Are US spy agencies sharing weapons, intelligence with Hezbollah?

October 2, 2014 by Leave a comment

Cyprus, Israel, Syria, LebanonBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
In its effort to amass regional support for its war against the Islamic State, the United States is reaching out to militant Shiites in Lebanon, including Hezbollah, according to some sources. In a report for New York-based magazine Newsweek, veteran intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein said on Wednesday that the meteoric rise of Sunni radicalism, in the form of the Islamic State, may have prompted the creation of a “de facto US-Saudi-Lebanese-Hezbollah-Iranian” alliance in the Middle East. Although no partner in this informal coalition is willing to admit its role in the collaborative effort, the common goal of eradicating Sunni extremism has brought about an “unwritten, unacknowledged cease fire” between these former adversaries, says Stein, quoting “authoritative sources”. Washington and Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that controls large swathes of Lebanese territory, have a common interest in combating the Islamic State and preventing its rule from spreading beyond Syria. So the Americans began reaching out to Hezbollah in 2012, says Stein, and have helped bring about a “regional consensus […] to contain the conflict away from Lebanon and in Syria”. Remarkably, bitter adversaries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran are said to actively subscribe to the Washington-led consensus against the Islamic State. Washington’s decision to reach out to Hezbollah appears to have been prompted by the realization that the militant Shiite group, along with the official Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), were the only actors on the ground capable of fighting and defeating the Islamic State. Last August, says Stein, the US Pentagon unloaded $20 million worth of weapons in Lebanon for use by the LAF. The weapons were reportedly shipped through the Beirut International Airport, which his under the control of Hezbollah. The group promptly transferred the weapons to the LAF, which is traditionally dominated by Christians, but has recently developed an “arm’s length alliance with Hezbollah” due to their mutual concern over the rise of the Islamic State. Stein suggests that the US-Hezbollah relationship may now also include intelligence-sharing. He quotes a number of sources who claim that some Sunni militants have been apprehended thanks to intelligence-sharing between America, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Some claim that Iran acts as a mediator between Washington and Hezbollah, and that British diplomats also mediate between the two sides. Read more of this post

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Austrian reporter alleges NSA spies on Vienna, including UN complex

September 25, 2014 by 1 Comment

Roof of the IZD Tower in ViennaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A reporter for Austria’s state broadcaster claims to have uncovered a United States National Security Agency listening post in Austrian capital Vienna, which he claims spies on the United Nations facility, among other targets. In September 2013, Austrian media alleged that a villa in Vienna’s Pötzleinsdorf district belonging to the US embassy there was part of a sophisticated communications interception network operated by Washington. At the time, both the US and Austrian governments denied the claims, with the US embassy claiming that the building served as an open-source center that processed and evaluated information that was openly available in Austrian media outlets and the Internet. Now, however, Austrian reporter Erich Möchel, who works for the country’s state-owned ORF broadcaster, says he believes he has identified another part of an alleged extensive NSA-run listening network in the nation’s capital. The reporter published a series of photographs from the roof of the so-called IZD Tower, a commercial 41-story skyscraper located in Vienna’s 22nd district, which is within walking distance from the UN facility there. Möchel said the photographs show the roof of the building, which is one of the tallest in Vienna, and were leaked to him by an anonymous source. They show what appears to be a grey-colored boxy structure, which resembles a maintenance hut on the roof of the tower. The hut is enclosed by rows of solid steel bars resembling a fence, and surrounded by approximately 10 surveillance cameras. Interestingly, the hut, which overlooks the UN building complex, cannot be seen from the street, or from nearby buildings. Möchel speculates that the hut is made of fiberglass, which would allow it to absorb radio signals and commercial mobile telecommunications messages, with the help of antennas located in its interior. Read more of this post

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CIA issues ‘stand-down’ on spying against Western Europe

September 23, 2014 by 2 Comments

CIA headquartersBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The United States Central Intelligence Agency has issued a “stand-down order” to its stations in Europe, instructing them to cease all intelligence operations targeting allied countries, media reports claim. According to several Western European news outlets, including British newspaper The Guardian, CIA stations in Europe have been “forbidden from undertaking unilateral operations” involving assets recruited from within government agencies allied to Washington. Last summer, the German government instructed its intelligence agencies to limit their cooperation with their American counterparts “to the bare essentials”. Berlin also expelled the United States Central Intelligence Agency chief of station —essentially the top American official in the country. The moves came after successive revelations by American defector Edward Snowden, suggesting that Washington had spied on Germany and other Western European countries with unprecedented intensity in recent years. In July, Berlin arrested two German intelligence officers who it said were spying on Germany on behalf of the CIA. The Guardian said that the stand-down order came into effect shortly after the arrests of the CIA’s two German assets and Berlin’s subsequent reaction, which diplomatic observers described as “unprecedented”. The order was communicated to CIA stations “by senior CIA officials through secret cables”, said the paper. The decision is reportedly aimed at giving CIA stations in Europe time to evaluate the degree of operational security of their intelligence-collection programs and assess whether their officers were “being careful enough” so as to prevent further embarrassment for Langley. Additionally, CIA stations have been asked to evaluate whether targeting allied nations in espionage operations is “worth running the risk of discovery”, said The Guardian. Since the stand-down order was issued, CIA case officers have reportedly stopped meeting with all of their assets recruited from within allied governments. The London-based newspaper quoted one anonymous former CIA official who said stand-downs of this sort are not uncommon after operations are compromised, but added that he could not remember a stand-down order being “this long or this deep”. Read more of this post

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Secret program gives US, UK spies access to German telecoms

September 15, 2014 by 1 Comment

 Deutsche Telekom headquarters in BerlinBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
American and British intelligence services have access to the network structure of German telecommunications through a top-secret program likened to a “Google Earth of the global Internet”, say reports. The program, codenamed TREASURE MAP, was first revealed late last year by The New York Times. The paper described it as a “sophisticated tool” that was designed by the United States National Security Agency as a “massive Internet mapping, analysis and exploration engine”. The paper said at the time that TREASURE MAP provided the NSA with a “near real-time, interactive map of the Internet” and gave it a “300,000 foot view” of the World Wide Web. Now German newsmagazine Der Spiegel has said that the top-secret program allows the NSA and its British counterpart, the General Communications Headquarters, to map the entire network of German telecommunications providers. The latter include the partially government-owned Deutsche Telekom, as well as several large local service providers, such as Stellar Telecommunications, Cetel, Inc., and NetCologne. Der Spiegel said TREASURE MAP collected network and geo-location data from each of these companies, thus allowing the NSA and GCHQ to map “any device, anywhere, all of the time”. These data permit the immediate identification of the owner and location of any computer or mobile device, by connecting the latter with unique Internet protocol addresses. The German magazine likened TREASURE MAP to “the Google Earth of the Internet” and said it gave its users access to the mapping of the German Internet, but also pointed to the addresses and locations of individual subscribers’ routers, as well as to targeted computer and smart phone devices. The data acquired through TREASURE MAP included “trade secrets and sensitive information, said Spiegel. Read more of this post

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War alone will not defeat Islamists, says US ex-military intel chief

September 11, 2014 by 2 Comments

Lieutenant General Michael FlynnBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The former chief of military intelligence in the United States has warned that military force cannot defeat Islamic-inspired militancy without a broader strategic plan. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn led the US Defense Intelligence Agency from July 2012 until August of this year, serving essentially as the most senior intelligence official in the US Armed Forces. He stepped down amidst rumors that he had been asked to resign because his plans to modernize military intelligence operations were “disruptive”. On Wednesday, while addressing the annual Maneuver Conference at the US Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence in Fort Benning, Georgia, General Flynn addressed the issue of Sunni militancy and how to counter groups like the Islamic State. Responding to a question from the audience, the former DIA director said “what this audience wants [to hear] is ‘kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out, get the T-shirt [and] go down to Ranger Joe’s” (a military clothing retailer). And he added: “we can kill all day long, but until we understand why there are [such large] numbers of [fundamentalist] believers globally, [groups like the Islamic State] will not be defeated”. Flynn went on to say that America is losing initiative in the war of ideas with Islamic radicalism, as the latter is spreading rapidly across the world, especially in regions such as Africa and South Asia. Responding to another question from the audience, the former DIA director dismissed the view that there is an ideological split between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, saying: “there is no tension; they hate us equally; it is an expansion”. Last month, Flynn gave an interview in which he said the international environment was “is the most uncertain, chaotic and confused” he had witnessed in his three-decade career. Read more of this post

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US intelligence official says ISIS still below al-Qaeda’s strength

September 4, 2014 by 2 Comments

Matthew OlsenBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Despite the rapid rise of the Islamic State in the Middle East, the strength of the young organization is still not comparable to that of al-Qaeda, which remains the world’s dominant Islamist group, according to the United States’ most senior counterterrorism official. This was the view expressed on Wednesday by Matthew Olsen, Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), who is preparing to step down later this year. Based in McLean, Virginia, the NCTC is the part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that advises the US government about terrorism. Olsen said there is no doubt that the Islamic State —also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS— has made “dramatic territorial gains in Syria and Iraq” and is displaying unmatched abilities in utilizing online social networking platforms to spread propaganda. Additionally, an increasing number of Muslim extremists view the Islamic State as “the new leader in the global jihadist movement”, said Olsen. But he added that NCTC experts have come to the conclusion that the Islamic State does not currently pose a direct threat to America or Western Europe, and said that the risk of a “spectacular, al-Qaeda-style attack” on American or European targets is negligible. America’s senior terrorism advisor went on to claim that al-Qaeda remains a more serious adversary for American interests than the Islamic State, and that the new organization is “significantly more limited than al-Qaeda was in the run-up to 9/11”, at which time it maintained underground cells across Europe and the US. Olsen continued by saying that there was “simply no credible information” that the Islamic State was planning to attack US targets anywhere outside the immediate surroundings of its territorial stronghold in Iraq and Syria. Read more of this post

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Turkey summons US chargé d’affaires to protest spying claims

September 3, 2014 by Leave a comment

Recep Tayyip ErdoğanBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
The government of Turkey has summoned the interim head of the United States diplomatic mission in the country to lodge an official protest over reports that Washington has been spying on Turkish leaders for nearly 10 years. German publication Der Spiegel said on Sunday that American intelligence agencies, with the help of British operatives, have engaged in “intensive spying” of Turkish government officials since at least 2006. The German newsmagazine said the information was based on internal documents released by American defector Edward Snowden, a former employee of the US National Security Agency who is currently living in Russia. The documents show that the NSA, which conducts worldwide communications interception on behalf of the US government, places Turkey “ahead of Cuba” when it comes to intelligence collection in the service of American national security. The documents supplied by Snowden show that the NSA launched a sizeable surveillance operation in 2006, in which it targeted the computers of Turkey’s senior government officials, including those belonging to then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Spiegel also said that Washington targeted Turkey’s embassy in the US and even spied on the communications of Turkey’s permanent mission in the United Nations in New York. The reported aim of the spying operations was to acquire accurate information regarding Ankara’s strategic intentions under the leadership of Prime Minister Erdoğan. What is more, the information gathered by the US was eventually shared with members of the so-called UKUSA agreement, namely Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. On Tuesday, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement describing the Spiegel revelations as “grave allegations” that “cannot be accepted”. It added that, if true, the German newsmagazine’s revelations pointed to actions that were incompatible with “the history of friendship between the two countries”. Read more of this post

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Fearing Soviet invasion, FBI trained Alaskan spies, files show

September 2, 2014 by Leave a comment

Russia, Alaska, CanadaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The United States government set up a secret network of citizen-spies in Alaska in response to concerns that the Soviet Union was planning to invade the territory, newly declassified documents show. The documents, dating from 1950, were given to the Associated Press by The Government Attic, a website specializing in publishing US government files obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. The news agency said on Sunday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation decided to set up the secret network of agents in the 1950s, after it was warned by the US Air Force that a Soviet invasion of Alaska was “a real possibility”. One FBI memo from the time stressed the likelihood that Moscow would stage an airborne invasion of what was then the US territory of Alaska, using “bombing and the dropping of paratroopers”. Responding to such concerns, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover authorized Operation WASHTUB, which involved the establishment of a “stay-behind” force of nearly 100 citizen-agents recruited from the local population. The operation, which was also known by several other codenames, including CORPUSCLE, STIGMATIC and CATBOAT, was headed by Hoover protégé Joseph F. Carroll, of the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations. From 1951 to 1959, the OSI, in association with the FBI, recruited Alaskan woodmen, fishermen, pilots, and others, paying them up to $3,000 a year (nearly $30,000 in today’s currency), a sum which was to be doubled following a Soviet invasion. The “stay-behind” agents were to retreat to predetermined hideouts throughout Alaska, unearth hidden caches of food, survival supplies, and communications facilities, and transmit information about Soviet movements. The Associated Press report suggests that the concept of stay-behind agents in Alaska was novel in those early stages of the Cold War. But the report fails to mention Operation GLADIO, the stay-behind program instituted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe, which appears to have preceded Operation WASHTUB by at least two years. Read more of this post

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John Walker, head of Cold-War-era Soviet spy ring, dies in prison

September 1, 2014 by Leave a comment

John Anthony WalkerBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
A retired United States Navy sailor, who led one of the most prolific Soviet spy rings in America during the Cold War, and made over $2 million in the process, has died in prison, where he had been serving a life sentence. John Anthony Walker, Jr., retired from the US Navy in 1976 as a Warrant Officer, having previously served as a radio operator and technical communications expert. He held a top-secret clearance for most of his Navy career. In 1967, Walker had walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, and had given Soviet officials a few US military codes as samples. The exchange sparked a cooperation that lasted 17 years, as the Soviets initially placed Walker on a $1,000-a-week salary, promising to upgrade his income if he delivered more classified material. Eventually, Walker recruited his older brother, Arthur Walker, a US Navy lieutenant commander, who had left the Navy and was working for a US military contractor. He also recruited his oldest son, Michael, who was a US Navy seaman aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and was able to clandestinely photograph classified documents he found on the ship. Walker also recruited one of his best friends, Jerry Whitworth, whom he had befriended when Whitworth was a student. He convinced the impressionable young man to enlist in the US Navy for the purpose of providing the spy ring with classified information. Whitworth eventually became a chief radioman for the Navy. The spy ring Walker set up conducted espionage on an industrial scale, providing the USSR with classified information for nearly two decades. The stolen information, which included the daily code configurations for several encryption devices used by the US Navy, allowed Moscow to decode over a million US navy messages. The breach perpetrated by the Walker spy ring is considered among the largest in American military history. Vitaly Yurchenko, a high-ranking officer in the Soviet KGB, once described the Walker spy ring as “the greatest case in Soviet intelligence history”. But the ring was busted in May of 1985 following an extensive counterintelligence operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Read more of this post

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US sharing intelligence with Syrian government, say sources

August 27, 2014 by 1 Comment

ISIS parade in SyriaBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
The United States is secretly sharing intelligence about the Islamic State with the government of Syria, according to sources. On Monday, American officials told the Associated Press that US President Barack Obama had authorized reconnaissance flights over Syrian airspace with the aim of gathering intelligence on the Islamic State —known previously as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. Pentagon officials said the reconnaissance flights are intended to collect “additional intelligence” on the Islamic State’s troop movements in Syria. Their ultimate goal is reportedly to assist the president and his advisors as they contemplate whether the US should launch airstrikes against Islamic State targets on Syrian soil. One American official told the news agency that the reconnaissance flights constituted “an important avenue for obtaining data” and said they would satisfy the “need for reliable intelligence from Syria”. But another source told French news agency Agence France Presse on Tuesday that the intelligence gathered from US reconnaissance flights was being shared with the Syrian government “through Iraqi and Russian channels”. Quoting “a regional source”, the Paris-based news agency said Damascus has been receiving lists of Islamic State targets on Syrian territory “from a Western country” since before mid-August. If these reports turn out to be accurate, it would mean that Washington is essentially collaborating for the first time with one of its arch-enemies in the Middle East, a regime which, in the past, it has come close to bombing. It would also bring American policy in the region closer to that of Russia, which has supported the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the civil war, arguing that it is preferable to the instability represented by opposition forces. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #882 (cybersecurity edition)

August 22, 2014 by 1 Comment

Andrew LewmanBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►GCHQ launches ‘Cyber Security Challenge’. Britain’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has created a new online game to find new recruits and test the public’s ability to deal with hacking attacks. The new game, named Assignment: Astute Explorer, will give registered players the chance to analyze code from a fictitious aerospace company, identify vulnerabilities and then suggest fixes.
►►Chinese hackers spied on investigators of Flight MH370. Malaysian officials investigating the disappearance of flight MH370 have been targeted in a hacking attack that resulted in the theft of classified material. The attack hit around 30 PCs assigned to officials in Malaysia Airlines, the country’s Civil Aviation Department and the National Security Council. The malware was hidden in a PDF attachment posing as a news article that was distributed on 9 March, just one day after the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
►►Developer alleges NSA and GCHQ employees are helping Tor Project. Tor is a free software used for enabling online anonymity and resisting censorship. It directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network consisting of more than five thousand relays to conceal a user’s location or usage. Interestingly, its executive director, Andrew Lewman, has told the BBC that employees of the NSA and GCHQ offer his team of programmers tips “on probably [a] monthly” basis about bugs and design issues that potentially could compromise the [Tor] service”. He added that he had been told by William Binney, a former NSA official turned whistleblower, that one reason NSA workers might have leaked such information was because many were “upset that they are spying on Americans”.

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German intelligence spied on American, Turkish officials

August 18, 2014 by Leave a comment

BND headquarters in BerlinBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
German intelligence agencies have spied on two successive American secretaries of state and are actively engaged in espionage in Turkey, even though both countries are allied members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported last week that German spies intercepted at least one telephone call made by American politician Hillary Clinton, while she was serving as secretary of state. The Munich-based newspaper said the intercepted telephone call was made over an unencrypted line while Clinton was travelling on an airplane belonging to the United States government. On Sunday, German newsmagazine Der Spiegel added that the interception of Clinton’s telephone call occurred in 2012, when the American secretary of state telephoned the former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan to discuss his mediation efforts over the Syrian civil war. Der Spiegel said that Clinton had not been a direct target of a German intelligence operation and that her telephone conversation with Anan had been intercepted “by accident”, after it “quasi-randomly entered the listening network” of the BND, Germany’s federal intelligence agency. Spiegel added that the BND officers who conducted the interception passed the recording on to their superiors. The newsmagazine said that Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, also had a telephone conversation intercepted by the BND in 2013, again by accident. This time, however, the German intelligence officers immediately deleted the intercepted conversation, according to Spiegel. The article goes on to add that German intelligence circles insist the wiretapped conversations of the two US secretaries of state were accidentally recorded within the context of other intelligence-collection operations, and that the American politicians were not in and of themselves targets of the BND. The Spiegel article goes on to state, however, that the BND has been actively conducting espionage operations in NATO member-state Turkey since at least 2009. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #881 (Cold War history edition)

August 14, 2014 by Leave a comment

Vehicle tracking deviceBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
►►McCarthy-era prisoner tries to overturn espionage conviction. In 1950, Miriam Moskowitz was secretary to Abraham Brothman, an American chemical engineer who was convicted for providing secret industrial information to communist spy Elizabeth Bentley. Moskowitz, who was having an affair with Brothman at the time of his arrest, was convicted of obstructing justice and served two years in prison. Now at age 98, she claims she has discovered evidence that key witness testimony about her role in Soviet espionage was falsified, and wants her conviction thrown out. In 2010, Moskowitz authored the book Phantom Spies, Phantom Justice, about her case.
►►Files show USSR spied on Czechoslovak communist leaders after 1968. The Soviet KGB spied aggressively on senior members of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSČ) for two decades following the Prague Spring of 1968, because it mistrusted them. The information on Soviet intelligence activities against the KSČ comes from files in to the so-called Mitrokhin Archive. Vasili Mitrokhin was a KGB archivist, who painstakingly copied tens of thousands of pages of the spy agency’s files prior to defecting to Britain following the dissolution of the USSR.
►►Canada’s spy agency reveals Cold War-era spying equipment. As part of its celebrations for its 30-year anniversary, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service has released photographs of what it calls “tools of the trade” –gadgets designed to hide or transport secret communication, acquire surreptitious photographs, listen in on private conversations, etc., without detection. The gadgets include Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko‘s gun, a toy truck with a concealment compartment for hiding a microdot reader, a hollowed-out battery used to contain clandestine messages or microfilm, and many others.

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China stops using some Apple products, fearing US espionage

August 7, 2014 by 2 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.orgApple offices in China
Authorities in China have removed Apple products from a government procurement list because of fears that they are susceptible to electronic espionage by the United States. Citing “government officials familiar with the matter”, Bloomberg News said on Wednesday that 10 Apple products have been removed from the list, including the iPad and iPad Mini, as well as MacBook Air and MacBook Pro products —though interestingly the inventory of removed items does not include Apple smartphone products. The procurement list is produced several times a year by China’s Ministry of Finance and the National Commission for Development and Reform. It specifies the types of products that can be purchased with public funds by all central departments of the Communist Party of China, as well as by all state and local government ministries. The surprise removal of Apple products from the list follows a report aired by Beijing’s state-owned China Central Television in July, which claimed that security weaknesses in Apple software could cause the theft of sensitive state secrets. Apple vigorously rejected the claims made in the television report. The action by the Chinese government is the latest move in a tit-for-tat cyberespionage war between Washington and Beijing, which began in 2013, when American defector Edward Snowden began leaking US intelligence secrets. In June of that year, it was revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been engaged in protracted offensive cyberespionage operations against China for nearly 15 years. Almost a year later, the US Department of Justice charged a group of Chinese military officers with stealing American trade secrets through cyberespionage. Apple is not the first American technology firm to be hit with removals of its products from the Chinese government’s procurement list. Read more of this post

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Russian jet ‘chased US spy plane into Swedish airspace’

August 6, 2014 by Leave a comment

RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraftBy IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org
An American spy plane was forced to enter Swedish airspace without permission in order to avoid a potentially serious encounter with a Russian military jet, which tried to intercept it in international airspace. Swedish news agency Svenska Dagbladet said on Monday that the incident happened on July 18, one day after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine. According to Swedish sources, the US plane was an RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft, which had been flying in international airspace on an eavesdropping mission, collecting signals intelligence on Russian military positions. All of a sudden, however, the American pilot noticed that Russian land-based military radars had begun to track the plane. Eventually, the Russians “locked” their radar on the US plane, which is usually interpreted as a step before firing at the aircraft. Such a move is not illegal, but is described by experts as “highly unusual”, especially when involving unarmed aircraft flying in international airspace. Shortly afterwards, the Russian Air Force sent “at least one” fighter jet toward the US aircraft in an apparent effort to intercept it. Swedish officials were later told by their US counterparts that the American pilot became seriously concerned that his aircraft might get fired upon, so he decided to abort his mission as soon as he could. He therefore ended up flying the plane over Sweden’s airspace without approval from Swedish air controllers. It is believed that the US plane may have crossed into other nations’ airspace, also without permission. Stephan Persson Tyrling, director of air operations at Sweden’s National Defense College, told Svenska Dagbladet that “Russia may have felt provoked” and embarked on an interception operation in order to “tell the US that they flew too close to their airspace or interfered with their [military] exercises”. Read more of this post

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