Tibet | intelNews.org

Canadian reporter says Chinese news agency asked him to spy

August 23, 2012 by intelNews Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A longtime Canadian journalist says he resigned his post at China’s state-run news agency after he was asked to use his press-pass privileges to spy on a prominent Tibetan separatist leader. Mark Bourrie, an Ottawa-based reporter and author of several books, told The Canadian Press news agency that he was first approached by Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua in 2009. The veteran journalist was allegedly told by Xinhua officials that the agency planned to expand its news coverage of Canada and wished to compete with other international news services active in North America. Bourrie said that, upon joining Xinhua, he began to cover “routine political subjects”; gradually, however, his superiors started making “some unusual requests”. In one characteristic case, he was asked to report on the identities and contact information of political activists who had participated in legal protests against the visit to Canada of Chinese President Hu Jintao in 2010. Bourrie says he rebuffed such requests, because they did not seem to him to have journalistic value. In April of this year, Xinhua’s bureau chief in Ottawa, Dacheng Zhang, allegedly asked Bourrie to attend a keynote speech by the 14^th Dalai Lama at the Sixth World Parliamentarians’ Convention on Tibet, which was held at the Ottawa Conference Center. Based in India, the Dalai Lama is the most prominent international figure of the movement for the independence of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which has been ruled by the People’s Republic of China since 1951. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Canada, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, China, CSIS (Canada), Dacheng Zhang, Dalai Lama, intelligence covers, journalism, Mark Bourrie, News, Ottawa (Canada), resignations, separatism, Tibet, Xinhua News Agency

News you may have missed #431

September 14, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

WikiLeaks to publish massive Iraq War document cache. A massive cache of previously unpublished classified US military documents from the Iraq War is being prepared for publication by WikiLeaks in a few weeks, a new report has confirmed.
Untangling the bizarre CIA links to the Ground Zero mosque. Interestingly, New York, native R. Leslie Deak, who is one of the earliest backers of the nonprofit group behind the so-called ‘Ground Zero mosque’, is connected with Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with CIA ties.
Plaque honours Tibetan ‘freedom fighters’ at CIA camp. The US Forest Service has unveiled a plaque to commemorate the training given to anti-Chinese Tibetan ‘freedom fighters’ by the CIA, at Colorado’s Camp Hale from 1958 to 1964. See here for previous intelNews coverage of this little-known incident.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 0 Plaque honours Tibetan 'freedom fighters' at CIA camp, 0 Untangling the bizarre CIA links to the Ground Zero mosque, 0 WikiLeaks to publish massive Iraq War document cache, Camp Hale, China, CIA, Colorado, declassification, Iraq War, New York, News, news you may have missed, Patriot Defense Group LLC, R. Leslie Deak, Tibet, United States, US Forest Service, Wikileaks

Researchers discover gigantic cyberespionage operation

March 31, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Ronald Deibert

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A team of Canadian researchers claims to have discovered a large cyberespionage ring located mainly in China. The researchers say the ring has managed to infiltrate nearly 1,300 mainly government and corporate computers in at least 103 countries around the world. The report, entitled Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network, was compiled after a ten-month collaboration between Ottawa’s SecDev group and the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Although the report concludes that the cyberespionage ring is located mainly in China, it specifically rejects claims that GhostNet is inevitably a Chinese government operation, saying that there is no evidence that Beijing is behind the operation. University of Toronto associate professor Ronald Deibert suggested that the operation could potentially be the work of non-state pro-Chinese actors, or could be conducted by a profit-oriented group that sells the acquired information to whoever offers it the highest monetary compensation. “It’s a murky realm that we’re lifting the lid on”, said Dr. Deibert: “This could well be the CIA or the Russians”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Canada, China, computer hacking, cyberespionage, Cyprus, Germany, GhostNet, India, Indonesia, Iran, Latvia, Munk Centre for International Studies, News, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Ronald J. Deibert, SecDev Group, Tibet, Tibetan government in exile, University of Toronto

CIA veteran reveals agency’s operations in Tibet

March 14, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Gyalo Thondup

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who supervised the Agency’s covert operations in the Chinese region of Tibet, says he is working on a new book on the subject. John Kenneth Klaus, who, while stationed in India in the 1960s, directed the CIA’s support of Tibetan independence paramilitaries, has given a rare interview to Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star. In it, he admits that the CIA supplied weapons to Tibetan monks, who are widely known for their non-violent philosophy. According to 85-year-old Klaus, the origins of the CIA’s covert assistance to Tibetan monks date back to at least 1957, when Gyalo Thondup, older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits, whom the Agency trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas. Shortly afterwards the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance”. In the process, they recruited another 300 Tibetans who were secretly transported to Colorado and trained by Klaus and other US intelligence and military officers. Read more of this post