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Paper alleges US espionage links at Cairo’s American University

April 8, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
America’s image in Egypt has suffered in recent days, after one of Egypt’s largest newspapers claimed in a series of articles that the American University in Cairo (AUC) is conducting espionage work for the US Pentagon. On March 30, Egypt’s Al Masry Al Yawm newspaper said that the AUC, one of Egypt’s most prominent academic institutions, which was established 90 years ago, had signed a contract worth $605,000 with the US Naval Medical Research Unit (NAMRU) to conduct research on “infectious diseases, applied research and development in Egypt”. Prompted by the article’s allegations, two representatives in the Egyptian People’s Assembly requested “an emergency meeting of national security and education officials to discuss espionage at the AUC”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Al Masry Al Yawm, American University in Cairo, Egypt, Mohamed Samir, News, United States, US Army, US DoD, US embassy in Egypt, US Naval Medical Research Unit, US Navy

US uses Kyrgyz base to spy, say Russians

April 7, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Rossiya TV

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Just as US officials entered one last round of negotiations to avert the scheduled evacuation of the Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan, Russian television has accused the US Pentagon of secretly using the base to spy on Moscow and Beijing. Government-owned Telekanal Rossiya aired during primetime last Sunday a documentary titled “Base”, which alleged that signals intelligence (SIGINT) is the Pentagon’s primary operational focus at Manas. Footage aired in the documentary showed several windowless buildings located around the perimeter of the Manas Air Base, said to contain components of a “multi-channel, multi-functional system of radio-electronic surveillance […] which controls entire Central Asia, parts of China and Siberia”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, Kyrgyzstan, Manas (Kyrgyzstan), News, Russia, SIGINT, Telekanal Rossiya, United States, US DoD

Analysis: Strange Case of Philippine Spy in US Gets Stranger

April 3, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Aquino

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Philippine former intelligence officer, who was arrested in New York for passing classified US documents to his Philippine contacts, has had his sentence reduced by a US court. Michael Ray Aquino was apprehended in 2005 and charged with collaborating with an FBI intelligence analyst who spied on the US. Aquino’s recent history is complicated. For several years, he worked for the (now defunct) Philippines National Police Intelligence Group (NPIG), where he quickly rose to the post of Deputy Director, under the Presidency of Joseph Estrada. In 2001, however, when Estrada was ousted from the Presidency amidst extensive corruption allegations, Aquino was one of several military and intelligence officials who were removed by the new government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Soon afterwards, Aquino was among several suspects charged with the politically motivated murder of Salvador “Bubby” Dacer, a well-known public relations manager who had helped oust Estrada. The ousted intelligence officer escaped justice by fleeing with his family to the US, in 2001. Read article →

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Abu Sayyaf Group, Anne Roberts, assassinations, Barack Obama, espionage, FBI, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Joseph Estrada, Joseph Fitsanakis, Judge William Walls, Leandro Aragoncillo, Michael Ray Aquino, Moro ethnic group, NPIG (Philippines), Philippines, RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement, Salvador Dacer, Southeast Asia, United States, US Joint Civil Military Operation Task Force

Ex-CIA historian claims Soviet asset was double agent

March 30, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Adolf Tolkachev

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
In official historical accounts of the CIA, Adolf Tolkachev is described as the Agency’s greatest Soviet asset in the 1980s, whose impact was “limitless” and of “immense value”. Tolkachev, codenamed GTVANQUISH in internal CIA documents, was a Soviet electronics engineer who conducted research for the Soviet armed forces. From 1979 until his capture in 1985, he secretly collaborated with the CIA and give the Agency countless documents on Soviet avionics and radar systems. But Benjamin Fischer, a former CIA clandestine operative and retired CIA historian, now claims that Tolkachev was actually a KGB double agent tasked by Soviet intelligence with providing US military strategists with false information. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Adolf Tolkachev, Benjamin Fischer, book news and reviews, CIA, Cold War, double agents, espionage, GTVANQUISH, history, KGB, News, United States, USSR

CIA expert claims Chávez rigged 2004 Venezuela vote

March 28, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Hugo Chávez

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In a development that will undoubtedly worsen relations between Washington and Caracas, a CIA expert has accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez of rigging the 2004 recall referendum. Speaking before the US Election Assistance Commission in Orlando, Florida, CIA cybersecurity specialist Steve Stigall said that all networked election systems are inherently insecure, and gave the 2004 Venezuelan referendum as an example. Stigall claimed that president Chávez fixed the referendum results through the Venezuelan government’s control of the electronic ballot systems firm that oversaw the voting. He also pointed to a programming analysis of the voting systems by a group of anti-Chávez mathematicians, who allegedly discovered “a very subtle algorithm that appeared to adjust the vote in Chavez’s favor”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum, CIA, cybersecurity, electronic voting, Hugo Chávez, News, Steve Stigall, United States, US Election Assistance Commission

Analysis: The timeliness of the Alger Hiss case

March 23, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

Susan Jacoby

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Susan Jacoby, author of Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, has written a noteworthy opinion piece on the symbolism of the Alger Hiss spy case. The veteran reporter and author’s piece was published by The Los Angeles Times on March 22, 58 years to the day after Hiss began serving a 44-month prison sentence. Alger Hiss was a US State Department official and alleged former member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He served as US President F.D. Roosevelt’s chief aide during the 1945 Yalta Conference, and at the 1945 San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations Charter. In 1948, former CPUSA member Whittaker Chambers alleged that Hiss had been a covert communist sympathizer who had used his State Department privileges to supply classified government documents to the Soviets. Hiss was convicted of perjury, not spying, and never admitted collaborating with the Soviets. Susan Jacoby, who says she is “95% certain that [Hiss] did pass on government documents”, considers the Hiss case to be symbolic of the politics McCarthyism, which continue to split America today. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with 1945 San Francisco Conference, 1945 Yalta Conference, Alger Hiss, Analysis, Cold War, Communist Party USA, Franklin D. Roosevelt, history, McCarthyism, Susan Jacoby, United Nations, United States, Whittaker Chambers

US Pentagon report acknowledges Israel has the bomb!

March 20, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Ever since the early 1970s, the United States and Israel have maintained what nuclear proliferation experts call “a policy of ambiguity” on Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Namely, American and Israeli officials will neither confirm nor deny that Israel has nuclear weapons. The reason for this pretended vagueness is the 1976 Symington Amendment, which prevents the US from providing any economic or military assistance to countries “that deliver or receive, acquire or transfer nuclear enrichment technology”. Now, however, a declassified report by the US Pentagon has been found to confirm that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal. The US Joint Forces Command study (pdf), which was compiled last year by the US Army, includes Israel among the world’s nuclear powers. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Israel, Israel's nuclear arsenal, News, nuclear proliferation, United States, US Army, US DoD, US Joint Forces Command

Israeli ex-spy barred from the US wants US visa

March 19, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Uzi Arad

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On March 9, I wrote about an interesting diplomatic incident in which the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, met in Israel with Uzi Arad, a former Mossad agent who is currently barred from entering the US for his involvement as a co-conspirator in the Lawrence Franklin spy case. Lawrence Anthony Franklin was a US Defense Department analyst, who in 2006 was given a 12-year prison sentence for handing classified US military information to Israeli officials and two lobbyists of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). On Tuesday, The Washington Times finally discovered that Uzi Arad is barred from entering the United States. The paper even headlined its article “exclusive”; hmmm…they must not read intelNews, or Ha’aretz for that matter. What is new in The Times‘ piece is the somewhat predictable revelation that, for nearly two years, Israeli officials and pro-Israel Americans have been pressuring the US State Department to grant Uzi Arad a visa, so that he can once again enter the United States. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Lawrence Anthony Franklin, Likud, News, United States, US Department of State, Uzi Arad

Advisors tell Obama to expand covert war inside Pakistan

March 18, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Baluchistan

By I. ALLEN and J. FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Reports are emerging today that the Obama White House is considering intensifying US covert operations and CIA drone airstrikes deep inside Pakistan. If carried out, these operations will be taking place in Pakistan’s vast Baluchistan province, and would represent a major escalation in the so-called “war on terrorism”. Until now, strikes by US unmanned drones, operated by the CIA, have been strictly limited to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistani border. But The New York Times report that “at least two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area” to include Baluchistan. Additionally, the paper reports that several of the President’s advisors favor “conduct[ing] cross-border ground actions [deep inside Pakistan], using CIA and Special Operations commandos”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Afghanistan, assassinations, Baluchistan (Pakistan), Barack Obama, CIA, covert operations, Mullah Mohammad Omar, News, Pakistan, Predator drones, Supreme Council of Afghanistan, Taliban, United States, War on Terrorism

CIA assassinations in Pakistan now almost routine

March 15, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
The targeted assassinations by the CIA in Pakistan have become routine to the extent that the US media have now stopped covering them. Last Thursday, four more missiles fired by a CIA-operated unmanned aircraft hit an alleged “militant hideout and training camp” in Kurram Valley, a tribally administered Pakistani region on the border with Afghanistan. A Reuters news agency correspondent in Islamabad quotes an unnamed senior Pakistani government official in Kuram who alleges that the missiles “hit a militant hideout and training camp in the Barjo area”. Also cited in the Reuters report is Noor Islam, a villager from the Barjo area, who stated that “[t]he training camp was completely destroyed” and that “at least 14 people were killed”. After a similar strike in Afghanistan last month, the US Pentagon was eventually forced to admit that it killed “13 Afghan civilians and only three militants”. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with al-Qaeda, assassinations, Barjo (Pakistan), CIA, Kurram Valley (Pakistan), News, Pakistan, Taliban, United States, War on Terrorism

CIA veteran reveals agency’s operations in Tibet

March 14, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Gyalo Thondup

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
A former CIA officer, who supervised the Agency’s covert operations in the Chinese region of Tibet, says he is working on a new book on the subject. John Kenneth Klaus, who, while stationed in India in the 1960s, directed the CIA’s support of Tibetan independence paramilitaries, has given a rare interview to Canadian newspaper The Toronto Star. In it, he admits that the CIA supplied weapons to Tibetan monks, who are widely known for their non-violent philosophy. According to 85-year-old Klaus, the origins of the CIA’s covert assistance to Tibetan monks date back to at least 1957, when Gyalo Thondup, older brother of the 14th (and current) Dalai Lama, sent the CIA five Tibetan recruits, whom the Agency trained in paramilitary tactics on the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas. Shortly afterwards the five men were covertly returned to Tibet “to assess and organize the resistance”. In the process, they recruited another 300 Tibetans who were secretly transported to Colorado and trained by Klaus and other US intelligence and military officers. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, CIA, Cold War, Dalai Lama, Gyalo Thondup, history, India, John Kenneth Klaus, News, Northern Mariana Islands, Saipan, Tibet, United States

Comment: Post-9/11 Intelligence Turf Wars Continue

March 13, 2009 by intelNews 1 Comment

Rod Beckstrom

By IAN ALLEN* | intelNews.org |
The stern assurances given to Americans after 9/11, that destructive turf wars between US intelligence agencies would stop, appear to be evaporating. Earlier this week, Rod Beckstrom, who headed the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced his resignation amidst a bitter row between the DHS and the National Security Agency (NSA) over the oversight of American cybersecurity. In a letter (.pdf) addressed to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, and carbon-copied to nearly every senior US intelligence and defense official, Beckstrom blasted the lack of “appropriate support [for NCSC] during the last administration”, as well as having to wrestle with “various roadblocks engineered within [DHS] by the Office of Management and Budget”. Most of all, Beckstrom, an industry entrepreneur who remained in his NCSC post for less than a year, accused the NSA of subverting NCSC’s cybersecurity role by trying to “subjugate” and “control” NCSC.

US officials step up warnings about missing Somali-Americans

March 13, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Shirwa Ahmed

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
IntelNews has previously reported on the case of Shirwa Ahmed, a US citizen of Somali descent who last October became history’s first known US-born suicide bomber. On October 29, 2008, Ahmed was one of five bombers who carried out near-simultaneous suicide bombings in the Somali city of Hargeisa, targeting the Presidential palace, the consulate of Ethiopia and a UN complex. The bombings have been attributed to al-Shabaab (the Party of Youth), a militant youth faction of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Members of the ICU went underground in late 2006, after Ethiopia launched a US-aided invasion of Somalia with the aim of curtailing the ICU’s grassroots support and preventing the solidification of the group’s rule in Somalia. Al-Shabaab represents the most militant of the ICU-led underground, and is said to be one of several groups in Somalia with significant al-Qaeda links. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Africa, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Andrew Liepman, assassinations, Ethiopia, FBI, Islamic Courts Union, J. Philip Mudd, Minneapolis, Minnesota, News, Shirwa Ahmed, Somalia, The Party of Youth (Somalia), United States, US National Counterterrorism Center, War on Terrorism

US-China naval standoff worst in years, US intel chief says

March 12, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Last Sunday’s naval confrontation between a US Navy ship and five Chinese vessels was “the most serious” in seven years, according to US Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Admiral Dennis Blair. The last known serious intelligence row between the two nations occurred in 2001, when a Chinese Air Force plane collided with a US electronic surveillance aircraft over the South China Sea, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the damaged US plane to perform an emergency landing on Chinese territory. Last Sunday’s incident also occurred in the South China Sea, approximately 75 miles off the Chinese island of Hainan. The US Pentagon initially claimed that its ship, the USNS Impeccable, was a “research vessel”, but it later admitted that it is used to “to hunt” foreign submarines. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with China, Chinese Air Force, Dennis Cutler Blair, DNI, Exclusive Economic Zone, Hainan (China), maritime surveillance, News, NSA, SIGINT, South China Sea, United States, US DoD, US Navy, USNS Impeccable

Bolivia expels second US diplomat for having CIA links

March 11, 2009 by intelNews 2 Comments

Evo Morales

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Two weeks ago, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the CIA was actively conspiring to subvert his government’s energy policy. On Monday, the President announced the expulsion of a US diplomat, whom he accused of working for the CIA. The diplomat, Francisco Martinez, Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Bolivian capital La Paz, has been given 72 hours to leave the country. The Bolivian government says Martinez “was in permanent contact with opposition groups” in the country, and helped facilitate the separatist protests of September 2008. Martinez’s alleged actions were reportedly exposed by a Bolivian police officer who was recently arrested for participating in an alleged CIA-led effort to infiltrate Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), Bolivia’s nationalized oil company. The scandal led to several layoffs at YPFB and to the subsequent arrest of the company’s former Director, Santos Ramirez, on corruption charges. Read more of this post