Was Dubai ruler’s daughter kidnapped by UAE and Indian Special Forces?

May 7, 2018 by Leave a comment

Sheikha LatifaThe international advocacy group Human Rights Watch has joined calls for information on the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates, who some say was abducted in international waters by Emirati and Indian special forces. Princess Latifa, 32, is the daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of the Emirate of Dubai and Prime Minister of the UAE. But she has fallen out with the royal family and has repeatedly issued public calls for democratic reforms and more rights for women. In 2002, when she was just 18, she attempted to leave the UAE but was forcibly repatriated by her father’s bodyguards. In recent years, Princess Latifa has continued to vocalize her opposition to her father’s rule, whom she has accused of deploying “death squads” to suppress dissent within the UAE royal family.

It is believed that on February 24, Princess Latifa was joined by Tiina Jauhiainen, a Finnish martial arts instructor who has lived and worked in the Middle East, with the aim of implementing an elaborate escape plan. The two women traveled to neighboring Oman and used jet skis to transport themselves to international waters. There they boarded a yacht captained by Hervé Jaubert, a French former intelligence officer who also has United States citizenship. Jaubert became internationally known in 2009 for escaping from the UAE without a passport, after authorities there accused him of owing money to investors. Jaubert’s yacht, The Nostromo, sailed from the Arabian Gulf toward India with the two women and three Filipino crew members onboard. On February 26, Princess Latifa posted several messages on social media, including a video in English, explaining her reasons for leaving her home country. But soon afterwards, The Nostromo went missing while sailing toward the coastal Indian state of Goa. It didn’t reappear again until March 20, when it sailed for Sri Lanka with its captain and crew, but without the two women on board.

Jaubert has since told reporters that his ship was intercepted in international waters by “two unmarked speedboats” carrying between six and eight commandos. They used stun guns and smoke grenades to neutralize the yacht’s crew, which they proceeded to handcuff and blindfold. The soldiers then took the two women. Notably they spoke to Princess Latifa in English, prompting Jaubert to conclude that they were Indian, not Arab. Some reports later claimed that a minimum of five Indian and Emirati warships, as well as two military airplanes and a helicopter, participated in the attack on The Nostromo. Jauhiainen, who was eventually released and is now back in Europe, confirmed Jaubert’s account.

But the Indian authorities have rejected these claims, arguing that they have no knowledge of such a military or paramilitary operation off the coast of Goa. Human Rights Watch recently issued a formal call on the Indian and Emirati governments to reveal the precise whereabouts of Princess Latifa, who has not been seen since the raid. “Failure to disclose the whereabouts and status of the princess could qualify as an enforced disappearance, given the evidence suggesting that she was last seen as UAE authorities were detaining her”, said the international advocacy group. The government of the UAE has not responded to media requests for comment.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 07 May 2018 | Permalink

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Western ex-spooks flock to Emirates to set up new agency modeled after CIA

December 25, 2017 by 2 Comments

Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesDozens of Western former spies, most of them Americans, are being hired by the United Arab Emirates, whose ruling family is trying to create a new spy service modeled after the United States Central Intelligence Agency. According to Foreign Policy magazine’s intelligence reporter, Jenna McLaughlin, Western contractors are paid $1000 a day for their services. They also reside for free in five-star hotels in Abu Dhabi, while helping the UAE “create its own spy empire”. The lucrative compensation makes it difficult for former spooks to turn down invitations to join a handful of Western consulting companies, who are leading the effort to create the UAE’s “professional intelligence cadre modeled after the West’s”, says McLaughlin.

Western instructors provide courses daily at two different locations in Abu Dhabi. In-class instruction takes place at a luxurious villa located in Mina Zayed, a port in the northern outskirts of Abu Dhabi. Field training is conducted at a secret facility located about 45 miles from the UAE capital. The facility is referred to as “The Academy” and is highly reminiscent of Camp Peary, a 10,000-acre US Department of Defense training base that is used to train CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency operations officers. Just like Camp Peary (known informally as “the Farm”), the UAE’s “Academy” features driving course instruction areas, military-style barracks, and gun ranges, among other training elements.

Foreign Policy says it spoke to “six sources with knowledge of the matter” who said that the effort to create a CIA-like agency in the UAE is spearheaded by CAGN Global Ltd., a consultancy company based in Baltimore, MD. The company’s president is Larry Sanchez, a former CIA operations officer, who struck a personal relationship with the UAE’s ruling royal family while working on counterterrorism for the US government in the early 2000s. He has reportedly been living in the UAE for the past six years, helping to build the UAE intelligence services “from the ground up”, says Foreign Policy. At times he has been joined by other high-profile American former ex-spooks, such as Blackwater founder Erik Prince and Richard A. Clarke, who served as National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism under Presidents George Bush, Sr, and Bill Clinton.

According to McLaughlin, the work of CAGN Global Ltd. came under scrutiny last year, as several US government agencies, including the State Department and the CIA, became concerned that the training of Emirati intelligence recruits was too closely modeled after the training provided at the Farm. But a review of the company’s instructional provision in the UAE concluded in its favor and the issue seems to have been resolved said McLaughlin. In researching its story, Foreign Policy reached out to Sanchez, the CIA, the Department of State, and the UAE embassy in Washington, DC, but received no responses.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 25 December 2017 | Permalink

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Israeli weapons, airpower, secretly given to Libyan warlord, source claims

August 8, 2017 by Leave a comment

Khalifa HaftarIsrael is secretly providing military assistance to Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army, one of the factions in the Libyan Civil War, according to a British-based publication. Libya has remained in a state of war since 2011, when a popular uprising backed by the West and its allies led to the demise of the country’s dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Currently the strongest faction in the ongoing Libyan Civil War is the eastern-based Tobruk-led Government, which is affiliated with the Libyan National Army (LNA). The commander of the LNA is Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an old adversary of Colonel Gaddafi, who lived in the United States under Washington’s protection for several decades before returning to Libya in 2011 to launch his military campaign.

In February of 2011, shortly after the popular uprising erupted in Libya, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1970, which —among other things— forbids the export of war materiel to Libya. In June of this year, the United Nations accused Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of violating the embargo by providing secret military assistance to Haftar and the LNA. Now a new report in a British-based Arab news outlet claims that, in addition to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, Israel too is helping the LNA. Allegedly, Tel Aviv has given the LNA war materiel and air power support, with the help of the United Arab Emirates.

Published in the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (The New Arab) newspaper, the report claims that the Libyan strongman has been holding secret meetings with Israel since 2015. The publication cites a high-ranking official in the LNA, who spoke on condition of anonymity “out of fear for his safety”. The source, who is reportedly close to Haftar, told the newspaper that he is personally aware of two meetings held between Haftar and agents of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, in 2015 and 2016. The LNA official said the meetings between the LNA and the Mossad were held in Jordan “in strict secrecy”under the supervision of the United Arab Emirates. Soon after the meetings, said the unnamed official, Israel began to provide the LNA with military aid, including night vision equipment and various sniper rifles. He also claimed that this is known to the LNA fighters on the ground, because there are Israeli markings on the rifles issued to them. The official also claimed that Israel may have secretly provided air cover during at least one of the LNA’s offensive in recent years.

The claim of collusion between Israel and the LNA is bound to raise popular pressure against the pro-LNA government in Egypt, which borders with Libya. It will also increase tension between the LNA and Algeria, which borders Libya from the west. According to The New Arab, the government of Algeria issued “a strong warning” against Israel’s involvement in Libya, following reports of secret cooperation between the LNA and Tel Aviv.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 08 August 2017 | Permalink

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US spies confirm Qatar’s claims that its media were hacked by Emirates to spark crisis

July 18, 2017 by Leave a comment

Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-ThaniAmerican officials appear to confirm Qatar’s allegations that its news media were hacked by its Gulf adversaries, who then used the fake news posted by hackers to launch a massive campaign against it. Tensions between Qatar and other Muslim countries have risen since late May, when the country’s state-controlled news agency appeared to publish an incendiary interview with Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani. In the interview, which appeared on May 24, the sheikh appeared to praise Saudi regional rival Iran as a “great Islamic power” and to express support for the militant Palestinian group Hamas. On the following day, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain immediately banned all Qatari media —primarily Al Jazeera— from broadcasting in their territories and broke diplomatic relations with Doha. Later on, they declared a large-scale commercial embargo against the small oil kingdom. They have since threatened war unless Qatar changes its alleged support for Iran and for a number of militant groups in the region.

The Qatari government has dismissed the embargo as unjust and has claimed that Sheikh al-Thani’s controversial interview was fake, and was placed on the country’s state-owned news agency and social media as a result of a computer hack. It has also claimed to have evidence of a number of iPhones that were used from locations in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to launch the hacks on its networks. Qatari officials have also said that an investigation into the incident is underway, but their claims have been criticized as outlandish by Qatar’s regional rivals.

Now, however, a report by The Washington Post claims that American officials have uncovered evidence that Qatar’s allegations of a computer hack are true. The paper cited “US intelligence and other officials” who spoke “on the condition of anonymity”. The officials said that US intelligence agencies recently became aware of a meeting of senior UAE state administrators that took place on May 23 in Abu Dhabi. At the meeting, the officials discussed a plan to hack Qatari news websites and social media, in order to post incendiary messages that could be used to spark a row between Qatar, the Saudi government and its allies. The alleged computer hacks is reported to have taken place on the following day. According to The Post, the only thing that US intelligence is unsure about is “whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done” by a third party.

The Post said that several US intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, refused to comment on its report. The paper received a response from the UAE embassy in Washington, DC, which said that the Emirates had “no role whatsoever in the alleged hacking described in the article”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 18 July 2017 | Permalink

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Emiratis, Saudis, secretly assisting Libyan rebels with air power, says UN

June 12, 2017 by 1 Comment

Khalifa HaftarSecret military assistance from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which violates United Nations sanctions, is helping Libya’s eastern-based rebels prevail in the civil war there, according to a new report. Libya has remained in a state of anarchy since 2011, when a popular uprising backed by the West and its allies led to the demise of the country’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Currently the strongest faction in the post-2011 Libyan Civil War is the eastern-based Tobruk-led Government, which is affiliated with the Libyan National Army (LNA). The commander of the LNA is Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an old adversary of Colonel Gaddafi, who lived in the US under Washington’s protection for several decades before returning to Libya in 2011.

The Tobruk-led Government is ostensibly supported by the United States, but has also received Russian assistance. The status of the group is further-complicated by the fact that, in recent years, its military wing, led by Haftar, operates semi-autonomously. Some believe that Haftar has now stopped taking orders from Tobruk and has aspirations to lead his own armed faction in Libya.

In February of 2011, shortly after the popular uprising erupted in Libya, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1970, which —among other things— forbids the export of war materiel to Libya. The resolution was further-strengthened in 2014 and today remains in place. But the UN embargo did not appear to stop the military domination of Haftar’s LNA. In the past few months, the armed group has managed to extend its control over dozens of urban centers, oil installations and military bases and outposts throughout eastern and central Libya. Today, the LNA is seen as the dominant military authority in the war-torn country.

Now a new report published by the UN suggests that the main reason for the LNA’s military prowess lies in the secret support it receives from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The report was published on Friday by the “Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1970”, a panel of experts appointed by the UN to oversee the implementation of the arms embargo. In its annual report, the panel asserts that Haftar’s forces received significant military assistance from the UAE in both ground and aerial support. Specifically, the LNA received nearly 650 armored and non-armored vehicles in April of 2016 alone, as well as helicopters and unmanned drones. The latter are now stationed the Al-Khadim air base, which was built by the LNA specifically in order to house the UAE-supplied aircraft. It is believed that the UAE operates the Al-Khadim air base, which is located approximately 60 miles east of Benghazi, Libya’s second most populous urban center.

The UN report goes on to state that much of the war materiel reaches Libya through ships that sail from Saudi Arabia, and that some Belarus-based companies are also involved in the illicit transfer of helicopters, non-armored vehicles and other items to Libya. It concludes that the materiel assistance provided by the UAE has “significantly increased the air support available to the LNA”, which in turn explains the group’s impressive military performance in the past year. The report’s authors noted that they contacted the government of the UAE in regards to the report’s findings, but received no response.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 June 2017 | Permalink

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What the Seychelles Trump-Russia story reveals about Emirati intelligence

April 11, 2017 by 1 Comment

Emirati intelligence has to be seen in two disparate tiers: actual home-grown intelligence efforts, which usually revolve within the small policing and military forces of the United Arab Emirates (UAE); and more elaborate, highly secretive, outsourced activities that use the UAE as a facilitating conduit or go-between with a clear advantage to Emirati interests.

The first tier is relatively modest and somewhat easy to describe: each emirate within the country has its own police force that takes responsibility to gather and act upon any intelligence, usually encompassing security, crime, and drug-trafficking. Additionally, the police forces of the two main cosmopolitan areas, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, each have their own departments to investigate, arrest, and prosecute transgressors. The capitol police in Abu Dhabi prides itself on ultra-modern intelligence capabilities, and cooperates with international organizations, other countries, and policing agencies. In addition, the UAE leadership has taken initiatives recently to create a domestic level of intelligence scholarship and professionalization, namely in the form of the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi. But those long-term aims are still just that: long-term and far from being fully developed and realized.

That leaves the aforementioned Tier Two, which involves plots worthy of Hollywood. The first aspect of Tier Two Emirati intelligence involves the outsourcing of performance to private companies. This is best exemplified by the agreement announced at the end of February with the Harris Corporation, following a $189 million two-year contract that was granted to provide a battle management system to the UAE Armed Forces. The BMS system de facto means Harris will be responsible in the UAE for initial operational capabilities, as the country tries to develop advanced contemporary battlefield management solutions. These types of agreements are very much a foundation for the actual realization and enactment of Emirati intelligence capabilities, in that they rely on the expertise and technological materiel of professional corporations (almost never Emirati themselves). It is indeed a basic ‘dollar for defense’ purchasing scheme. This strategy provides the nuts and bolts of Tier One Emirati intelligence, while simultaneously creating an intelligence dependency that works at cross-purposes with the institutional mission of the aforementioned National Defense College.

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Discovery of spy parts leaves French-UAE satellite deal in doubt

January 7, 2014 by Leave a comment

Jean-Yves Le Drian and Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin ZayedBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The planned acquisition of two French-built spy satellites by the United Arab Emirates appeared to be in doubt last night, after news that technicians discovered “security-compromising components” in the satellites’ software. The agreed purchase, which is to be completed in 2018, concerns two Falcon Eye military observation satellites worth nearly €700 million (US $930 million). The deal, signed last July by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, includes the provision of a ground station, as well as the training of up to 20 UAE engineers who will staff it. Two companies, Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space, were contracted for the project. The French bid was chosen from an original shortlist of 11 bidders, along with a similar one from the United States. Ultimately, the American bid was rejected by Abu Dhabi, due to the operational restrictions placed by the American makers of the proposed satellites. At the time, the French-UAE deal raised eyebrows in defense circles worldwide, as it was the first time that France had agreed to sell military-grade high-resolution satellites to a foreign buyer. But an article in US-based defense industry publication Defense News, said software engineers in the UAE had discovered a number of components in the satellites that seem designed to “provide a back door to the highly secure data transmitted to the ground station”. Interestingly, the back-door components appeared to have come from US suppliers. Read more of this post

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Syrian President’s mother said to have ‘defected’

January 30, 2013 by 4 Comments

Anisah Makhlouf with Hafez al-Assad in 1994By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Arab media reports appeared to confirm yesterday an allegation made last week by a senior American diplomat that the mother of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had abandoned the country. Speaking to CNN last week, Ambassador Robert Ford, who served as the United States’ envoy to Syria until he was recalled by Washington in 2011, said Anisah Makhlouf al-Assad had escaped to the United Arab Emirates. The 78-year-old widow of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1970 until his death in 2000, is a revered figure among government supporters. As the current President’s mother, she is said to exercise significant influence on the Syrian regime’s core decision makers, despite her advanced age. According several reports in Arab media, Anisah has now joined her daughter Bushra al-Assad in the Emirates. Bushra, who is the Syrian President’s oldest sister, escaped with her five children to the Gulf oil state in July 2012, after her husband, Assef Shawkat, Syria’s deputy Minister of Defense, was assassinated by the opposition in Damascus along with two other senior Syrian government officials. In his CNN interview, Ambassador Ford argued that Anisah’s defection showed that, “little by little, the inner core [of the Syrian regime] is weakening” as its members are “flaking off. They themselves know they are losing”, he added. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #743 (espionage edition)

June 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

Vladimir LazarBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Denmark professor jailed for spying. Timo Kivimäki a Finnish professor of international politics in Copenhagen, Denmark, has been sentenced to five months in prison for spying, following a trial held behind closed doors, from which even the verdict was not released. Several Russian diplomats left Denmark after the start of the spy case and, according to Danish media, Kivimäki’s lawyer, Anders Nemeth, had attempted to have them return to act as witnesses.
►►Retired Russian colonel convicted of spying for US. A Russian court has ruled that retired Colonel Vladimir Lazar spied for the US, and sentenced him to 12 years in prison. Lazar will be sent to a high-security prison and stripped of his military rank, the Federal Security Service said in a statement. Prosecutors said Lazar purchased several computer disks with more than 7,000 images of classified maps of Russia from a collector in 2008 and smuggled them to neighboring Belarus, where he gave them to an alleged American intelligence agent.
►►India arrests military intel staffer for spying. The soldier, identified only as Shivdasan, worked for the Indian Army’s Technical Support Division, which is a newly founded unit within Indian Military Intelligence. He was reportedly trapped by the Indian Directorate of Revenue Intelligence in an elaborate operation that involved a “double agent” and a relative of the soldier in Dubai.

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News you may have missed #660

January 5, 2012 by Leave a comment

Margaret ThatcherBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Taiwan President accused of spying on political opponents. Taiwan’s opposition challenger for the presidency, Tsai Ing-wen, has accused intelligence services under the control of incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou of tracking her campaign events for political advantage. The allegations – unproven and denied by Ma – conjure up memories of Taiwan’s one-party past when Ma’s party, the Nationalists, used their total control of the state apparatus to persecute opponents.
►►Analysis: Has Israeli-Australian spy relationship been restored? Intelligence sharing between Israel and Australia was halted this time last year, when a Mossad hit squad with forged Australian passports assassinated senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in in Dubai. But Australian newspaper The Age reports that “the flow of top secret intelligence between the two countries has now been restored”, in a move apparently initiated by the Australian side.
►►Thatcher threatened to ban BBC program on MI5 and MI6. The Conservative government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher threatened to “veto” a BBC investigative program about British intelligence services MI5 and MI6, because it would reveal details about how they operated and question their public accountability. In a letter marked “top secret and personal”, cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, recommended that Margaret Thatcher consider invoking the rarely used power, saying that “the government has the power to ban any program”. Thatcher wrote on the note: “I would be prepared to use the veto”.

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Mossad spy network allegedly busted in Mauritania

January 5, 2012 by 3 Comments

Fares al-BannaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Authorities in the northwestern African country of Mauritania have allegedly busted an Israeli spy network linked to the 2010 assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. One of Mauridania’s leading daily newspapers, Al-Huriyeh, says that the spy ring, which allegedly consisted “businessmen and activists [from] several Arab nationalities”, was uncovered following the arrest of one of its members, identified as Fares al-Banna. A Jordanian citizen of Palestinian extraction, al-Banna was arrested for larceny, which eventually lead to a warrant issued for searching his premises. Upon searching his house, authorities reportedly found a handwritten letter, addressed to the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in Mauritanian capital Nouakchott, in which al-Banna claimed had been recruited by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. In the letter, al-Banna also claimed that he had participated in the January 2010 assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. The letter also alleges that al-Banna helped Mossad carry out a bombing of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET409, which blew up in mid-air on January 24, 2010, five minutes after taking off from Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, en route to Addis Ababa. Al-Huriyeh reports that al-Banna’s letter suggests the Mossad blew up the plane in order to kill one or more Hezbollah targets who were on board. The Mauritanian daily says that police officers who searched al-Banna’s home, as well as his office at a travel agents called “United Travel Services”, found several different passports containing his picture, “dozens of credit cards”, as well as a sophisticated device believed to be a transmitter of some kind. Read more of this post

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United States urges Iran to release alleged CIA spy

December 22, 2011 by 1 Comment

Amir Mirzaei HekmatiBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The United States has called on Iran to release an American citizen of Iranian descent, who appeared on Iranian state TV last Sunday and acknowledged that he was an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the pre-recorded interview, a man identifying himself as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, from Arizona, said he was arrested by Iranian counterintelligence while on a CIA mission. Speaking calmly in Farsi and English and —as Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper put it— appearing to be “not under duress”, Hekmati said the joined the US Army in 2001 and served in Iraq. He also said that he was trained “in languages and espionage” while in the US Army, and eventually worked for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the US Pentagon’s research and development wing. In 2009, after nearly a decade of intelligence training, he said he was recruited by the CIA and was specifically prepared for what intelligence operatives sometimes refer to as a ‘dangling operation’ in Iran.  The aim of the mission, said Hekmati, was to travel to Tehran, contact Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, and pose as a genuine American defector wishing to supply the Iranians with inside information about American intelligence. His immediate task was to gain the trust of Iranian authorities by giving them some correct information, in order to set the stage for a longer campaign of disinformation aimed at undermining a host of Iranian intelligence operations. Read more of this post

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Ex-Bush official advised Gaddafi until early August, documents show

September 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

Libya

Libya

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Intelligence documents found at the headquarters of Libya’s abandoned spy agency appear to show that the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi enjoyed the support of an American diplomat who served in the Bush administration. Al Jazeera reports that David Welch, who was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs in the US Department of State between 2005 and 2008, met on August 2 with Gaddafi officials in the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. According to a Libyan intelligence memo from the meeting, Welch, who now works for Bechtel Corporation, gave the Gaddafi officials tips on how “to win the propaganda war” against the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC). He also instructed them to undermine Libya’s rebel movement by relying on several “confidence-building measures”, including controlled intelligence leaks aimed at manipulating the news output of Arab and Western media. The documents also reveal that Gaddafi maintained spies at the highest echelons of the rebel council, and that at least one of these spies offered to assassinate rebel leaders by “poisoning their food and water”. However, despite maintaining an ample amount of informants inside the NTC, the Gaddafi regime found it difficult to collect reliable and actionable intelligence during the civil war. Characteristically, many of the names of NTC’s central figures are misspelled in intelligence field reports, and one intelligence analyst complained recently that “the majority of those currently working for the intelligence administration are ill-prepared to carry out intelligence duties”. Despite these shortcomings, however, Gaddafi’s spies inside the NTC appear to have managed to intercept a large number of telephone messages and confidential emails between the NTC and foreign diplomats. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #534

July 9, 2011 by Leave a comment

MI6 HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
According to extracts from the diary of Alastair Campbell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s communications director from 2000 to 2003, officials from the MI6 intelligence agency told Blair that France and Germany aimed to “exploit his feud” with then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Gotta love European unity. In Kuwait, meanwhile, the oil state’s Al-Shahed daily quotes “knowledgeable sources”, who claim that “a lot of spy networks exploit the Kuwaiti environment” and use the country as a transit point to spy on neighboring countries. Hopefully the Kuwaitis will not emulate authorities in Dubai, which in March of last year called on all foreign spies “to leave the region within a week. If not”, they warned, “we will cross that bridge when we come to it”. In the nearby state of Israel, public opinion is still divided about former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s criticism of the Netanyahu government. As Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg notes, Dagan has “called into question the wisdom –and, privately, even the sanity– of any Israeli leader who contemplates a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities”. But why is he doing it, and could it backfire?

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News you may have missed #518

June 10, 2011 by 2 Comments

  • Pakistan to intensify intel collaboration with China. Pakistan has assured China of full co-operation in providing intelligence about the activities of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which aims to separate Xinjiang, an autonomous region, from China.
  • US spy community launches ‘Analytical Olympics’. This new competition for analysts to see who makes the best predictions, was outlined in a recent report by the US National Research Council, which suggests practical ways to apply insights from the behavioral and social sciences to the intelligence community.
  • UAE mercenaries say they have no Blackwater contacts. Michael Roumi, president of Reflex Responses, a company training foreign mercenary troops for the United Arab Emirates, has told the US State Department and members of Congress that Erik Prince, the former head of the security firm Blackwater Worldwide, plays no role in operating the business.

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