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

January 26, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

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

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with BBC, biological weapons, British Houses of Parliament, David Kelly, government secrecy, intelligence classification, Iraq War, Iraq weapons of mass destruction, Lord Hutton, News, scientific intelligence, suicides, suspicious deaths, UK, UK Ministry of Defence

News you may have missed #0268

January 25, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Lithuanian foreign minister resigns over CIA black sites. After Lithuania’s intelligence director, Povilas Malakauskas, who resigned last month following the revelation that two CIA black sites operated in Vilnius between 2004 and 2005, the country’s foreign minister, Vygaudas Usackas, has said he will step down in connection with the case.
UK prime minister urges co-operation between spy agencies. It is not just US intelligence agencies that seem to have trouble cooperating with each other. Britain’s leader Gordon Brown says MI5, MI6 and GCHQ need “to be able seamlessly to track and disrupt terrorist activity and movements, whether within the UK or beyond”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with CIA, GCHQ, Gordon Brown, intelligence cooperation, Lithuania, MI5, MI6, News, news you may have missed, Povilas Malakauskas, resignations, secret prisons, UK, United States, Vilnius (Lithuania), Vygaudas Usackas

News you may have missed #0258

January 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Cambridge University exhibition documents famous spy ring. Called Under Covers: Documenting Spies, the exhibition features previously unseen student records of the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring (Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess, and John Cairncross).
CIA Abdulmutallab report not distributed, awaiting photo. On Christmas Day, 2009, as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was preparing to bomb an inbound flight to Detroit, a draft CIA memorandum on him was “still sitting in the computer of a junior CIA analyst, waiting until a photo of the young Nigerian was located. Unbeknownst to the analyst”, however, a photo of Abdulmutallab “had already been delivered to other counterterrorism agencies”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Anthony Blunt, Cambridge Five, CIA, Cold War, Donald Maclean, espionage, exhibitions, Guy Burgess, H.A.R. "Kim" Philby, history, intelligence analysis, intelligence sharing, John Cairncross, News, news you may have missed, UK, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, United States, University of Cambridge, USSR

Spanish spies remain active in UK territory of Gibraltar

January 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Gibraltar

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The British Crown has ruled Gibraltar since the early 1700s, but Spain has never ceased to claim national rights over the territory. Today, la Cuestión de Gibraltar (the Gibraltar question) is as critical an issue in Spanish-British relations as it has been for over 300 years. A recent article in Gibraltar’s English-language Panorama news site reminds us that, even though the two countries are NATO and European Union allies, Spanish intelligence agents remain active in the territory. It is true that the Rock is frequented by agents of Spain’s Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), who are mostly concerned with assessing economic and political life in the British possession. The article lacks sources, but its views are probably not far from the truth, considering Gibraltar’s immense geostrategic significance. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, assassinations, Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (Spain), colonialism, EU, Gibraltar, Morocco, NATO, News, Operation FLAVIUS, Provisional IRA, Spain, Special Air Service (UK), UK

News you may have missed #0251 (analysis edition)

January 13, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Bomber’s betrayal shows spy challenge for West. The December 30 suicide attack that killed seven CIA agents in Khost, Afghanistan, shows that al-Qaeda is currently keener on killing Western spies than infiltrating them.
Christmas Day bomber affair was intel failure of the highest order. On Christmas Day, 2009, the US had 16 intelligence agencies, a czar for national intelligence and an intelligence budget of more than $75 billion. There was sufficient intelligence available to detect the Christmas Day bomber. However, US intelligence efforts were unimaginative, divided and diffuse, argues former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman.
Endemic failures in US intelligence gathering, analysis. Excellent summary analysis from Deutsche Welle on how endemic failures in communication and information gathering by US spy agencies are threatening to undermine Washington’s so-called “war on terrorism”.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Analysis, CIA, double agents, Forward Operating Base Chapman, informants, intelligence analysis, intelligence failures, intelligence sharing, Khost, Melvin A. Goodman, news you may have missed, Nigeria, Pakistan, suicide bombings, UK, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, United States, War on Terrorism, Yemen

News you may have missed #0250

January 12, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Pakistanis ask US to quit drone strikes. A Pakistani intelligence official has told the Associated Press that the response to the December 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA agents should not include intensifying unmanned drone strikes inside Pakistan. However, the CIA has reportedly “stepped up drone strikes” since the bombing.
Bush, Obama administrations guilty for neglecting info sharing. Thomas E. McNamara, former head of the US federal Information Sharing Environment, says the Bush and Obama administrations are both guilty of either losing interest or not focusing at all on promoting information sharing among often-secluded US government agencies.
China ends probe into Rio Tinto espionage case. Chinese prosecutors have now taken over the case of Stern Hu, the jailed boss of Anglo-Australian mining corporation Rio Tinto, after officials ended their investigation. Hu was arrested last July on espionage charges.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, Australia, Bush Administration, China, CIA, energy resources, espionage, intelligence sharing, News, news you may have missed, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Predator drones, Rio Tinto, Stern Hu, Thomas E. McNamara, UK, United States, US Information Sharing Environment

Files reveal previously unknown UK-Soviet diplomatic scuffle

January 5, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Aubone Pyke

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A previously unknown fracas between two British diplomatic officials, their wives, and a team of Soviet intelligence agents, has been revealed in declassified British government reports. The documents, which were released last weekend, show that two employees of the British embassy in Moscow were detained, along with their wives, allegedly for photographing a Soviet military installation. The British diplomats were Lieutenant-Commanders Ian Clapham and Aubone Pyke, who was the embassy’s assistant military attaché. Escorted by their wives, the two officials were allegedly taking a tour of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), in February of 1979, when a group of “about 25” Soviet intelligence agents rapidly approached them. The agents proceeded to confiscate a cameral belonging to Pyke, after rapidly pulling down his trousers, an old trick aimed to prevent a suspect from running away. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Aubone Pyke, British embassy in the USSR, Cold War, counterintelligence, diplomacy, espionage, Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service (UK), history, Ian Clapham, James Callaghan, KGB, Leningrad (USSR), News, photographic intelligence, Saint Petersburg (Russia), UK, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, USSR

News you may have missed #0236

December 30, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Airline bomb plotter’s father warned CIA about his son. Dr. Umaru AbdulMutallab, the father of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect, visited the US embassy in Nigeria in November, where he told a CIA agent that he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen.
New book details Stasi spying on Günter Grass. A new book, entitled Guenter Grass im Visier: Die Stasi-Akte (Günter Grass in the Crosshairs: The Stasi Files), is to be published in March in Germany. Among other things, it will detail spying operations against the Nobel Prize-winning author by the East German secret police, the Stasi.
Former Albanian spymaster claiming benefits in Britain. Ilir Kumbaro, Albania’s former spymaster, is wanted by authorities for having kidnapped and tortured three men in his homeland. But after falling out with officials there, he fled to Britain in 1996, where he has lived for 13 years using the alias Shaqa Shatri.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Africa, Albania, book news and reviews, CIA, Cold War, Günter Grass, German Democratic Republic, Ilir Kumbaro, literature, News, news you may have missed, Nigeria, Shaqa Shatri, Stasi (GDR), terrorism, UK, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, Umaru AbdulMutallab, United States, Yemen

Secret UK envoy convinced Iran Shah to stay away in 1979

December 30, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Sir Denis Wright

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The British government sent a former diplomat, disguised as an old friend of the Iranian Shah, to convince the deposed monarch to stay away from the UK, after he was forced to abandon Iran in 1979. The information has been made available in a series of official government documents recently declassified by Britain’s Foreign Office. Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the US-backed Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, abandoned his throne and ended up in the Bahamas, a former British colony which had gained its independence in 1973. But Britain’s Labour government feared that the deposed monarch aimed to live in England, something that Prime Minister James Callaghan considered a potentially damaging decision by “an immensely controversial figure in Iran”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 1979 Iranian Revolution, Bahamas, Iran, James Callaghan, Labour Party (UK), Margaret Thatcher, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, News, secret meetings, Sir Dennis Wright, UK

Protestant alleges links between N. Ireland loyalists and British state

December 21, 2009 by intelNews 3 Comments

Ray McCord, Sr.

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On November 9, 1997, Royal Air Force officer Raymond McCord Jr. was beaten to death in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by members of the Mount Vernon branch of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). McCord’s beating was one of many instances in which Northern Ireland’s most violent loyalist gang targeted members of its own Protestant community. The difference in McCord’s case was that his father, Raymond McCord Sr., decided to come forward and speak out about the decades-old collusion between Northern Irish loyalist paramilitaries and Britain’s security services. Despite repeated death threats and intimidation, McCord’s campaign prompted an official investigation into the matter by Northern Ireland’s police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan. Her 2007 report confirmed that the leader of the Mount Vernon UVF, Mark Haddock, had been repeatedly protected by police authorities, despite being routinely implicated in extortion, blackmail, drug dealing and arson, as well as in dozens of paramilitary-style attacks that resulted in 16 murders and 10 attempted murders. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Belfast (UK), Human Rights and Oversight, informants, Mark Haddock, Mount Vernon council estate (Belfast), News, Northern Ireland, Nuala O'Loan, Raymond McCord Jr., Raymond McCord Sr., Special Branch, terrorism, UK, US House of Representatives, US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, UVF

News you may have missed #0227

December 20, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

British politicians sue CIA over rendition flights. A group of British members of parliament, led by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, has filed a complaint in a district court in Washington, DC, asking for a judicial review of secret agreements between the US and UK on renditioning terrorism suspects.
US DHS broke domestic spying rules. The US Department of Homeland Security gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam for eight months in 2007, and broke the law by taking longer than 180 days to determine whether the US-based group or its American members posed a terrorist threat.
Expert says UK ex-spy chief misled Iraq War probe. Sir John Scarlett, Britain’s former spy chief has misled the Iraq inquiry by exaggerating the reliability of crucial claims about Saddam Hussein’s ability to launch weapons of mass destruction, according to Dr. Brian Jones, the leading UK Ministry of Defense expert who assessed the intelligence behind London’s decision to go to war in 2003.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Andrew Tyrie, Brian Jones, Chilcot Inquiry (UK), CIA, domestic intelligence, extraordinary rendition, Iraq Inquiry (UK), Iraq War, lawsuits, Nation of Islam, News, news you may have missed, Saddam Hussein, Sir John Scarlett, UK, UK Ministry of Defence, United States, US Department of Homeland Security, Washington DC

A veteran British envoy on diplomacy, sex and espionage

December 17, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Christopher Meyer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
British newspaper The Daily Mail has published a well-written and entertaining essay by a longtime UK government envoy, explaining the close links between diplomacy, sex and espionage. Sir Christopher Meyer, a career diplomat with the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, served in several countries during his career, including the Soviet Union and Spain, as well as in Germany and the United States, where he was ambassador from 1997 to 2003. He argues in his article that “sex and diplomacy have long been bedfellows”, and recounts some of his personal experiences in the former USSR, where he began his 35-year diplomatic career in 1968, as “an innocent, unmarried 24-year- old”. He arrived in Moscow along with Sir Duncan Wilson, Britain’s ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1971. Sir Christopher is bold enough to recount that Sir Duncan’s predecessor, Sir Geoffrey Harrison (ambassador from 1965 to 1968), “had to leave [Moscow] 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

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, British embassy in the US, British embassy in the USSR, Cold War, diplomacy, eavesdropping, Germany, Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service (UK), history, honey traps, KGB, NATO, Sir Christopher Meyer, Sir Duncan Wilson, Sir Geoffrey Harrison, Spain, UK, United States, USSR

Spy agencies closely monitoring climate change talks

December 15, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

DSD logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
I have written before about the increasing involvement of intelligence agencies in ongoing climate change negotiations between the world’s governments. In October, the CIA announced the establishment of its Center on Climate Change and National Security, despite fierce opposition by Republican lawmakers. Earlier this month, it was alleged that the hackers who stole and leaked onto the Internet hundreds of University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit emails were operating via a Russian military and security network, a claim that has been disputed by the Russian FSB (Federal Security Service). However, a recent article in Australian daily The Canberra Times provides the first mainstream indication that a Western intelligence agency is “giving top priority” to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Denmark. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Australia, Australian National Intelligence Collection Committee, CIA, CIA Center on Climate Change, climate change, climategate, Copenhagen (Denmark), Defence Signals Directorate (Australia), Denmark, FSB, Kevin Rudd, News, Russia, SIGINT, UK, United States, University of East Anglia (UK), University of East Anglia Climatic Reseach Unit (UK)

News you may have missed #0215

December 11, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ex-MI5 officer cannot publish memoirs, court decides. A former MI5 officer, known only as “A.”, cannot publish his memoirs, which consist of a 300-page manuscript, a panel of British judges has decided. Interestingly, “A.” has said he intends to remain anonymous.
Turkey denies Israel use of its airspace to spy on Iran. If Israel were to violate Turkish airspace in order to conduct reconnaissance operations on Iran, Ankara’s reaction would resemble an “earthquake”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said in an interview.

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with aerial reconnaissance, airborne surveillance, book news and reviews, censorship, government secrecy, Iran, Israel, MI5, News, news you may have missed, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey, UK

Former MI6 head testifies in UK Iraq War commission

December 9, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Sir John Scarlett

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Sir John Scarlett, who until recently headed MI6, Britain’s foremost external spy agency, chaired the country’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in the run-up to the Iraq War. He was therefore in charge of an influential government report, produced in September 2002, which argued that Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction constituted an immediate threat to Britain. As part of the official inquiry into Britain’s entry in the Iraq War, Sir John testified yesterday about the controversial report, known as ‘the dodgy dossier’, which has been criticized as a monumental intelligence failure that helped drag the country into an unpopular war. The former JIC chairman admitted that British intelligence services were aware before the War that Iraq had dismantled its long-range missiles and thus had no way of shooting its chemical munitions at distant targets, including Britain. Read more of this post