News you may have missed #469

January 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

  • Vulture not a Zionist spy after all, declare Saudis. After more than a week of febrile rumor and speculation, the King of Saudi Arabia has declared that a vulture found on the country’s territory, carrying a GPS tracker labeled “Tel Aviv University”, is not part of an Israeli reconnaissance plot.
  • Germany jails two Libyans for spying. Two Libyans have been sentenced in a Berlin court for spying on members of the Libyan opposition living in Europe. ‘Adel Ab.’, an officer for the Libyan intelligence service, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison while his accomplice, ‘Adel Al.’ was sentenced to one year and 10 months.
  • Russian aide accused of spying to remain in UK until October. Britain’s MI5 accuses Katia Zatuliveter, former assistant to Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, of spying for Russia. But she will remain in the UK until next October, when she will be able to challenge her pending deportation at an immigration hearing.

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News you may have missed #464 (Mossad edition)

January 3, 2011 by 4 Comments

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News you may have missed #461

December 23, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • London expels Russian diplomat for spying. Britain’s troubled relations with Moscow suffered another blow on Tuesday, when London announced the expulsion of an unnamed Russian diplomat in London following “clear evidence” of spying. The request was communicated to the Kremlin on December 10, and was reportedly countered by Russia with a tit-for-tat expulsion of a British diplomat from the country.
  • Syria saw Israel behind aide’s assassination, leaked cables show. Syria suspected Israel of carrying out the murder of Brigadier General Mohammed Sleiman, a top security aide of President Bashar al-Assad, who was assassinated by a sniper in August of 2008, according to US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks. The killing empowered hardliners in Syria and put an end to moves by President al-Assad for rapprochement between Damascus and Tel Aviv, according to the cables.
  • Israel to publicly press for release of spy held in US. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to officially and publicly appeal to US President Barack Obama in the coming days for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American serving a life term in a US jail for spying on the US for Israel.

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News you may have missed #458

December 7, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • More arrests of alleged Russian agents in Georgia. The government of Georgia arrested six people suspected of being agents for Russia and accused them of staging a series of explosions, including one outside the US embassy in capital Tbilisi. At least 13 more people were arrested last month in Georgia, and are facing charges of spying for Moscow.
  • Iran defector says Tehran hosted N. Korean techs. Mohammad Reza Heydari, who resigned in January from his post as Iranian consul in Norway, and defected to the West, has told a conference in Paris that he saw North Korean technicians “repeatedly” travel to Iran.
  • Spy scandal MP helped second Russian woman stay in UK. British Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Mike Hancock, whose assistant, Katia Zatuliveter, is accused by MI5 of spying for Russia, helped 25-year-old Russian citizen Ekaterina Paderina stay in Britain after she ran into visa problems, in the late 1990s.

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Some spy news in the shadow of WikiLeaks’ revelations

December 6, 2010 by 2 Comments

Katia Zatuliveter

Katia Zatuliveter

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The WikiLeaks revelations continue, and so does the global news storm concerning the whistleblower site. Obviously, the news value of the WikiLeaks disclosures is unquestionable. However, there are notable intelligence-related developments taking place outside the now-familiarWikiLeaks context. Take for instance the recent arrest of what appears to be a Polish spy in Limassol, Cyprus. The unidentified man, who was reportedly detained in the vicinity of a Greek-Cypriot military base on the island, was carrying “a camera containing photos of National Guard posts, a laptop, two mobile phones, five memory cards, a GPS system and three pairs of binoculars”. Another interesting development concerns the arrest on espionage charges of Katia Zatuliveter, a Russian citizen who works as an assistant to British Member of Parliament Mike Hancock. Zatuliveter is expected to be deported on the basis of evidence gathered by MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence service, which has apparently been monitoring her for several months. Interestingly, Mr. Hancock, who is a member of the British House of Commons’ Defence Select Committee, is standing by his assistant. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #455

November 24, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Israel says it did not kill German politician. Israel has rejected a claim by a Swiss chemistry professor that the 1987 murder of German politician Uwe Barschel had the hallmarks of a Mossad assassination. For more on Barschel see previous intelNews story here.
  • Foreign cyber spies targeted UK defense official. Foreign spies, probably working for the People’s Republic of China, targeted senior British defense official Joanna Hole, in a sophisticated spear phishing operation that aimed to steal military secrets. The plan was foiled last year when Hole became suspicious of an email she received from a contact she had met at a conference.
  • The 10 most interesting CIA-backed startups. America’s only federally funded venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, was created in 1999 during the tech boom. The company invests in startups developing technologies that could prove useful to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

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News you may have missed #452

November 16, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Britain’s GCHQ turns to Google for help. GCHQ, Britain’s Cheltenham-based signals intelligence agency, is recruiting an expert on MapReduce, the patented number-crunching technique developed by Google to distribute the load of billions of web searches across its cluster of hundreds of thousands of commodity servers.
  • CIA double agent pleads guilty from prison. CIA officer Harold James Nicholson, who in 1997 was jailed for spying for Russia, has pleaded guilty to enlisting his son Nathan to sell the Russians more secrets and collect money owed to him by the Russian spy services.
  • Georgia offers to negotiate with Russia over spies. Tbilisi is ready for negotiations with Moscow on the repatriation of several alleged Russian spies arrested in Georgia, the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze has said.

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News you may have missed #451 (history edition)

November 12, 2010 by Leave a comment

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News you may have missed #449

November 5, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Damning report on CIA attack on missionary plane. US Central Intelligence Agency officers involved with a secret counternarcotics mission in the Peruvian jungle routinely violated agency procedures, tried to cover up their mistakes, and misled Congress immediately after a missionary plane was accidentally shot down in 2001, according to a blistering CIA internal report released on Monday.
  • Israeli legislators call on US to release Jewish spy. Members of the Israeli Knesset are calling on US President Barack Obama to pardon American-born spy Jonathan Pollard, having been jailed in a maximum-security facility since 1985. George Bush refused to pardon Pollard in the last days of his presidency.
  • Analysis: Britain’s MI6 operates a bit differently than CIA. “Like the CIA, MI6 has a website, but while the U.S. agency site is only in English, MI6’s is also in Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese. Another sign of British sophistication: while the CIA site has games and quizzes for kids, the MI6 site gives short tests to allow potential recruits to assess their analytical and administrative skills”. Interesting comparative assessment by Walter Pincus.

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News you may have missed #448

November 2, 2010 by 3 Comments

  • Russian intel source threatens WikiLeaks. A Russian secret services expert has denied that whistleblower website WikiLeaks poses a threat to Russia, and warned that the “right team” of people could simply shut down WikiLeaks “forever” if it posts classified Russian government documents.
  • UK female spy gave rare interview about WWII exploits. It has emerged that British wartime spy Eileen Nearne, who died aged 89 in September, and whose exploits echoed the fictional character Charlotte Gray, gave an interview 13 years ago –in disguise– in which she told how she was tortured by the Gestapo.
  • Lebanon sentences 3 to death for spying for Israel. A Lebanese military court on Monday sentenced three people to death for spying for Israel. Two of the Lebanese nationals, Sami Farhat and Amar al-Halabi, were sentenced in absentia because they have fled the country. The third man, Jawdat el-Hakim, is held by Lebanese authorities. Dozens of alleged Israeli spy cells have been uncovered in Lebanon in the past year.

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News you may have missed #447

October 29, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • UK MI6 chief speaks publicly for the first time. Sir John Sawers, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, has delivered what he said was the first public address by a serving chief of the agency in its 101-year history.
  • WikiLeaks to release secret Russia, China logs. Whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which has published hundreds of US war logs, is preparing to release secret files from Russia and China, Russian newspaper Kommersant said on Tuesday.
  • Renegade CIA agent’s papers acquired by NYU. The private papers of the late Philip Agee, the disaffected CIA operative whose unauthorized publication of agency secrets 35 years ago was arguably far more controversial than anything WikiLeaks has produced, have been obtained by New York University, which plans to make them public next spring.

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Proposed US-Chinese telecom deal worries US legislators

October 28, 2010 by 1 Comment

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Three US Congress members have raised security concerns about a proposed deal between American and Chinese telecommunications companies, claiming that it could facilitate Chinese espionage in the United States. The proposed collaboration is between US-based Sprint-Nextel and Cricket Wireless, and Chinese hardware manufacturers ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies. But three US Senators, Jon Kyl (R-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), have written to US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski, claiming that the ZTE and Huawei are effectively controlled by China’s civilian and military intelligence establishment. According to the legislators, if the proposed deal goes through the Chinese government may be able to use ZTE and Huawei to “manipulate switches, routers, or software embedded in American telecommunications networks so that communications can be disrupted, intercepted, tampered with, or purposely misrouted”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #445

October 27, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • WikiLeaks files show Iranian involvement in Iraq. The latest WiliLeaks release of nearly 392,000 US military reports from Iraq shows, among other things, that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq War. According to the documents, Tehran’s elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported weapons like Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and US troops.
  • WikiLeaks founder on the run. Julian Assange’s fate seems as imperiled as that of Private Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old former Army intelligence operative under detention in the US for leaking Iraq and Afghan war documents to WikiLeaks. Last Monday, Mr. Assange’s bid for a residence permit in Sweden was rejected. His British visa will expire early next year.
  • Money problems of US spies may threaten US security. Elizabeth Bancroft The executive director of the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers, has suggested that government agencies should monitor intelligence service employees with security clearances, who may have fallen into bankruptcy during the ongoing economic crisis. Spy agencies are worried that financial problems might leave these employees open to bribery or blackmail.

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News you may have missed #443

October 25, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • First budget cuts in a decade for UK spy agencies. Spending on Britain’s intelligence agencies is set to fall by 7%, for the first time in more than a decade. This is be expected to force MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to cap staff numbers, merge some of their operations, and scrap plans to modernize some of their buildings. Looks like even more British spies will be moving to Australia.
  • South Koreans arrested for trying to defect to North. Three South Koreans, including a medical doctor, are being investigated after allegedly trying to defect to North Korea from China. It is extremely unusual for South Koreans or other nationals to attempt to defect to the North.
  • Plame calls Fair Game movie ‘accurate portrayal’. CIA agent Valerie Plame has said the movie Fair Game, based on her book, is a “really good, accurate portrayal of what we went through, both personally and in the political maelstrom that we live through”. The Bush administration was accused of blowing Plame’s cover as retaliation after her diplomat husband openly challenged the reasoning behind the Iraq War.

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British citizen among Mossad assassins intrigues investigators

October 20, 2010 by Leave a comment

Christopher Lockwood

Lockwood

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Only a handful of the 33 members of an Israeli assassination squad, who killed a senior Hamas member in Dubai last January, carried non-fraudulent passports. Most of the assassins, who in all probability worked for Kidon, an elite assassination unit within Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, used forged British, Irish, German, Australian, and other passports. Dubai officials investigating the murder of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh have identified at least one British citizen among non-fraudulent passport holders in the Mossad assassination team: he is 62-year-old Christopher Lockwood (photo), who helped facilitate al-Mabhouh’s assassination by transporting some of the Mossad members around Dubai “in a [rented] white minivan with tinted windows”. Read more of this post

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