or institutional support. Predictably, many were arrested, and dozens are believed to remain in China’s prisons today.
►►Egypt to try Israeli on espionage charges. And, no, it’s not Ilan Grapel, the American-Israeli who was arrested on espionage charges earlier this summer, and who is still in prison in Egypt. This case concerns another alleged Mossad operative, Ofir Herari, who has allegedly escaped and will be tried in absentia. Another man, Jordanian telecommunications engineer Bashar Ibrahim Abu Zeid, has been apprehended on charges of collaborating with Herari. He will be tried for “spying for a foreign country with the purpose of harming Egyptian national interests”.
►►Pakistan ‘gave China access’ to US copter used in bin Laden raid. According to a report in The New York Times, in the days after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Pakistan’s intelligence service “probably allowed” Chinese military engineers to examine the wreckage of a stealth American helicopter that crashed during the operation. This is the view of Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #564 (China/Taiwan edition)

August 10, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

China & Taiwan

►►Taiwan opposition party alleges Chinese hacking. Taiwan’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) says it has been the target of a Chinese hacking campaign that since March has made daily incursions into its computers, complicating its preparations for presidential elections in January. A DPP spokesman said the hackers had downloaded the party’s research reports, schedules and meeting notes, but hadn’t stolen any sensitive information.
►►Taiwanese businessman sentenced for spying for China. Taiwan’s High Court has sentenced 35-year-old Lai Kun-chieh to 18 months in prison for spying for China. Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says Lai was recruited by Chinese intelligence agents while working in China. But apparently a Taiwanese military officer approached by Lai and asked to share classified information, reported the incident to the authorities.
►►Taiwanese ex-spy arrested in China. There are reports in Southeast Asian news outlets of an arrest in China of a retired Taiwanese intelligence official, who was allegedly vacationing in the country. The former spy, who is identified simply as “Wu” in Chinese-language media, was arrested four months ago, soon after he arrived in China “as a tourist”. It is worth noting that, in 2010, the Deputy Director of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau Secret Service Center, Chang Kan-ping, warned retired intelligence officers to avoid visiting China, “because of the risk of arrest or interrogation there”.

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News you may have missed #551

July 28, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Salva Kiir

►►Analysis: The fallout from the CIA’s vaccination ploy in Pakistan. We wrote earlier this month that not everyone is amused by news that the CIA tried to collect DNA evidence on Osama bin Laden by running a phony vaccination program in Pakistan. In an editorial published in The Washington Post on July 15, two American public health professionals argued that the CIA’s DNA-collection operation “destroyed credibility that wasn’t its to erode” and “burned bridges that took years for health workers to build”. The issue is developing into a very interesting case study in intelligence ethics, as two new articles on the subject were published this week. One is by Jack C. Chow formerly US ambassador on global HIV/AIDS and ex-assistant director-general of the World Health Organization on HIV/AIDS. The other, by Slate magazine columnist Tom Scocca, argues that the the CIA vaccination scheme “reveals the moral bankruptcy of American spooks”.
►►South Sudan dissolves intelligence and security bodies. The president of the newly established Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has issued an order dissolving the country’s national security and intelligence organs. There are at least two intelligence agencies in existence in the new nation, both of which were illegally formed in 2006, before South Sudan’s independence.
►►China warns US to halt spy plane flights. China has demanded that the United States stops spy plane flights near the Chinese coast, saying they have “severely harmed” trust between the two countries, state-run media reported Wednesday. The warning comes a month after two Chinese fighter jets chased an American U-2 reconnaissance plane into Taiwanese airspace.

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News you may have missed #550

July 27, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Sukhoi-27 jets

►►Chinese fighters chased US spy plane into Taiwan. It has been revealed that, late last June, The Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense sent two F-16 fighters to intercept a two Chinese Sukhoi-27 jets that crossed into its airspace, while pursuing an American U-2 reconnaissance plane. It was the first time that Chinese jets breached Taiwan’s airspace since 1999. The Pentagon declined to confirm the report, but some in Washington must have had flashbacks of the 2001 Hainan Island incident.
►►Israel arrests four of its soldiers for sabotaging spy gear. This story is interesting on numerous levels: according to a statement by the IDF’s Northern Command, Israeli military authorities plan to prosecute four Israeli female soldiers for repeatedly shutting off unspecified surveillance equipment designed to collect intelligence from neighboring Lebanon. When faced with the accusations, the soldiers apparently told their commanders that “they worked under very difficult conditions and couldn’t bear the pressure”.
►►Turkish national convicted for spying in Ukraine. Ukrainian prosecutors say Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #549

July 26, 2011 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Lo Hsien-che

►►Taiwan general who spied for China gets life. A court in Taiwan has sentenced Lo Hsien-che to life imprisonment, for spying for the People’s Republic of China. As intelNews reported before, Major General Lo gave national secrets to his mistress, a “tall, beautiful and chic” Chinese female operative, who held an Australian passport. Taiwanese counterintelligence investigators said this was Taiwan’s most serious espionage scandal in almost fifty years.
►►Did German intelligence protect world’s most wanted Nazi criminal? The German intelligence service, the BND, destroyed the file of the world’s most-wanted Nazi criminal, Alois Brunner, and may have tried to recruit him into its ranks, German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported over the weekend. The order to destroy Brunner’s file came “at some point between 1994 and 1997”, according to the magazine. Few of those knowledgeable of BND’s history will be surprised. Incidentally, intelligence observers may remember that, in 1961 and 1980, Brunner, who lived in Syria, was injured by postal bombs sent by Mossad agents.
►►Analysis: New Czech spy law will not curtail abuse. Authorities in the Czech Republic have drafted a new law aimed, partly, at limiting the mandates of the country’s domestic Security and Information Service (BIS) and the Office of Foreign Relations and Information (ÚZSI) –the Czech foreign espionage agency. Read more of this post

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Taiwanese spy operation led to Chinese official’s dismissal, claims leaked cable

June 27, 2011 by intelNews 1 Comment

Jin Renqing

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
The puzzling resignation of China’s minister of finance was caused by his sexual involvement with a Taiwanese spy, who extracted classified information from him, according to a leaked American diplomatic cable. At the time of his 2007 resignation, Jin Renqing, a Communist Party bureaucrat with over 40 years of financial affairs experience, was regarded as Asia’s preeminent finance technocrat. His rise to China’s most powerful financial post, in the early years of our century, coincided with the country’s meteoric economic rise. When he quietly stepped down, a brief press statement by the Chinese government said Jin had resigned for “personal reasons”. But according to a diplomatic cable authored in September 2007 by a US State Department diplomat, Jin’s resignation was in fact a summary dismissal, caused by his sexual involvement with a much younger woman, who is now believed to have worked for Taiwanese intelligence. The cable, which has been leaked by whistleblower website WikiLeaks, describes the alleged Taiwanese spy as a “promiscuous socialite” and a “social butterfly”, who had successive affairs with a host of senior Chinese officials. The list included the country’s former Minister for Agriculture, Du Qinglin and Chen Tonghai, Director of China’s powerful Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, also known as Sinopec. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #515

June 1, 2011 by intelNews Leave a comment

US spies tracked suspected terrorists in Sweden. US intelligence agents have staked out suspected terrorists in Sweden without the authorization of the government there, Svenska Daglbadet newspaper has reported. Last November, Norway, Sweden and Denmark launched official investigations into reports that US embassies there operated illegal intelligence-gathering networks.
Aussie spy agency reported on WikiLeaks. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s department has revealed that WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, were the subject of Australian intelligence reporting last year, as the government anticipated the whistleblower website would spill “highly sensitive and politically embarrassing” secrets.
Former Taiwanese general accused of spying. Taiwanese government prosecutors are seeking a life sentence for Major General Lo Hsien-che, the most senior Taiwanese official to be arrested on espionage charges in the country since the early 1960s.

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News you may have missed #507

May 10, 2011 by intelNews Leave a comment

Pakistani media reveal name of CIA station chief. Mark Carlton, the purported CIA station chief in Islamabad, was named by a Pakistani newspaper and a private television news network over the weekend, the second holder of that post in less than a year to have his cover blown by the media.
How an immigrant from Taiwan came to spy for China. Well-researched article on Tai Shen Kuo, a Taiwanese-born American citizen who is serving time in an Arizona prison for spying on the US for China.
Domestic surveillance grew in US in 2010. The level of domestic US intelligence surveillance activity in 2010 increased from the year before, according to a new Justice Department report to Congress. Moreover, the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved all 1,506 government requests to electronically monitor suspected “agents” of a foreign power or terrorists on US soil.

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General arrested in Taiwan’s biggest spy scandal in 50 years

February 10, 2011 by intelNews Leave a comment

Lo Hsien-che

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A “tall, beautiful and chic” Chinese female operative, who held an Australian passport, appears to be behind Taiwan’s most serious espionage scandal in almost half a century, according to news reports. The scandal centers on the arrest earlier this week of Major General Lo Hsien-che, who heads the Taiwanese military’s Office of Communications and Information. Taiwanese prosecutors said that General Lo is the most senior Taiwanese official to be arrested on espionage charges since the early 1960s. He had apparently been investigated for several months by Taiwanese counterintelligence investigators, who claim that Lo was recruited by Chinese intelligence while stationed in Thailand, between 2002 and 2005. Paris-based Agence France Presse cites The China Times in reporting that the General was lured by a female Chinese operative in her early 30s, who cajoled him with “sex and money”. Read more of this post

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Taiwan grapples with ‘largest military spy scandal in 20 years’

November 4, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Taiwan

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two Taiwanese double agents have been arrested in Taipei, in connection with what one newspaper editorial described as the most serious case of military espionage to hit the country in two decades. The two men, who have been charged with conspiracy to conduct espionage on behalf of a foreign power, were detained on Tuesday, after they were witnessed exchanging classified information at a busy outdoor location by Taiwanese counterintelligence agents. One of them, identified as Lo Chi-cheng, is allegedly a Colonel in Taiwan’s Military Information Bureau, the most powerful intelligence organization under Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. According to Taiwanese officials, he operated for several years as a procurer of classified military information on behalf of his unnamed co-conspirator, a Taiwanese businessman who is reportedly “linked to Taiwan’s intelligence network”. The unnamed businessman, who was also detained Tuesday, would then pass the classified information to a handler from Chinese intelligence. Read more of this post

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Analysis: A detailed look into Taiwanese espionage on mainland China

May 19, 2010 by intelNews 4 Comments

Lin Yi-lin

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Japanese newspaper The Asahi Shimbun has published the first part of a captivating two-part examination into Taiwanese espionage activities in China, authored by Tsuyoshi Nojima, the paper’s former Taipei bureau chief. In the article, Nojima highlights the cases of a number of former civilian agents of Taiwan’s Military Information Bureau (MIB), including that of Lin Yi-lin. The MIB recruited Lin in the late 1980s, during what has been called the modern heyday of Taiwanese intelligence activities in China. Taiwan spies had been active on the Chinese mainland for decades following the Chinese Civil War, but a nationwide counterintelligence crackdown by Beijing in the late 1970s virtually decimated Taiwan’s espionage networks inside China. It took nearly a decade for the MIB to reestablish its informant architecture on the mainland. By that time, the rapprochement between the two rival countries was beginning, with commercial ties rapidly accelerating. Read more of this post

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Study points to Chinese city as ‘world capital’ of cyberespionage

March 29, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Shaoxing

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
A major traffic analysis of cyberespionage attacks has identified a provincial urban center in southeast China as ‘the world capital’ of cyberespionage. The survey, conducted by cybersecurity firm Symantec, studied the origination points and targets of 12 billion malicious emails. It concluded that nearly one third of all email-based cyberespionage attacks originate from the People’s Republic of China –a percentage far larger than previously thought. It also traced most Chinese cyberespionage attacks to Shaoxing, a city of over four million residents in China’s southeaster Zhejiang province. The Symantec study said that large-scale Chinese cyberespionage attacks appear to be systematic and concentrate on carefully selected targets, such as defense policy experts and human rights activists. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0226

December 19, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA tries to increase numbers of women leaders. CIA Director Leon Panetta is taking steps to increase the number of women at the Agency’s highest levels. The US is apparently “behind the curve when it comes to promoting women to the top ranks of intelligence services”.
CIA denies employing David Headley. CIA spokesperson Marie E. Harf said that “any suggestion that [David Coleman Headley] worked for the CIA is flat wrong”. The comment was in response to persistent rumors that Headley, who was arrested by the FBI in October, for plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, is in fact an undercover CIA agent gone wild.
Taiwan wants to swap jailed spies with China. The Taiwanese Ministry of Defense, which proposed the exchange, said the plan follows its policy of “do[ing] our best to take care of agents and their family members in accordance with the law and regulations”. There have been several espionage-related arrests involving the two bitter rivals in recent months.

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News you may have missed #0222

December 15, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

UN investigates claims Iran using Taiwan as nuclear conduit. United Nations officials are investigating intelligence claims that Iran has established a smuggling network using front companies in Taiwan to acquire equipment that it could use to make nuclear weapons.
Blackwater tied to secret CIA raids, say employees. “There was a feeling that Blackwater eventually became an extension of the agency”, said one former top CIA officer. IntelNews regulars will remember that we described last summer’s revelations of Blackwater’s participation in US special operations as “just the tip of the iceberg”.

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News you may have missed #0162

November 2, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

South Korean 1967 spy case was “trumped up”, report finds. A national truth commission set up by South Korea’s primary intelligence organization, the National Intelligence Service, has concluded that the so-called Tongbaengnim spy ring case was “grossly trumped up”. The case culminated in a public show-trial of 194 South Korean academics, artists and students, accused of spying for North Korea.
CIA torture sparked rift with FBI. The Associated Press is reporting what intelNews readers have known since July 20; namely that the CIA’s use of “harsh interrogation techniques” against captured terror suspects made FBI interrogators wary of the legality of the methods. As a result, FBI agents were barred from the interrogations.
Analysis: Friendship is no bar to espionage. As relations between Taiwan and China improve, would it be reasonable to expect that China will temper espionage activity against Taiwan, and vice-versa?