News you may have missed #0063

August 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • UK government ministers, MI6 boss, reject torture accusations. Britain’s home secretary, Alan Johnson, and foreign secretary, David Miliband, have rejected claims that the UK operated a “policy to collude in, solicit, or directly participate in abuses of [war on terrorism] prisoners” or to cover up abuses. The outgoing director of MI6, Sir John Scarlett, has also said that there has been “no torture and there is no complicity with torture” by British agents.
  • Ex-spy may succeed Kazakh leader. An unnamed senior security official may eventually succeed Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan for 20 years.
  • Congressman tells Holder to widen torture probe. Several news outlets are verifying earlier rumors (reported on by intelNews on July 13) that the Obama Administration is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the use of torture by US intelligence agencies after September 11, 2001. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, has said he wants US Attorney General Eric Holder to extend the rumored investigation beyond CIA interrogators, and determine whether high-level officials of the Bush administration committed war crimes.

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News you may have missed #0059

August 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Torture report says UK government ministers shielded MI5, MI6. A new report from Britain’s parliamentary human rights committee accuses senior cabinet ministers of “hiding behind a wall of secrecy” to avoid being held to account over allegations of British intelligence agents’ collusion in torture.
  • US cyber czar resigns. Senior intelligence official Melissa Hathaway, who was US President Barack Obama’s choice to monitor America’s online security, said in an interview that she is leaving “for personal reasons”.
  • South Korean opposition skeptical of request for new intelligence powers. Opposition parties in South Korea are critical of the National Intelligence Service’s (NIS) recent request to gain access to information on financial transactions amounting to 20 million won or more without a warrant.

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News you may have missed #0058

August 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Al-Qaeda may have infiltrated Britain’s MI5, says lawmaker

August 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

Patrick Mercer

Patrick Mercer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The chairperson of Britain’s House of Commons subcommittee on counter-terrorism has raised the possibility that MI5, the country’s premier domestic intelligence agency, has been infiltrated by al-Qaeda operatives. MP Patrick Mercer (Con.) revealed on Saturday that he had been told MI5 had expelled as many as six British Muslim recruits after red flags were raised about their backgrounds. He has since called upon Home Secretary Alan Johnson “to detail how far down the recruitment process the men had got before they were weeded out” by MI5 vetting officers. There are allegations that some of the six potential recruits had been trained in al-Qaeda-run camps in Pakistan, while others had “unexplained gaps in their curricula vitae”. No response has so far been issued by the British government, but The Daily Telegraph has quoted an “unnamed senior security source”, who has denied the allegations.

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Hillary Clinton pressured UK government to conceal torture information

July 31, 2009 by Leave a comment

Binyam Mohamed

B. Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally threatened the British government that Washington would stop collaborating with London on intelligence matters if the latter allowed the release of evidence on an alleged torture case. This has been revealed in London’s high court during the ongoing trial of Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is was until recently imprisoned by US authorities at the Guantánamo Bay camp. Mr. Mohamed was abducted in 2002 by Pakistani authorities, who delivered him to US intelligence agents. The latter employed the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition and had Mr. Mohamed secretly imprisoned in Morocco and Afghanistan before taking him to Guantánamo. Read more of this post

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Kim Philby’s granddaughter describes memories of her grandfather

July 30, 2009 by 3 Comments

Charlotte Philby

Charlotte Philby

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Charlotte Philby, daughter of John Philby, H.A.R. “Kim” Philby’s oldest son, has penned an extensive account of her memories of her grandfather. In her article, published yesterday in British daily The Independent, she describes Kim Philby as “a proud man, and one who chose to publicly stand by his actions”. Kim Philby was probably the most successful double spy in history. While working as a senior member of British intelligence, he spied on behalf of the Soviet KGB and NKVD from the early 1930s until 1963, when he defected to Moscow. Two years later he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. The Soviet authorities buried him with honors when he died in 1988. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0045

July 28, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Ex-CIA, -NSA director defends warrantless wiretapping. Michael Hayden, who was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009 and of the NSA from 1999 to 2005, has penned an article in The New York Times, in which he says that the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program helped the US intelligence community “connecting the dots, something for which we were roundly criticized after Sept[ember] 11 as not sufficiently doing”.
  • US House intelligence panel member calls for new Church Committee. Rush Holt (D-NJ) a senior member of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has called for a resuscitation of the Church and Pike investigations into intelligence practices of the 1970s.
  • BBC radio launches series on MI6. The BBC’s Radio 4 has launched today a new three-part series examining the 100-year history and operations of MI6, Britain’s foremost external intelligence agency. The programs, which can also be listened to online, include interviews with senior intelligence officers, agents and diplomats.

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News you may have missed #0042

July 26, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Postcards containing Cold War spy messages unearthed. The postcards, containing chess moves, were posted in 1950 by an unidentified man in Frankfurt, thought to have been an undercover agent, to Graham Mitchell, who was then deputy director general of MI5. The problem is, researchers are not quite sure whether the cryptic text on the postcards is based on British or Soviet codes, because Mitchell was suspected of being a secret Soviet agent at the time.
  • Is NSA actively mapping social networks? There are rumors out there that NSA is monitoring social networking tools, such as Tweeter, Facebook and MySpace, in order to make links between individuals and construct elaborate data-mining-based maps of who associates with whom.
  • US Senate bill would disclose intelligence budget. The US Senate version of the FY2010 intelligence authorization bill would require the President to disclose the aggregate amount requested for intelligence each year. Disclosure of the budget request would enable Congress to appropriate a stand-alone intelligence budget that would no longer need to be concealed misleadingly in other non-intelligence budget accounts.

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News you may have missed #0033

July 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

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Sex video prompts British diplomat’s resignation

July 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

Hudson video

Hudson video

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The British Foreign Office has confirmed that one of its officials stationed in Russia has resigned following the emergence of video footage which shows him cavorting with two prostitutes. British diplomatic sources have identified that James Hudson, a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, is indeed the man shown having sex with prostitutes in a black-and-white surveillance film, which was probably shot in a brothel in the Russian city of Ekaterinberg. Mr. Hudson was Britain’s Deputy Consul General in the city, also known as Yekaterinburg, which is a major industrial center and is described as “a key outpost for British trade”. The explicit video, which was anonymously posted on a Russian news website under the title “Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia”, is thought to have been shot by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in what is known in espionage circles as a “honey trap”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0020

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Social media is ruining spy industry, says IT security group. IT security consultancy NCC Group says that intelligence “agencies are concerned that Facebook and other social networking tools are ruining the spy industry”. The comments come just hours after British newspaper The Mail on Sunday revealed that personal details about the future head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, had been accessible to 200 million online users through his wife’s Facebook account.
  • Pakistan’s nukes face insider threat, says ex-CIA official. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, argues in Arms Control Today that “[t]he greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb […]. Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats”, claims the retired US intelligence agent.
  • Hamas says Israeli spy cell in Ramallah busted. Hamas says it has dismantled an Israeli spy network, which served through the West Bank-based administration of Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas. The group claims that the network “channeled […] false information to Ramallah [in the Fatah-dominated West Bank] and then to the Israeli occupation”, in order to create “target bank” in Gaza.

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Facebook reveals personal details of future MI6 chief

July 7, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sir John Sawers

Sir John Sawers

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Facebook, the Internet social networking site with over 200 million registered users worldwide, has made intelligence headlines once again. Last April, intelNews reported on revelations by Sweden’s armed forces that Swedish soldiers serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan were approached on Facebook and asked to provide details on NATO’s military presence in the country. Last weekend, Facebook did it again: British newspaper The Mail on Sunday argued that “potentially compromising” personal details about Sir John Sawers, who has been appointed to the post of Director of MI6, Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, were revealed by his wife on her Facebook account. The paper accused Lady Shelley Sawers of “a major personal security breach” upon discovering that “she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account”, which made it accessible to all of Facebook’s 200 million users. Read more of this post

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Is new MI6 head really an outsider?

June 20, 2009 by Leave a comment

Sir John Sawers

Sir John Sawers

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Soon after Downing Street announced the pending appointment of Sir John Sawers to the post of Director of MI6, Britain’s primary external intelligence agency, many hurried to call the choice a “break with tradition”. This is because Sir John’s official career description is that of a diplomat. It is true that appointing anyone other than a seasoned intelligence professional to the helm of MI6 or MI5 is highly unusual. The last time this happened was in 1968, when Sir John Rennie, also a diplomat, was tasked to head MI6. But how much of an intelligence outsider is Sawers, really? The truth is that he will actually be rejoining MI6, where he began his career in 1977, serving in Syria and Yemen, among other places. The question that nobody in Whitehall will answer is when exactly Sawers left the service. The London Times claims he did so “in the 1980s”, when he joined the diplomatic service. The question is, of course, did he actually leave MI6? Or did he linger in one of the agency’s many desks that overlap with Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service? Read more of this post

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New book examines KGB poison lab

June 16, 2009 by 1 Comment

Lugovoy

Lugovoy

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Former Soviet military intelligence officer Boris Volodarsky has given an extensive interview to Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL’s Russian language service) about his newest book, KGB Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko. At the heart of his book is the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB intelligence officer who had defected and was living with his family to the UK, until he came down with a fatal dose of polonium 210. Volodarsky agrees with most intelligence experts that Litvinenko’s murder carries with it all the marks of a KGB assassination operation. But the former intelligence officer, who now lives in Vienna and London, believes Litvinenko’s poisoning was not carried out by Andrey Lugovoy, as is claimed by British authorities, but by an unknown member of the KGB’s mysterious “C” directorate. Lugovoy, who is wanted in Britain for Litvinenko’s murder, served in the KGB and in Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO) from 1987 to 1996, and is currently a member of the Russian Duma. Volodarsky’s interview is available in Russian here.

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UK report concludes security services not to blame for 7/7 attacks

May 25, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The second installment of an extensive evaluation of the intelligence background to the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, has been published by Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). The parliamentary committee, whose cabinet-appointed members have access to highly classified material, have concluded that Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, MI5, which is also known as the Security Service, as well as the Special Branch, lacked the resources necessary to detect and foil the 7/7 attacks. The report, which is publicly available online in a heavily censored version, reveals that MI5’s resources enabled it to provide “reasonable” intelligence coverage of no more than one in every 20 militant suspects . Read more of this post

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