Declassified MI5 files offer wealth of new information

Sophie Kukralova

Sophie Kukralova

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Britain’s National Archives have authorized the release of nearly 200 files from the vaults of MI5, the country’s domestic intelligence service. The release of the documents, which range from 1937 to 1955, has given rise to numerous interesting historical revelations, including an apparent effort by German Hitler Youth groups to establish personal and institutional links with Lord Baden-Powell, founder and leader of the Boy Scouts. The relevant MI5 file notes that Baden-Powell, who was “wined and dined by senior Hitler Youth figures”, responded enthusiastically to the Nazi charm offensive. Other revelations include the Soviet sympathies of Sidney Bernstein, later Baron Bernstein, who founded Britain’s Granada Theatres (later Granada Television) in 1926. Read more of this post

MI6 employee arrested for trying to sell documents

Daniel Houghton

Daniel Houghton

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities have detained a former MI6 employee after he was caught trying to sell classified documents to MI5 spooks posing as foreign agents. Daniel Houghton, 25, who was arrested on Monday at a central London hotel, worked for MI6 between September 2007 and May 2009. During the course of his employment, he apparently stole MI5 (and not MI6, as has been suggested) electronic documents, classified secret and top-secret, by copying them to CDs and DVDs. He then attempted to sell the material, which is said to relate to “techniques for intelligence collection”, for £2 million ($2.9 million), to MI5 agents posing as intelligence handlers of an unspecified foreign intelligence service. Read more of this post

Italy busts arms smuggling network, arrests Iranian intelligence agents

Hamid Nejad Masoumi

Masoumi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Italian authorities have announced the arrest of two Iranians and five Italians on suspicion of smuggling European-made weapons and explosives to Iran. Italian police said the Iranians involved in the operation, which breached an international embargo on Iran, are “believed to be members of the Iranian secret services”. They are Ali Damirchiloo, 55 (occupation unknown), and Hamid Nejad Masoumi, 51, an accredited journalist and Iranian state television correspondent, who has lived in Italy since 1995. Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for two more Iranians, Hamir Bakhtiyari Reza and Bakhtiyari Homayoun, who are also believed to be intelligence agents and are thought to have managed to escape to Iran. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #295

  • US spies want super-sensitive human lie detectors. IARPA, the research unit of the US intelligence community is soliciting proposals for a five-year, three-phased overhaul of current deception-detection technology, which will include research on what is called “pre-conscious human assessment of trustworthiness”.
  • UK may purchase IP monitoring system from CIA-linked company. A security startup with close links to the CIA is touting a system to the UK government that monitors every IP address on the internet for malware, as part of its declared aim of improving cyber war capabilities. The firm has built a massive database of security breaches across the globe and is currently monitoring about 250 million compromised machines.
  • No Americans on CIA’s assassination list. The Washington Post has corrected an earlier report, flagged by intelNews earlier this month, which claimed that the US President has authorized the CIA to kill Americans abroad. According to new information, there are no Americans currently on the CIA hit list, but there are four on the list of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). It is worth noting that JSOC, which some say is gradually taking over the CIA’s paramilitary mission, lacks the CIA’s mandatory Congressional oversight and has a history of being run directly out of the White House.

Bookmark and Share

News you may have missed #0292 (al-Mabhouh assassination edition #3)

  • Former Mossad spy says Israel killed al-Mabhouh. Victor Ostrovsky, who worked for the Mossad in the 1980s, says the assassination of Hamas official Mahmound al-Mabhouh last month in Dubai has all the earmarks of a Mossad operation, and was likely sanctioned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • UK denies knowledge of Hamas murder plot. The British Foreign Office has denied a news report that the British intelligence service was told in advance that Israeli agents planned to assassinate senior Hamas militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, using British passports.
  • Anglo-Israeli intelligence co-operation is now in jeopardy. Britain has cut its ties with Mossad in the past –after its London station chief carelessly mislaid a sackful of forged British passports– and will do so again unless Israel can provide a credible defense of its actions, says The Daily Telegraph‘s Con Coughlin.

Bookmark and Share

News you may have missed #0289

  • UK spies worry about human rights lawsuits. Intelligence officers at Britain’s MI5 and MI6 are allegedly being diverted from counter-terrorism work to sift through thousands of documents relating to former terrorism detainees, who are suing the security services for breaching their human rights. The article makes it look like it is the torture victims’ fault for pursuing their rights. But in reality, MI5 and MI6 should have known better than to allow and participate in extralegal torture.
  • Bangladesh arrests alleged Burmese spies. Bangladesh coast guards have arrested eight citizens of Myanmar on suspicion of spying. Photographs of Bangladesh Navy warships and security installations were found in their possession, according to the country’s police chief.

News you may have missed #0288

UK special forces chief trying to prevent book publication

SAS seal

SAS seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The director of Britain’s Special Forces is actively trying to stop the publication of a new book that sheds unprecedented light on the elite combat group’s operations in Iraq. The official, whose name cannot be revealed for security reasons, has said that the book, authored by BBC journalist Mark Urban, will negatively impact the operational effectiveness of the Special Air Service (SAS) and other UK Special Forces units. The official’s objections have come to overshadow a compromise struck earlier this month between Mr. Urban’s publishers and the UK Ministry of Defence. Following four months of negotiations, the Ministry reportedly decided that the book “would not compromise the operational effectiveness of the SAS”. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0286

  • More on CIA spies working for corporations. Author Eamon Javers provides more information about his new book, in which he examines the increasing phenomenon of CIA agents working for private corporations on the side.
  • Rio Tinto spy controversy thickens. Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto says it is “extremely worried” about four of its staff, who were arrested last July by Chinese authorities and have now been formally charged with espionage.
  • Court keeps White House spy emails secret. Two weeks ago, US President Barack Obama declared in his State of the Union address that “it’s time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or Congress”. This does not appear to apply to telecommunication industry lobbyists, who campaigned in favor of facilitating warrantless communications interception through the National Security Agency’s STELLAR WIND program.

Bookmark and Share

News you may have missed #0284

  • Real IRA faction killed MI5 informant, says Irish police. The Gardai have concluded that a Real IRA faction executed Denis Donaldson, a former Sinn Fein official who turned informer for MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Last year, the Real IRA took responsibility for the 2007 killing.
  • NATO spy station up for sale. A Canadian NATO spy station in Nova Scotia that operated between 1983 and 2006 is for sale for US$1.4 million. It appears that the site’s current owner, who doesn’t want to be identified, bought it from the Canadian Defense Department after the base was closed down.
  • Analysis on the Binyam Mohamed disclosures and UK-US spy cooperation. This analysis, by Michael Clarke, director of Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, is probably the best synopsis of the meaning of the recent court order to disclose Binyam Mohamed’s torture records, which has complicated US-UK spy relations.

Bookmark and Share

US, UK spy agencies on alert after unprecedented court decision

Binyam Mohamed

Binyam Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British and American intelligence agencies have been placed on alert following an unprecedented ruling by a British court, which forces the British government to disclose CIA documents in its possession. The documents relate to the case of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian resident of Britain, who says he was severely tortured with the collaboration of the CIA and British domestic intelligence agency MI5, after he was renditioned to Morocco. Last February, two British judges overseeing Mr. Mohamed’s case revealed that the British government kept “powerful evidence” secret after being threatened by the US that it would “stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK”. In July, it emerged that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally threatened the British government that Washington would stop collaborating with London on intelligence matters if evidence in Mr. Mohamed’s case was publicly released. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0281

  • US intel director confirms CIA can kill US citizens abroad. It’s official; speaking before the House Intelligence Committee, US Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged that President Obama is continuing a Bush-era policy authorizing the killing of US citizens if they are considered “a terrorist threat to the United States”.
  • Funny sign at CIA gift shop. Actual notice displayed at a CIA gift store inside the Agency’s Langley, VA, headquarters: “Don’t forget! If you are undercover, you cannot charge! It will blow your cover”. Good point.
  • Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars out in paperback. IntelNews has received the new paperback edition of Gordon Thomas’ Secret Wars: 100 Years of British Intelligence. Joseph Fitsanakis reviewed the hardback edition last May.

Bookmark and Share

Leaked MI5 report sees China as ‘most significant’ spy threat

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A restricted MI5 report describes China as Britain’s most serious espionage threat, and says British business executives are increasingly targeted by Chinese intelligence operatives. The 14-page document was authored by the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure, a unit of MI5, Britain’s primary counterintelligence and security agency. In it, the intelligence agencies of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, as well as the Ministry of State Security, are identified as leaders in a massive targeting of British corporate executives who regularly make business trips to China. The report warns that most of the hotel rooms where they stay are “likely to be bugged”, that they are regularly “searched while the occupants are out of the[ir] room[s]”, and that hotels are frequented by Chinese female intelligence agents, looking “to exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships and illegal activities”. Read more of this post

Uproar as UK government classifies details of weapon expert’s death

Dr. David Kelly

Dr. David Kelly

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Public speculation over the alleged suicide of UK biological weapons expert Dr. David Kelly is bound to increase, after a senior state official secretly ordered that details of his death be kept secret for 70 years. Dr. Kelly, a British Ministry of Defense scientist, who had been employed by the United Nations as a weapons inspector, caused a major stir by becoming one of the sources of a 2003 BBC report disputing the British government’s claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons at 45 minutes’ notice. He was later called to appear before a Parliamentary committee investigating the government’s claims about Iraq’s purported ‘weapons of mass destruction’. But on July 18, 2003, four days after appearing before the committee, Dr. Kelly’s was found dead at a wooded area near his home. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #0268

Bookmark and Share