Turkish media disclose identity of alleged spy for Canada

March 17, 2015 by 4 Comments

Mohammed al-RashedBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Turkish media have released the name, as well as video footage, of an alleged agent for Canadian intelligence, who says he helped three British schoolgirls travel to territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The three girls, aged between 15 and 16 years old, crossed into ISIS-controlled territory on February 17, after traveling by plane from London to Istanbul. The incident prompted international criticism of the Turkish government’s hands-off attitude toward a growing influx of Western Islamists who cross into Syria from Turkey, intent on joining ISIS. However, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu said last week that the girls had been assisted by an intelligence agent working for a member-state of the military coalition fighting ISIS.

The minister declined to offer further details. But Turkish media eventually disclosed the identity of the alleged agent, who has been detained by authorities in Turkey as Mohammed al-Rashed. Also known as “Mohammed Mehmet Rashid” or “Dr. Mehmet Rashid”, the man is a Syrian national who claims to be working for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. According to Turkey’s pro-government daily Sabah, al-Rashed is a 28-year-old Syrian dentist who fled from Syria to Jordan in 2013 to escape the civil war there. While in Jordan, he sought asylum at the Canadian embassy in Amman. He was subsequently offered Canadian citizenship, said Sabah, in return for working as an agent of CSIS. According to the Turkish daily, al-Rashed then traveled to Canada, where he stayed for several months before returning to Jordan.

Sources in Turkey say al-Rashed explained upon his detention that he had been tasked by CSIS to uncover the methods by which European and American ISIS recruits travel to Syria through Turkey. For that reason, he said, he had helped at least 15 individuals, including the three British schoolgirls, cross form Turkey to Syria. He would then provide information on the transfers —including passport data and baggage tags— to the Canadian embassy in Jordan, he said. Sabah added that the Canadians would pay for al-Rashed’s frequent trips to Jordan, where he would meet a Canadian embassy employee called “Matt”, who would then pass on the information to his superior at the embassy, called “Claude”. The Syrian alleged agent added that CSIS would compensate him for his work through frequent deposits of between $800 and $1,500 made to bank accounts opened in his name in British banks. Turkish sources added that al-Rashed had recorded details of his activities on a personal laptop, which had been seized and was being examined.

The Canadian government has yet to comment publicly on the allegations about al-Rashed. Unnamed Canadian sources said last week that he was neither a Canadian citizen nor a CSIS employee. But officials so far refused to speculate on what they describe as “operational matters of national security”.

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Turkey says Canadian spy helped British schoolgirls travel to Syria

March 13, 2015 by Leave a comment

CCTV footage of UK girls heading to SyriaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
In a development described by observers as “highly unusual”, a Turkish government minister has claimed that a Canadian spy helped three British schoolgirls travel to territory controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The three girls, Kadiza Sultana, 16, Shamima Begum, 15, and Amira Abase, also 15, crossed into ISIS-controlled territory on February 17, after having traveled by plane from London to Istanbul. The incident prompted renewed international criticism of the Turkish government’s hands-off attitude toward the growing influx of Western Islamists who cross into Syria from Turkey, intent on joining ISIS.

But Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday that the girls had been assisted during their trip by an intelligence agent working for a foreign country. In responding to criticism against Turkey, the minister claimed during a television interview that Turkish security forces had arrested a foreign intelligence operative who had enabled the three British citizens to cross into Syria. The man, said Cavusoglu, was a spy from a member-state of the military coalition fighting ISIS. “It is not a member-state of the European Union”, he added, “nor is he from the United States. But he is working for the intelligence [agency] of a country within the [anti-ISIS] coalition”. Later on Thursday, an unnamed Turkish government source told local media that the agent was not a Turkish citizen and that he had been arrested earlier in March.

Several press agencies, including Reuters and Agence France Presse reported on Thursday that the individual in question was “connected” with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but stopped short of saying that he was working for the government of Canada. A statement from the office of Steven Blaney, Canada’s Minister for Public Safety, who is responsible for overseeing the work of CSIS, said simply that the Ministry was “aware of these reports” but would “not comment on operational matters of national security”. An anonymous government source in Ottawa denied that the individual arrested in Turkey was a Canadian citizen or that he ever worked for CSIS.

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German-British intelligence dispute worsens: media reports

March 6, 2015 by Leave a comment

GCHQ center in Cheltenham, EnglandBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
An intelligence-sharing dispute between Britain and Germany, which was sparked by revelations about Anglo-American espionage against Berlin, is turning into a “burgeoning crisis”, according to German media reports. Relations between Germany and the United Kingdom worsened in September, after the revelation of TREASURE MAP, a top-secret program led by the US National Security Agency, which allegedly allows American spies to map the entire network of German telecommunications providers. Reports suggest that TREASURE MAP enables the NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, to map the German Internet and reveals the addresses and locations of individual subscribers’ routers, as well as those of targeted computer and smart-phone users.

Late last year, the German parliament set up a body known informally as the NSA investigative commission, and tasked it with probing the allegations of American and British spying activities against the German state. In February, however, German newsmagazine Focus reported that British intelligence officials issued formal warnings aimed at their German counterparts, telling them that London would reconsider its intelligence cooperation with Berlin should the German parliament proceed with the probe into alleged British spying on German soil. According to Focus, British officials were concerned that such an inquiry by the NSA investigative commission would unearth British intelligence activities and would debate them openly during parliamentary sessions.

Earlier this week, the German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung said that Gerhard Schindler, head of the German intelligence agency BND, tried to convince members of the NSA investigative commission to avert public disclosures of GCHQ activities in Germany. The parliamentarians’ response was reportedly extremely negative, with some members of the commission threatening to launch a lawsuit against any attempt to censor its proceedings. Süddeutsche Zeitung added that Schindler had been recalled from his holidays this week and had spent several days feverishly briefing German politicians about the ongoing dispute with London. According to the paper, the British government insists that all intelligence cooperation with Germany will be suspended should the parliamentary committee proceed with its investigation. Berlin considers this prospect “an unconcealed threat”, said the paper, and added that such an eventuality would “certainly go against the spirit of the European Union and could even be a breach of European cooperation treaties”.

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News you may have missed #889

February 27, 2015 by Leave a comment

Malcolm RifkindBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►US agency warns of domestic right-wing terror threat. A new intelligence assessment, circulated by the US Department of Homeland Security this month, focuses on the domestic terror threat from right-wing so-called “sovereign citizen” extremists and comes as the Obama administration holds a White House conference to focus efforts to fight violent extremism. Some federal and local law enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to —and in some cases greater than—the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.​
►►Chair of UK parliament’s spy watchdog resigns over corruption scandal. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a British parliamentarian who chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee, has announced that he will stand down, after a video emerged showing him discussing with what he thought were representatives of a Chinese company, who asked him to help them buy influence in the British parliament. Rifkind offered to get them access to British officials in exchange for money. The people he was talking to, however, turned out to be journalists for The Daily Telegraph and Channel 4 News who recorded the conversations.
►►The case of the sleepy CIA spy. Although a federal judge ruled in favor of the CIA last week in a discrimination suit brought by an employee who claimed he was harassed out of his job because of his narcolepsy and race, the African-American man is back in court with another complaint. On December 4, “Jacob Abilt”, the pseudonym for the CIA technical operations officer who sued the CIA, filed a second, until now unreported suit, complaining that he was unjustly denied a temporary duty assignment to a war zone due to a combination of his race and narcolepsy.

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British spy testifies in disguise in alleged al-Qaeda member’s trial

February 20, 2015 by Leave a comment

MI5 HQ Thames HouseBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
A heavily disguised British intelligence officer has given evidence in the trial of the alleged leader of an al-Qaeda cell who is being tried in the United States for planning to bomb the New York subway system. Abid Naseer, 28, from Pakistan, was a studying in Britain in April 2009, when he was arrested by British police along with 12 other people for allegedly planning a series of suicide bombings in a popular shopping center in the city of Manchester. In January 2013, however, he was extradited to the US, where he also faces changes of having tried to organize suicide attacks against the New York public transportation system.

American prosecutors claim Naseer received paramilitary training in Pakistan before moving to the UK intent on carrying out terrorist attacks. Last year, the prosecution asked the judge whether six intelligence officers from the UK’s Security Service (also known as MI5), who monitored Naseer’s activities in the months leading up to his arrest, could provide evidence in court. Moreover, the prosecution requested that the MI5 officers be allowed to provide evidence without revealing their identities, since they work as surveillance operatives and are currently involved in counterterrorism investigations. The judge agreed, and the first of the six MI5 officers gave evidence this week through a video link from an undisclosed location in the Britain.

The witness concealed his identity by wearing a false goatee beard, thick spectacles and what reporters described as “a long black wig”. He was also wearing heavy make-up and was identified in court only as “serial number 1603”, according to British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. He told the court that he was part of a large team of MI5 surveillance officers who closely followed Naseer for over a month while he was allegedly planning suicide operations in Britain and the US. The physical surveillance included following the suspect as he was scouting targets in Manchester and sitting behind him on a bus traveling from Manchester to Liverpool. Naseer is defending himself in the trial and had the chance to cross-examine the MI5 officer, said The Telegraph.

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Britain threatens to stop intelligence cooperation with Germany

February 13, 2015 by 4 Comments

GCHQ center in Cheltenham, EnglandBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Intelligence officials in Britain have warned their German counterparts that London could stop intelligence-sharing with Berlin if a German parliamentary probe into British spy activities goes ahead as planned. Last summer, Berlin reportedly threatened to cancel an agreement dating back to 1945 with the three Allied victors of World War II, namely the United States, Britain and France. The report emerged following the arrest of a German intelligence officer who was caught spying for the United States. Based on documents leaked by American defector Edward Snowden, Berlin claims that Washington routinely shares German-related intelligence with London.

Relations between Germany and the United Kingdom worsened in September, after the revelation of TREASURE MAP, a top-secret program led by the US National Security Agency, which allegedly allows American spies to map the entire network of German telecommunications providers. Reports suggest that TREASURE MAP enables the NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, to map the German Internet and reveals the addresses and locations of individual subscribers’ routers, as well as those of targeted computer and smart phone users.

Late last year, the German parliament set up a body known informally as the NSA investigative commission, and tasked it with probing the allegations of American and British spying activities against the German state. However, according to a report in German newsmagazine Focus, British intelligence officials have issued formal warnings aimed at their German counterparts, telling them that London will reconsider its intelligence cooperation with Berlin should the German parliament proceed with the probe into alleged British spying on German soil. According to Focus, British officials are concerned that such an inquiry by the NSA investigative commission would unearth recent British intelligence activities and would debate them openly during parliamentary sessions.

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Links revealed between UK spy agencies and Gaddafi-era Libya

January 26, 2015 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.orgTony Blair and Muammar Gaddafi in 2007
British spy agencies had close operational links with their Libyan counterparts during the rule of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, and even allowed Libyan spies to operate on British soil, according to documents. The Libyan government files, unearthed in the North African country following the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, allegedly reveal a degree of cooperation between London and Tripoli that goes far beyond what has been publicly acknowledged. According to London-based newspaper The Guardian, which saw the documents, intelligence agencies from the two countries launched a series of joint operations between 2006 and 2011, aimed at political enemies of the Libyan ruler, many of whom were thought to have links with al-Qaeda. In an article published on Friday, The Guardian said that the Security Service (commonly known as MI5), invited Libyan intelligence operatives to Britain and allowed them to spy on enemies of the Gaddafi regime who were living there, having been granted political asylum by the British government. The paper said that the Libyan intelligence officers were even allowed to “intimidate a number of Gaddafi opponents” who were trying to organize anti-Gaddafi campaigns on British soil. In return, the Libyan government allowed MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) access to captured anti-Gaddafi dissidents in Libya, while the latter underwent interrogation that almost certainly involved torture. The British paper said the unearthed documents, which come straight from the archive vaults of the Gaddafi government, are being used in a lawsuit filed in Britain against MI5, MI6, as well as against a number of British government departments, by former anti-Gaddafi dissidents. The plaintiffs, all members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which tried to depose Gaddafi in the years prior to his death, claim that evidence against them was obtained through torture in Libyan prisons. They also claim that British intelligence agencies knew they were being tortured when they cooperated with the Libyan intelligence services that had captured them. In 2014, a former senior leader of LIFG, Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, won the right to sue the British government over his claim that he was tortured by Libyan intelligence operatives with the cooperation of British and American intelligence agencies. In 2012, another prominent Libyan political dissident, Sami al-Saadi, was awarded £2.2 million ($3.5 million) by a British court, after claiming that he underwent torture in Libya following his abduction in a joint British/Libyan/American intelligence operation.

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UK spies intercepted emails from top European, American media

January 20, 2015 by 1 Comment

GCHQ center in Cheltenham, EnglandBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Britain’s communications-interception agency captured private emails from journalists and editors in some of the world’s top media, including The New York Times, the BBC, The Washington Post, and NBC. British broadsheet The Guardian said on Monday that the interception occurred in 2008 by experts in the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which spies on international communications on behalf of the British government. The London-based newspaper said the emails were among 70,000 that were captured during a 10-minute interception drill that took place in 2008. The exercise involved the installation of a number of taps on fiber-optic cables, which function as superhighways of digital signals exchanged between users around the world. The messages captured included emails sent by journalists and editors working for some of the world’s most recognizable media in Britain, France and the United States. Following the exercise, the content of the intercepted messages was posted on GCHQ’s internal servers, where any one of its employees with access to the organization’s intranet could read them. The Guardian said it based its revelation on internal GCHQ files disclosed by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for GCHQ’s American counterpart, the National Security Agency, who defected to Russia in 2013. The purpose of the British spy agency’s exercise is not known, nor is there any information in the leaked documents to show whether journalists and their editors were deliberately targeted by GCHQ. However, the paper said that another document leaked by Snowden contains an “information security assessment”, in which GCHQ targeting officers listed “investigative journalists” in a detailed hierarchical list of security threats, which included computer hackers and terrorists. The document cautions that “journalists and reporters […] specializing in defence-related exposés […] represent a potential threat to security”. The Guardian contacted GCHQ but was told by a spokesman that the organization has a “longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters”. The spokesman added, however, that the agency’s interception activities are subject to “rigorous oversight, including from the secretary of state”.

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News you may have missed #887 (Anglosphere edition)

January 13, 2015 by Leave a comment

Ian FletcherBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►Canadian military deploys spies during Arctic exercise. The Canadian military has been routinely deploying a counter-intelligence team to guard against possible spying, terrorism and sabotage during its annual Arctic exercise, according to internal documents. In the view of intelligence experts, the move is unusual because Operation NANOOK is conducted on Canadian soil in remote locations of the Far North.
►►Sudden resignation of NZ spy chief raises questions. Opposition parties in New Zealand have raised questions over the sudden resignation of Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), Ian Fletcher, who is stepping down after three years in the role. Chris Finlayson, the minister responsible for the spy agency, said Fletcher was making the move for family reasons. Fletcher will finish in the role on 27 February and an acting director will be appointed from that date.
►►British government argues for more powers for spy agencies. Britain’s spying agencies need more powers to read the contents of communications in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, British Prime Minister David Cameron has said. Speaking in Nottingham, he said the intelligence agencies need more access to both communications data –records of phone calls and online exchanges between individuals– and the contents of communications. This is compatible with a “modern, liberal democracy”, he said.

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Irish police mole helped entire IRA leadership avoid capture in 1974

December 8, 2014 by Leave a comment

Provisional IRA volunteer in the 1970sBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The former intelligence director of the Provisional Irish Republican Army has claimed that an informant within the Irish police helped the entire leadership of the militant organization avoid capture during a raid in 1974. The raid was conducted in December of 1974 by Garda Síochána, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, in the village of Feakle, County Claire, in western Ireland. On the day of the raid, the entire leadership of the Provisional IRA was taking part in a secret meeting with Protestant clergy, which had been pursued by the separatist organization following the so-called pub bombings in the English cities of Guildford and Birmingham. The bombings were meant to take the war in Northern Ireland to the British mainland, but were eventually deemed disastrous to the image of the IRA. Nearly 30 people died in the bombings, while hundreds were injured, many of them seriously. The secret meeting between the IRA’s leadership and Protestant clergy was part of a wider negotiation campaign between republican separatists and pro-British loyalists, which eventually led to a ceasefire that lasted until the start of 1975. However, an informant had given the Garda accurate information about the meeting location between the IRA senior command and Protestant clergy, and the agency’s Crime and Security Branch planned to swoop on the meeting and arrest the republican militants. However, in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian, the IRA’s former director of intelligence, Kieran Conway, said the IRA leadership managed to escape arrest thanks to “a tip-off from high-placed figures within the Garda”. Conway joined the IRA in 1970 and became director of its intelligence wing in 1974. He left a year later and joined again in 1981 during the hunger strikes by republican prisoners. He left for good in 1993, in protest against the IRA’s decision to sign the Downing Street Declaration, which formed the basis of the IRA’s eventual decision to decommission its weapons and enter the political process. Conway also told The Guardian that the IRA had the support of “prominent members of the Irish establishment” including mainstream politicians, senior bankers, stockbrokers and journalists. Many of these supporters provided safe houses for members of the IRA in affluent neighborhoods of Irish capital Dublin, he claimed. Conway was speaking to promote his recently published book, called Southside Provisional: From Freedom Fighter to the Four Courts. This is not the first time allegations have surfaced about IRA moles inside the Irish Garda. In 2011, an Irish government investigation unearthed intelligence reports claiming that an informant within the agency helped the IRA plan the killings of a judge and two senior British police officers in the 1980s.

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UK report warns about sexual entrapment by foreign spies

November 11, 2014 by 2 Comments

UK Ministry of DefenceBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
A leaked report issued by military authorities in the United Kingdom cautions British officials to be aware of attempts by Chinese and Russian intelligence services to compromise them using sexual entrapment. The London-based Sunday Times newspaper said it had acquired a copy of the document, entitled Manual of Security, authored by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence for use by senior officials. The manual warns that foreign intelligence services are known to employ sexual entrapment or romantic attachment as a means of compromising their targets. The document singles out the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Chinese Ministry of State Security as two adversary agencies that are known to employ sexual entrapment on a regular basis. British officials are warned in the document that the FSB could gain classified information by exploiting “knowledge of marital infidelity or sexual activity the target may wish to hide”. The Times spoke to an unidentified “senior military official”, who told the paper he was recently approached by “a very attractive blonde woman in her early 30s” in a hotel in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg. The woman began telling him of her fascination with vintage British sports cars, which happened to be the British official’s favorite hobby. He eventually terminated the encounter after he became suspicious of the woman’s motives. But he remains puzzled as to how the woman knew details of his personal hobbies. In 2009, the British Foreign Office had to recall its deputy consul-general in the Russian city of Ekaterinberg, after he appeared in an explicit video on YouTube having a sexual encounter with two Russian prostitutes. Many speculated at the time that the video had been posted online by the FSB in an attempt to embarrass the diplomat and have him removed from Russia. Later that year, London’s former deputy mayor, Ian Clement, admitted he was lured by a female Chinese secret agent, who drugged him and ransacked his Beijing hotel room after having sex with him. Clement said he fell for what he called “the oldest trick in the book” while in Beijing to “build contacts with potential investors” for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Sir Christopher Meyer, a career diplomat with the Foreign Office, who served in several countries during his career, including the Soviet Union, has written about the case of Sir Geoffrey Harrison, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow from 1965 to 1968. The ambassador, said Sir Christopher, “had to leave [the Soviet capital] in a hurry, having fallen for the charms of his Russian maid –trained and targeted, of course, by the KGB”. Read more of this post

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British spy agencies launch recruitment drive for Russian speakers

November 5, 2014 by Leave a comment

MI5 HQ Thames HouseBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Amid mounting tensions between Russia and the West, British spy agencies have announced an ambitious recruitment campaign aimed at hiring a new generation of Russian-language specialists. The Security Service, known as MI5, which is responsible for domestic security and counterintelligence, posted an advertisement on its website this week, alerting potential applicants that the job search for Russian-language speakers will officially launch “in mid-November 2014”. The recruitment campaign, which is described on the spy agency’s website as “an exciting opportunity to match your language skills to a position in MI5”, appears to be jointly administered with the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain’s signals intelligence agency, which is tasked with intercepting foreign communications. The move takes place in a wider context of deteriorating relations between Moscow and Western Europe, notably in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of southeastern Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Some suggest that there has also been a low-intensity intelligence war taking place between London and Moscow ever since the assassination in the British capital of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. In late 2012, an officer of the Royal Navy was captured during a counterintelligence sting operation while trying to sell top-secret British government documents to people he believed were Russian intelligence operatives. A few months later, the British government let it be known of its increasing annoyance by persistent allegations made in the Russian media that Denis Keefe, the UK’s deputy ambassador to Moscow, was “an undercover spy, with his diplomatic position serving as a smokescreen”. In March of 2013, Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet KGB’s former station chief in London, who defected to the UK in the 1980s, alleged in an interview that Russia operates as many spies in Britain today as it did during the Cold War. His comments were echoed earlier this year by the former director of MI5, Jonathan Evans, who said that there had been no change in the number of undeclared Russian intelligence officers operating in Britain since the end of the Cold War. Evans said that up to 50 undeclared Russian military and civilian spies were believed to be operating in Britain at any given moment. In June of this year, intelNews reported that the crisis in Crimea had caused the British military to hurriedly reach out to hundreds of retired Russian-language analysts who left the service at the end of the Cold War, most of whom are now in their 60s.

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Historian names wartime British spy who fooled Nazi sympathizers

October 24, 2014 by 1 Comment

Eric RobertsBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A British counterintelligence agent, who managed to neutralize an extensive wartime network of Nazi sympathizers in the United Kingdom by pretending to represent the German government, has been named. Regular intelNews readers might remember our post about a wartime agent identified only as “Jack King” in files released by the British National Archives in February. “Jack King” was the operational codename given to the agent by his handlers in the British Security Service, commonly known as MI5, which is tasked with counterintelligence duties. Senior officials at the agency described “King” as “a genius” at luring Nazi sympathizers in the UK. The files show that “King’s” work helped MI5 identify hundreds of residents in Britain —most of them British citizens— as committed Nazis who were prepared to pass national secrets to Berlin. “King” reportedly utilized his pro-German contacts in the southeast of England and was able to infiltrate pro-Nazi circles operating in and around London. He did so by posing as an agent of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police. He quickly gained the trust of some of the most fervent pro-German activists operating in the British Isles. These included Edgar Whitehead, Hilda Leech, and Marita Perigoe, a Swedish resident of the UK who was so fervently pro-Nazi that she once dismissed Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists as “insufficiently extreme”. When the “Jack King” files were declassified, some intelligence historians suggested that the operational codename referred to John Bingham, a legendary MI5 office and fluent German speaker who is said to have inspired John le Carré’s fictional character George Smiley. But Cambridge University historian Christopher Andrew, who in 2009 authored In Defense of the Realm, an officially-commissioned history of MI5, has revealed the name of “Jack King” as Eric Roberts. Professor Andrew told The Daily Telegraph newspaper that Roberts was an unassuming suburban bank clerk who lived in a small market town called Epsom in Surrey. Roberts was born in nearby Sussex, in southeastern England, in 1907, married at a young age and had three children —two sons and a daughter. His MI5 files document that, by the time World War II started, he was “thoroughly familiar” with networks of Nazi sympathizers in the south of England, though just how he had managed to do that remains a mystery. Roberts eventually attracted the attention of Maxwell Knight, a legendary MI5 spymaster who headed the organization’s Section B5(b), tasked with infiltrating subversive political groups in Britain. Read more of this post

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Britain’s MI6 appoints new director amidst mounting global crises

October 6, 2014 by Leave a comment

Alex YoungerBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6) has announced the appointment of a new director at a period that some see as the most critical for the agency since the end of the Cold War. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a brief statement on Saturday that Alex Younger will be replacing Sir John Sawers, who earlier this year announced he would be stepping down from the post. Prior to his appointment, Younger, 51, held the position of chief of global operations, which is considered the number two position at MI6. The Foreign Office statement described Younger as a “career SIS officer” who has worked for the agency since 1991, when he joined from the Scots Guards regiment of the British Army. He holds an economics degree and has served with MI6 in the Middle East, Europe, and Afghanistan, where he represented the agency as its most senior officer in the country following the US-led military invasion of 2001. Upon his return to the United Kingdom, Younger directed MI6’s counterterrorism preparations in the lead-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Some observers noted on Sunday that the new director’s appointment comes at a crucial period for Britain’s principal external intelligence agency, as it prepares to expand its operations in Iraq and Syria, in response to the growth of the Islamic State there. Additionally, British intelligence is refocusing on Eastern Europe, as the crisis in Ukraine threatens to further-damage relations between East and West, which appear to be on their direst state since the Cold War. Younger’s appointment will be seen as a reaffirmation by the government of the work of Sir John, who has led MI6 for four years. Many were surprised when Sir John, who was a diplomat, not an intelligence officer, was named as director of MI6 in 2010. It was said at the time that his appointment was meant to be seen as a public response by the government over strong accusations that the agency had seriously underperformed in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Sir John has tried to restore MI6’s reputation and has been particularly noted for his public appearances, which included lectures and speeches at parliamentary hearings. Read more of this post

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Ex-MI6 counterterror chief urges caution in tackling ISIS threat

August 28, 2014 by Leave a comment

Richard BarrettBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
Britain should not hurriedly change its laws to counter the perceived danger posed by homegrown militants that have joined the Islamic State, according to the former head of counterterrorism for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Richard Barrett, a former diplomat, served as Director of Global Counter Terrorism Operations for MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, and is considered an international authority on counterterrorism. He told The Guardian newspaper that it would be wrong for the British government to introduce legislation effectively criminalizing travel to Iraq or Syria by British subjects. Barrett was responding to a newspaper article by London mayor Boris Johnson, who criticized Britain’s conservative government for not taking active steps to prevent British citizens form traveling to Syria and Iraq in order to join the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. Johnson said he supported calls for British members of the Islamic State to be stripped of their British citizenship, even if that meant they would be left stateless —a violation of United Nations law. The London mayor further suggested that all British citizens travelling to Syria and Iraq without first notifying the government, should be legally considered as having traveled there “for a terrorist purpose”. He added that the burden should be on them to prove that they were “acting innocently” while abroad. But Barrett dismissed Johnson’s proposals, saying that they would cancel age-old principles of British common law and could potentially criminalize British citizens who traveled to the Middle East for legitimate purposes. Read more of this post

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