News you may have missed #439

October 18, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Book critical of Russian FSB published. In a new book entitled The New Nobility, Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan claim that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is less repressive but ultimately more dangerous than its predecessor, the Soviet KGB.
  • Senior-most North Korean defector dies. Hwang Jang-yop, the theoretician behind North Korea’s Songun and Juche state doctrines, who defected to South Korea in 1997, has died at his home in Seoul, aged 87. Last April, South Korea charged two North Korean government agents with attempting to assassinate Hwang.
  • ‘Low morale’ leads MI6 spies to apply for Australian jobs. More than 50 spies at Britain’s MI6 have allegedly responded to a recruitment drive by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). According to insiders, there has been growing uncertainty among MI6’s 2,600 staff over looming budget cuts and inquiries into alleged complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects.

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News you may have missed #433

September 22, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • White House quiet on Pollard release speculation. The Barack Obama administration is staying silent on a reported offer from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend a settlements freeze in the occupied areas, in exchange for the release of Jonathan Pollard, currently held in a US prison for spying on America for Israel.
  • ‘The Secret History of MI6’ published. An authorized history of the first forty years of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has been published by Bloomsbury. The book is written by Professor Keith Jeffery, of Queen’s University, Belfast, based on his unrestricted access to SIS archives of the period.
  • Pakistan accuses Briton of spying. Authorities in Pakistan are holding a 70-year-old Briton on suspicion of spying for almost a month in the country’s lawless tribal areas. Nicholas Bain, who claims he is an author researching a book, is suspected of “working for a British intelligence agency”, according to a Pakistani official.

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British informant sues MI5 for breach of contract

September 16, 2010 by 1 Comment

RIRA gunmen

RIRA gunmen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An informant, who was used by British intelligence to infiltrate an Irish Republican dissident group, is suing the British government claiming he was forced to give evidence in court despite his will. The case, which is believed to be the first of its kind in British legal history, has been brought before the court by a man identified only as “Amir”. Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, has admitted recruiting Amir in 2004, and using him to infiltrate the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), a Provisional IRA splinter group that continues its armed campaign against British presence in Northern Ireland. But the informant claims that he accepted payment from MI5 on condition that he would never be expected to testify as a witness in court. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #430

September 13, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Russians arrested outside US power plant. Police in the US state of Georgia have arrested one Kazakh and two Russian citizens, who were carrying “a machete, shovel, wire cutters and ski masks”, outside Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh, at 1:00 in the morning. Hmm….
  • MI6 spy could have climbed into sports bag before death. British detectives reportedly believe that someone else padlocked GCHQ and MI6 employee Gareth Williams into the sports bag where his body was found on August 23. But they remain open to the possibility that Dr Williams climbed into the bag as part of a sex game and then suffocated.
  • Tamils claim espionage behind Canada HQ break-in. The Canadian Tamil Congress believes that lists containing the names of hundreds of Tamil asylum-seekers were stolen from its Toronto headquarters by Sri Lankan government spies.

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Irish republicans used cameras to spy on MI5

September 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

Palace Barracks

Palace Barracks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British government officials in Northern Ireland have ordered 20 trees cut down outside a spying installation, after a number of surveillance cameras were discovered hidden among the tree branches. The trees are located around a multimillion-dollar spying base belonging to MI5, Britain’s primary domestic intelligence organization. The base, which serves as MI5’s headquarters in Northern Ireland, is located in Holywood, County Down, inside a British Army installation named Palace Barracks. Eyebrows were raised on April 12, when a dissident republican group managed to detonate a massive car bomb inside the maximum-security base. The bomb was carried into the base by a local taxi driver, who had been forced by paramilitaries at gunpoint to smuggle it into the facility. British media initially attributed the attack to the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), but it was later blamed on Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH), which split from the Continuity Irish Republican Army (CIRA) four years ago. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #427

September 8, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Did Belarus KGB murder opposition activist? The death of Belarussian opposition activist and journalist Oleg Bebenin has thrown a murky light on both the circumstances of his demise and those who might be behind it. Some point the finger at Minsk’s modern-day KGB, whose leadership was reshuffled earlier this year by President Alexander Lukashenko.
  • Colombian agency behind domestic spying honey trap. Former Colombian detective Alba Luz Florez has revealed that she seduced a national police captain as a way of infiltrating the Colombian Supreme Court, during a 2007 domestic spying operation by the country’s scandal-besieged Administrative Department of Security.
  • Ex-MI6 worker jailed for trying to sell secrets. A British court has jailed Daniel Houghton, a former employee of MI6, Britain’s external spy agency, for trying to sell secret intelligence documents to the Dutch secret services. Interestingly, the Dutch notified MI6 after they were approached by Houghton, who has dual British and Dutch citizenship.

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News you may have missed #426 (Gareth Williams edition II)

September 7, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • ‘Turf war’ over Williams killing. British media claim that a turf battle has erupted between British police and the country’s external intelligence agency, MI6, with some police officers complaining that MI6 personnel are hindering their investigation into the death of former MI6 and GCHQ employee Gareth Williams.
  • Williams reported ‘being tailed’ before death. British tabloid The Daily Express claims that Gareth Williams feared he was being followed and told his superiors at MI6 he thought he was being targeted by foreign agents, several weeks before his death.
  • NSA expert doubts Williams killing was spy-related. Intelligence commentator James Bamford, who has authored several books on the NSA, GCHQ’s equivalent agency in the US, says that “leaving a body in a canvas bag sounds more like a jealous lover or drug deal gone bad than a political assassination”.

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Killer submerged British spy’s body in ‘chemical substance’

September 6, 2010 by 3 Comments

Gareth Williams

Gareth Williams

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Investigators are still in the dark about vital clues behind last month’s killing of a British intelligence employee in his London apartment. Detectives say they are still unsure about the exact cause of death of Dr. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old mathematician employed by General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British government’s communications security and surveillance agency. It has been determined that Williams, who for the past year had been temporarily transferred to MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency, was not stabbed or shot, and is unlikely to have been strangled by his murderer(s). There are, however, increasing signs that the GCHQ scientist’s murder was carried out in a professional manner, possibly by a member of a rival intelligence agency. Read more of this post

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Taliban operate ‘very extensive’ spy network in British Afghan bases

September 1, 2010 by 4 Comments

Richard Kemp

Richard Kemp

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The former head of British troops in Afghanistan has warned that the Taliban are gathering intelligence from a “very, very extensive network of intelligence” operating inside British military bases in the Central Asian country. Colonel Richard J. Kemp, who was Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan in 2003, said the spy network includes “sources in many places” throughout the country, such as NATO military bases and Afghan security forces outposts. He also told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that the network is so effective that it tends to possess more information about the itineraries of foreign officials visiting Afghanistan than Western diplomats, NATO or Afghan military commanders realize. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #422 (suspicious deaths edition)

August 31, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Self-described CIA assassin dies in gun accident. Roland W. Haas, a senior intelligence officer in the US Army Reserve who claimed in a 2007 memoir that he was a CIA assassin, died over the weekend when he accidentally shot himself, police in the US state of Georgia said.
  • Russian military intel chief in mystery death. General Yuri Ivanov, 52, deputy head of Russia’s powerful military intelligence agency, the GRU, died mysteriously in a swimming accident “several days ago”, Russian media has reported. No further details have been released on the circumstances or the location of Ivanov’s death.
  • David Kelly inquest calls ‘outrageous’, says friend. Professor Christian Seelos, was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq alongside British biological weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, who was found dead four days after appearing before a UK Parliament committee investigating claims about Iraq’s purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Seelos now says that calls for a fresh examination into Dr. Kelly’s death are “totally politically motivated”.

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Police see ‘professional job’ in British spy’s death

August 30, 2010 by 1 Comment

Gareth Williams

Gareth Williams

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As authorities investigate the recent death of British spy Dr. Gareth Williams, the country’s notorious tabloid media industry is having a field day disorienting interested observers. It is thus easy to miss important news breakthroughs in the cacophony of sensationalized headlines about Williams, whose body was discovered a week ago, stuffed in a sports duffle bag in the bath of his London apartment. One such breakthrough was yesterday’s report by Britain’s widely respected Channel 4, which said that law enforcement investigators described Williams’ death as “a neat job”, a term used to refer to professional killings. The Channel 4 report was preceded by strong official denials by police that Williams’ murder was sex-related, as had been previously reported. Some investigators now believe that Williams was killed by a foreign agent, who then deliberately “planted a trail of clues” pointing to a homosexual link to the death. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #419 (Gareth Williams edition)

August 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

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British MI6 employee found dead in London flat

August 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

Gareth Williams

Gareth Williams

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities are keeping silent on the mysterious death of a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) employee, whose body was found in the bath of his London apartment, stuffed in a sports duffle bag. By Monday afternoon, when police entered the top apartment of the five-storey townhouse in Pimlico, London, the man had been laying dead for nearly a fortnight. On Wednesday, he was identified as Dr. Gareth Williams, a 31-year-old mathematician employed by General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British government’s foremost communications security and surveillance agency. For the past year, Williams had been temporarily transferred to MI6, the country’s external intelligence agency, whose headquarters is located less than a mile from the apartment where the mathematician’s body was discovered. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #415

August 20, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • GCHQ tech arm adopts new personnel evaluation tests. The Communications Electronics Security Group is the information assurance arm of the General Communications Headquarters –Britain’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. CESG has now adopted a new testing method of verifying the competency of its IT security professionals, because apparently there are “not enough security professionals in the public and private sectors to go around”.
  • Swapped Russian insists he was no CIA spy. Of the four jailed Russians the US received from Moscow in exchange for the 11 Russian illegals in July, only one is talking. But Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear proliferation expert, who was convicted of links with a CIA front-company, insists he was no CIA spy. However, if that is so, why was he on Washington’s swap list in the first place?
  • Militants target Yemen spy officials. Two officers in Yemen’s Political Security Organization, Colonel Ali Abdul Kareem al-Ban, and Juman Safian, have been shot dead in recent days. Al-Qaeda militants, who assumed responsibility for the attacks, warned they will be stepping up operations inside neighboring Saudi Arabia.

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Russian alleged CIA spy gives interview

August 18, 2010 by 1 Comment

Igor Sutyagin

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Of the four Russians alleged spies that the US and the UK received from Moscow in exchange for the 11 Russian illegals in July, only one is talking to the media. The Russian government convicted Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear proliferation expert, of having links with Alternative Futures, a British consulting company alleged by Moscow to be a CIA front. This past weekend, Sutyagin, who now lives in an undisclosed London location, gave a detailed interview to Natalya Golitsyna, a London-based correspondent for US government-owned Radio Liberty’s. As in his previous statements to the press, the Russian scientist rejected he was ever a spy, claiming that “[t]he first thing in my mind […] was doing and thinking for my country”. He also rejected accusations that he provided Alternative Futures with classified information on Russian nuclear weapons policy: “there was no transfer of information”, said Sutyagin, noting that the information he shared with the British-registered company “was just an illustration of the processes that are going on in Russia tasks”. Read more of this post

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