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News you may have missed #411

August 10, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Third Lebanese telecom worker charged with spying for Israel. A Lebanese prosecutor has charged a third state telecommunications employee with spying for Israel. Milad Eid, who worked at the state-owned fixed-line operator Ogero, is accused of “dealing with the Israeli enemy [and] giving them technical information in his position as head of international communications at the Telecommunications Ministry”.
Author Roald Dahl was British spy, new book claims. A new book by Donald Sturrock, entitled Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, claims that children’s author worked for British Security Coordination (BSC), a 1940s secret service network based in the United States, and was ‘run’ from New York by Canadian industrialist William Stephenson.
Israeli nuclear whistleblower wants to leave country. Nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu has been released from prison after serving a 10-week sentence for violating the terms of his parole by speaking to a foreign journalist. Upon his release, he asked that he be allowed to leave the country.

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News you may have missed #406

August 4, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

US National intelligence nominee oversaw problematic contract. While James Clapper headed the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a corporation he contracted for information technology functions was found to have “been seriously deficient with respect to security issues”. Clapper is now President Barack Obama’s controversial nominee to be Director of National Intelligence.
Pakistan spy chief cancels UK visit over terrorism comments. British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent claim that Pakistan promotes the export of terrorism has led its intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to cancel a visit to Britain.
Israel alleges new Turkey spy chief is Iran supporter. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has expressed concern over Turkey’s appointment of new spy chief, Hakan Fidan, saying he is a “supporter” of the Jewish state’s enemy Iran. This is the second time in recent weeks that Israel has expressed concern over Fidan.

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News you may have missed #405

August 3, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Democracy Now on Google-CIA partnership. Democracy Now has aired an interview with John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Inside Google project, and Noah Shachtman, of Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog, who broke the story of the Google-CIA investment partnership.
Ex-CIA chief downplays cyberwar with China. Retired CIA chief Michael Hayden downplayed the notion that the US is in a raging “cyberwar” with China during a speech on Thursday at the Black Hat Technical Security Conference in Las Vegas.
Men held over parcel bomb sent to MI6. Two men have been arrested in north Wales, after parcel bombs were sent to the offices of the British government executive at 10 Downing Street, and the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s external intelligence agency. The two men, aged 52 and 21, are believed to be related and of Pakistani origin.

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Largest leak in US military history reveals Afghan war details

July 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
American, British and German military planners are scrambling to contain the political impact of a massive cache of classified reports from Afghanistan, which has been leaked by an anti-secrecy activist group. It has now become known that, several weeks ago, the group Wikileaks.org handed over a total of 91,731 classified incident and intelligence reports from the US-led occupation force in Afghanistan to American newspaper The New York Times, British broadsheet The Guardian, and German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. All three outlets agreed to examine the material, abiding by Wikileaks’ condition that they would wait until Sunday, July 25, to release it. All three news media published news of the leak almost simultaneously on Sunday night, (see here, here and here), and posted several of the files, which provide an unprecedented six-year archive (from 2004 to 2009) of day-to-day US-led military operations in Afghanistan. This unprecedented disclosure is believed to represent the largest public leak of classified material in US military history. Read more of this post

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Russian ‘spy’ breaks silence, wants to leave UK for Russia

July 23, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
One of the four Russian alleged spies that were handed over to the West in return for 11 Russian intelligence officers arrested in the US last month, has issued a public statement for the first time since his July 9 release from prison. At the time of his release, Dr. Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear expert who headed the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, had served 11 years of a 15-year sentence, for allegedly passing state secrets to Alternative Futures, a British company alleged to be a CIA front by the Russian government. Once Washington included his name on the top-secret exchange list, Sutyagin was transferred from his prison cell in Kholmogory prison, near Arkhangelsk in northern Russia, to the Lefortovo high-security jail in Moscow. It was there that, following a meeting with this family, he was told that he would receive a Presidential pardon in exchange for his unconditional admission of guilt. Minutes after he agreed to the deal, the Russian scientist was flown to London, still in his prison uniform. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #398

July 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Britain’s first spy chief ordered Rasputin’s murder. Mansfield Cumming, or ‘C’ as he became known, was the first chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). In December 1916, he sent three agents in Russia to eliminate Grigori Rasputin, an influential Orthodox Russian priest who had a positive view of Germany.
Russian spy network moved money to Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwean company called Southern Union is alleged to have been used by exposed Russian spy Anna Chapman in a money smuggling operation involving a syndicate linked to the Robert Mugabe regime.
Iran says nuclear scientist gave valuable info on CIA. Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency says that Iranian nuclear scientist Dr. Shahram Amiri, who resurfaced and returned home last week from the United States, after having disappeared during a 2009 religious pilgrimage to Mecca, has provided Iran with “valuable information” on the CIA.

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British government to investigate death of former Mossad agent

July 20, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ashraf Marwan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In June 2007, Dr. Ashraf Marwan, son-in-law of the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, fell to his death from the balcony of his London home. Last week, British authorities initiated a previously announced official investigation into Dr. Marwan’s death, following accusations by his widow, Mona Nasser, that he had been murdered. Undoubtedly, the late Dr. Marwan had plenty of enemies. In 1969 he walked in the Israeli embassy in London and told diplomatic officials that he wished to be employed as an agent for Israeli intelligence. After several interview sessions with Mossad officers, some involving the use of polygraph techniques, the Mossad employed him as an agent. It is said that Dr. Marwan proved invaluable to the Israelis, over a number of years. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #396 (Russian spy ring edition V)

July 19, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

12th Russian spy network member deported from US. Alexey Karetnikov, a 23-year-old Russian citizen living in Seattle, has been deported to his home country, apparently in connection with the Russian illegals spy network uncovered by the FBI last month. A photograph of Karetnikov is available here.
Returned spies look to changed identities. Several of the Russian agents detained in the United States in June and handed over to Russia last week will change their identities under a witness protection program, a Russian intelligence official said last week. All but three of the agents were using false names when they were arrested by the FBI on June 27.
Russian spy Chapman stripped of UK citizenship. Anna Chapman, also known as Anya Kushchenko, one of the Russian spies deported from the United States, has been deprived of her British citizenship, and exclusion is expected to follow, meaning she cannot travel to the UK. She has a UK passport through a previous marriage.

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Russia-US spy swap plan was almost shelved, say Russian media

July 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The unprecedented spy exchange between Russia and the United States nearly failed, after American and Russian planners came across several unforeseen problems during the run-up to the swap. Moscow-based daily newspaper Moskovsky Komzomolez cited a confidential source in Russian intelligence, who said that Washington almost cancelled the exchange deal in the early hours of July 9. This was after Russian media published the names of the four jailed Russian citizens who were to be given up by Moscow, in exchange for the ten Russian deep-cover spies arrested by the FBI in several US cities in June. The agreement almost came to a standstill again a few hours later, after Russian nuclear weapons expert Igor Sutyagin refused to officially admit guilt, a step that was required for the planned exchange to take place. The Russian scientist, who chaired a division in the Russian Academy of Sciences’ USA and Canada Institute, was serving a 15-year sentence for allegedly passing state secrets to a foreign company that was a front for the CIA. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #390 (Russia-US spy swap edition I)

July 12, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

In spy swap, agents were pawns in a practiced game. The US arrests were not made to facilitate a swap, said a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Rather, they were precipitated, at least partly, by the plans of several of the Russians to leave this country this summer.
Russian spies get tepid reception in Moscow. The 10 spies who pleaded guilty to acting as foreign agents in the United States, including one Peruvian, were given a tepid, uneasy reception in Russia on Friday. State-controlled national television channels reported their return briefly, with no patriotic fervor. No national TV channels carried live coverage of the plane’s landing, even though it was available from international news agencies.
Russian, US spies start new lives but mystery swirls. The 14 spies swapped by Moscow and Washington were starting new lives in Russia and the West last weekend, but mystery shrouded their precise whereabouts. In one case, Igor Sutyagin, a Russian nuclear arms expert who allegedly spied for the US, found himself at a hotel somewhere in Britain, without a visa and still wearing his Russian prison clothes.

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News you may have missed #389

July 10, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Secrecy over attack on Syrian nuclear plant unjustified, says ex-CIA chief. The secrecy surrounding the Israeli attack on the nuclear plant in eastern Syria in September 2007 was justified only for the period immediately after the operation, according to the CIA head at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. That secrecy had been meant to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from embarrassment that could have provoked him to retaliate, argues Hayden in an authorized scholarly journal article.
No proof yet of Colombian spying, says Ecuador. Ecuadorean Security Minister Miguel Carvajal said Thursday that allegations that Colombian security agency DAS spied on Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and other officials is “so far just a newspaper story”. Late last month, the Ecuadorean government threatened to break off diplomatic ties with Colombia over the media revelations.
GCHQ releases Stalin-era Soviet intercepts. A series of newly released telegrams and telephone conversations, intercepted by the UK’s General Communications Headquarters, paint a picture of Joseph Stalin’s regime in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

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Russia, US, in largest spy swap since World War II

July 9, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Russian and American governments have agreed to conduct one of history’s largest spy exchanges, as ten Russian agents captured in the US last month have been swapped for four Russian citizens imprisoned by Moscow for spying for the US and Britain. The ten Russians arrested by the FBI in June were non-official-cover (NOC) operatives, otherwise known as ‘illegals’, a term used to identify deep-cover intelligence operatives not associated with a country’s diplomatic representation. According to reports, they were all instructed by the SVR, Russia’s equivalent of MI6, which is responsible for all foreign intelligence operations abroad, to plead guilty to “acting as unregistered foreign agents” a charge not equivalent to espionage in either seriousness or repercussions. They were then legally forbidden from ever returning to the United States and summarily expelled. They were taken from the courtroom directly to the airport, where they boarded a plane to Vienna, Austria. In return, Russian government sources have confirmed that four Russian citizens, arrested in recent years for spying on behalf of the US or Britain, will be released from prison and delivered to US authorities. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #388

July 8, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Political policing rising in US, ACLU report warns. A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union chronicles government spying and what it describes as the detention of groups and individuals “for doing little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights”.
Mistrust still marks ISI-CIA ties, say US officials. John Tierney, chairman of the US House Armed Services Committee, told a Pakistani delegation that there is mistrust between the CIA and ISI, according to a report by the Pakistan Senate’s Standing Committee on Defence. Regular intelNews readers should not be surprised.
Britain releases secret document at heart of UKUSA agreement. Authorities in the UK have released a six-page document dating from 1946, which describes the “British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement”, known as BRUSA, later UKUSA. The deal has tied the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand into a worldwide network of electronic listening posts.

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News you may have missed #384

July 3, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

India arrests Russian woman in connection with alleged German spy. Police in the Indian state of Punjab have arrested Olga Timoshik, a Russian woman accused of assisting Thomas Kuehn, a suspected German spy who was arrested in Punjab in early June.
UK Prime Minister raises ex-spy’s death with Russian President. British leader David Cameron raised the contentious issue of the 2006 assassination of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in London, in his first meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last weekend. Litvinenko’s death triggered the worst dispute between the UK and Russia in recent years.
BP hires ex-CIA counsel as lobbyist. Stanley Sporkin, who was General Counsel for the CIA for five years under William Casey during the Iran-Contra years, has been hired by British Petroleum as ombudsman “to hear worker complaints from Alaska and elsewhere in the US”.

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News you may have missed #382 (Russian spy ring edition III)

July 1, 2010 by intelNews 4 Comments

What about the children of the accused Russian spies? The suspected spies have seven children among them, most of whom are thought to be younger than 18. But while plenty of details have emerged about the spying activities of their parents, very little is known about the children.
MI5 investigates Russian spy’s time in Britain. Russian alleged spy Anna Chapman lived in Britain for almost five years, working in a string of top London companies. Now MI5, which carries out Britain’s counterespionage work, is understood to be helping the Americans in their investigation.
Canadian identity was useful for Russian spies. The FBI affidavit charges that four of the 11 Russian spies arrested in the US last weekend, four claim Canadian birth or citizenship, including one who allegedly took the identity of a Montreal infant who died in 1963. The Canadian identity card has become a preferred commodity in the shadowy world of international espionage.