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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UK activist reveals police attempt to recruit her as a paid informant

May 8, 2009 by 1 Comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The London Sunday Times has aired a brief interview with Matilda “Tilly” Gifford, a British environmental activist who last week accused British police officers of trying to recruit her as a paid informant to spy on protest groups. Gifford, whose activist pursuits have repeatedly brought her to the attention of British police, was approached by two unnamed police officers at a Strathclyde Police station in Glasgow, Scotland, and was asked to perform undercover work on behalf of law enforcement. Unbeknownst to the police, however, Gifford was recording the recruiting conversation using a concealed mobile phone. With the help of fellow activists, Gifford secretly videotaped a subsequent meeting with Strathclyde Police officers, who had been led to believe she was genuinely interested in participating in undercover work. Read more of this post

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MI5 looking for new chief scientific adviser

April 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The MI5 is openly advertising for a chief scientific adviser for the first time. Britain’s foremost counterintelligence agency, which is also known as the Security Service, has posted the job advertisement on its website, and is asking interested individuals to submit applications by April 24. It also urges them to exercise discretion by discussing the application “only with [their] partner and/or immediate family”. The brief advertisement describes the “unique and challenging” mission of the new position as “lead[ing] and co-ordinat[ing] the scientific work of the Security Service”. Read more of this post

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“Unprecedented” history of MI5 to be published in October

March 21, 2009 by Leave a comment

Dr. Andrew

Dr. Andrew

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence organization, made headlines in 2002, when it appointed Cambridge University history Professor Christopher Andrew to produce an authorized account of its long history. Now book publishers Penguin Group have announced that the book, titled Defense of the Realm, is to be published by Allen Lane in October 2009, in time to mark the agency’s centennial. Professor Andrew is well known for his considerable contributions to intelligence history scholarship, which include Comrade Kryuchkov’s Instructions (1991, with Oleg Gordievsky), For The President’s Eyes Only (1995), and of course The Mitrokhin Archive (1991, with Vasili Mitrokhin). Penguin has described Defense of the Realm as “unprecedented” and claims that “no major intelligence organization in the world has ever let an independent historian into its archives in this way” (though James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets may object to this). Read more of this post

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Ex-KGB agent, wanted for murder in Britain, to run for mayor

March 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Lugovoy

Lugovoy

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
Andrey Lugovoy, who is wanted in Britain for the 2006 murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, is poised to run for mayor in the Russian city of Sochi. British authorities believe that Lugovoy, who served in the KGB and in Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO) from 1987 to 1996, carried out the radioactive poisoning of Litvinenko, a former intelligence officer who had defected to the UK. Litvinenko, who was a vocal critic of former Russian President Vladimir Putin, came down with radioactive poisoning soon after meeting Lugovoy in a London restaurant. The latter is believed by British authorities to have acted “with the backing of the Russian state”. A victory by Lugovoy in next month’s mayoral race could potentially pose a diplomatic challenge for London, as Sochi will be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. If he wins, therefore, the prime murder suspect will be expected to lead local officials in “welcoming the British team to the Games”. Britain’s Daily Telegraph notes that such a possibility could ultimately “lead to the first ever British boycott of an Olympic Games”. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Real IRA Attacks Part of Broader N. Ireland Military Buildup

March 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

RIRA gunman

RIRA gunman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On Saturday, March 7, two unarmed British soldiers were executed and two others seriously injured when three guerillas opened fire on them with semi-automatic weapons outside the British Army’s Massereene Barracks in Northern Ireland. Two nights later, a police officer was shot and killed in Craigavon, County Armagh, as he investigated reports of “suspicious activity” in the area. Northern Irish politics entered a new phase after these strikes, which have so far left three people dead and at least two seriously injured. Yet the attacks, which have been attributed to Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) paramilitaries, were hardly unexpected; on the contrary, they are part of a broader pattern of intensification of covert military and paramilitary activity in the troubled region. Read article →

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Wikileaks publishes major RAND intelligence study

March 3, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Wikileaks, the public website that anonymously publishes leaks of sensitive documents, has aired a major US government study on intelligence and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study, titled Intelligence Operations and Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan, was initially published on a confidential basis in November of 2008 by the Research and Development (RAND) Corporation, the research arm of the US Pentagon. Originally prepared for the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command, the 318-page study is described by Wikileaks as the “Pentagon Papers” of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The RAND Corporation report findings are reportedly not as interesting as the “candid and revealing interview quotes” scattered throughout the document, which represent the views on the wars of nearly 300 intelligence officers and diplomats from the US, Britain and the Netherlands. Read more of this post

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Austrian police officers arrested on Kazakh espionage charges

February 18, 2009 by 2 Comments

Rakhat Aliyev

Rakhat Aliyev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last month we reported on Rakhat Aliyev, former Director of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee (KNB) and former son-in-law to the country’s dictatorial president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2007, following his divorce with Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Aliyev was stripped of his government positions, issued with an arrest warrant, and now lives in exile in Vienna, Austria. Soon afterwards, Aliyev began exposing President Nazarbayev’s corrupt dealings with foreign oil companies operating in Kazakhstan. In January of this year, a Kazakh-employed public relations firm working to “exonerate” Nazarbayev was found to have received assistance from “two anonymous serving officers of MI6”, Britain’s external intelligence agency. Now a new scandal has erupted in Vienna, where two Austrian police officers have been arrested by the country’s authorities and charged with “spying for Kazakhstan”. The two officers were apprehended by counterintelligence agents while reportedly “gathering information from a computer about Rakhat Aliyev”. Read more of this post

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Former MI5 head warns UK turning into a police state

February 18, 2009 by Leave a comment

Rimington

Rimington

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is one thing for the British government to be accused of exploiting anxiety over terrorism to restrict civil liberties. It is quite another for these accusations to be made by the former Director-General of MI5, Britain’s foremost counterintelligence organization. Dame Stella Rimington, who headed the secretive agency between 1992 and 1996, recently gave an interview to Spanish daily La Vanguardia, in which she accused the British government of “scaring people to pass laws restricting freedoms”. She criticized the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of failing to strike the proper balance between civil liberties and security, thus gradually giving in to “one of the goals of terrorism”, namely living “in fear and under a police state”. She also criticized the US for going “too far with Guantánamo and torture, [which] has the opposite effect [to security]: there are more and more suicide bombers who find greater justification”, she said. Read more of this post

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Did CIA censor lawyer’s letter to President Obama?

February 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

Mohamed

Mohamed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A prominent British lawyer representing a Guantánamo detainee has said a letter he sent to Barack Obama was censored by US intelligence officials. The lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, represents Binyam Mohamed, a resident of Britain, who is currently imprisoned by US authorities at the Guantánamo Bay camp. Mr. Mohamed was abducted in 2002 by Pakistani agents, who delivered him to US intelligence. US officials employed the controversial practice of extraordinary rendition and had Mr. Mohamed secretly imprisoned in Morocco and Afghanistan before taking him to Guantánamo. The Ethiopian-born Mohamed says he was brutally tortured while in Moroccan and US custody. Earlier this month, two British judges overseeing Mr. Mohamed court challenge in the UK, accused the British government of keeping “powerful evidence” about Mr. Mohamed’s torture secret, after being threatened by Washington that it would “stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK”. Read more of this post

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Obama officials toe Bush Administration secrecy line in rendition lawsuit

February 12, 2009 by 2 Comments

Eric Holder

Eric Holder

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last Monday it emerged that the new US Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, ordered “a review of all claims of state secrets used to block lawsuits into warrantless spying on Americans and the treatment of foreign terrorism suspects”. US Justice Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, said the directive “will ensure the [state secrets] privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know”. Despite Mr. Holder’s review order, however, the Obama Administration has chosen to retain the previous government’s “state secrets” clause to block a lawsuit filed by victims of CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The case is Binyam Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen Dataplan, a Colorado-based Boeing Corporation subcontractor that provided logistical support to the CIA’s prisoner transfer scheme. Read more of this post

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UK Air Force deploys world’s most advanced spy plane

February 11, 2009 by Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) has announced the official deployment of what it describes as “the most advanced long-range, airborne surveillance system of its kind in the world”. The aircraft-based system is called ASTOR (Airborne Stand-Off Radar) and is installed on Raytheon’s Sentinel R1 jets. The ASTOR radar is reportedly so advanced that it can detect target movement over “thousands of square miles, looking deep into valleys, picking out well-used enemy routes and mapping vehicle activity”, and can even perform during bad weather at night. What is more, the twin-engine aircraft can do all that while flying up to 7.5 miles above ground level, thus staying clear of any engagement by most air-defense systems, including surface-to-air missiles. Read more of this post

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CIA sees British Muslims as most dangerous threat

February 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On January 4, intelNews relayed reports from officials in Washington and London of an “unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain” by the CIA. The reason behind this intense activity appears to be that the Agency considers militants in Britain’s one-million-strong Muslim community to be “the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on US soil”. Now a follow-up report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reveals that US President Barack Obama has been briefed in detail by CIA officials about the “dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain” in recent months. Read more of this post

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Britain says at least 20 countries spying on it

February 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper has revealed a government report, which states that the UK is a “high priority espionage target” for “at least 20 foreign intelligence services”. The report, issued to UK government departments on January 19, 2009, warns against overlooking traditional espionage threats while focusing almost solely on the activities of al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. Authored by a group of British Army Intelligence Corps officers, the report identifies Chinese and Russian espionage networks as the most active on British soil, and discloses that “[t]he number of Russian intelligence officers in London has not fallen since the Soviet times”. Read more of this post

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