News you may have missed #546

July 23, 2011 by Leave a comment

Thomas Drake

Thomas Drake

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Whistleblower says NSA mismanagement continues. Former US National Security Agency employee Thomas Drake was recently sentenced to a year’s probation for leaking secrets about the agency to a journalist. The presiding judge did not sentence him to prison, recognizing that his genuine intention was to expose mismanagement. Soon after his sentencing, Drake told The Washington Times that mismanagement continues at the NSA, which he compared to “the Enron of the intelligence world”. He also told the paper that NSA’s accounts were “unauditable”, like those of most of the other agencies operating under the Pentagon. ►►Taliban claim phones hacked by NATO. The Afghan Taliban have accused NATO and the CIA of hacking pro-Taliban websites, as well as personal email accounts and cell phones belonging to Taliban leaders, in order to send out a false message saying that their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had died. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told the Reuters news agency that the hacking was “the work of American intelligence” and that the Taliban would “take revenge on the telephone network providers”. ►►Rumsfeld memo says ‘US can’t keep a secret’. “The United States Government is incapable of keeping a secret”. This was opined in a November 2, 2005 memo authored by Donald Rumsfeld. The memo by the then-Defense Secretary continues: Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #545

July 22, 2011 by Leave a comment

Robert Baer

Robert Baer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Pakistan restores visas to CIA personnel. The government of Pakistan has reissued entry visas to nearly 90 CIA officers, which were withdrawn following the assassination of Osama bin Laden last May. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reports that the visas were approved hours after ISI director Ahmed Shuja Pasha’s visit to the United States last week. It is interesting to note the speed of official authorization of the visas in Pakistan –a country where even basic government services routinely fall victim to endless bureaucratic delays. Does this mean that the ISI and the CIA are back in business? If Pakistani media reports are to be believed, the two agencies were back in business as early as last May. ►►German spy agency accused of playing down stolen blueprints. New reports in the German media say that the stolen blueprints of Germany’s intelligence agency BND may contain even more sensitive security information than previously believed. German newsmagazine Focus alleged earlier this month that the top-secret architectural plans for the BND’s state-of-the-art new building “mysteriously disappeared” a year ago, without anyone in government noticing their absence. Ernst Uhrlau, BND’s Director, responded by claiming that only the building’s car park, cafeteria and energy supply areas had been affected by the theft. But according to Focus and Der Spiegel, Germany’s other major newsmagazine, the stolen documents contain classified plans for the headquarters’ main building. There are now rumors in Berlin that the scandal may force Uhrlau to resign. ►►Ex-CIA operative says he never claimed Israel would attack Iran. Recently we reported on former CIA officer Robert Baer’s warning that Israel was planning an armed attack against Iran. Read more of this post

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Two US citizens charged with spying for Pakistan

July 22, 2011 by Leave a comment

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

Syed Fai

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
American counterintelligence officers have indicted two US citizens of Pakistani origin with trying to influence Congress and the White House on behalf of the government of Pakistan. According to court documents filed on Tuesday by the FBI in Virginia, Zaheer Ahmad (who escaped arrest and may be currently in Pakistan) and Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai acted as unregistered agents of a foreign government (legal terminology for espionage) while operating under the direction of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI). Both men were leading members of the Kashmiri American Council, a lobby group that propagates Pakistan’s territorial claim to the northwester Indian region of Kashmir. Pakistan and India fought over Kashmir in 1947 and 1967, and have been engaged in constant low-intensity conflict over the territory ever since. The Kashmiri American Council is one of three Kashmir Councils in the West, the other two being in London, UK, and Brussels, Belgium. But the FBI court affidavit claims that the Kashmir Centers are ISI front-organizations, and that the activities of their employees are directed by the ISI. Specifically, the FBI alleges that Fai, who acted as the Council’s director in Washington, routinely coordinated his endeavors with his ISI handlers, usually communicating with them via email. The court documents mention a witness testimony that claims Fai has been an ISI operative for over two decades, and that in recent years he has been receiving between $500,000 and $700,000 per annum from Pakistani intelligence. Much of this money ended up in the pockets of influential American politicians, in the form of campaign donations. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #544

July 21, 2011 by Leave a comment

Google

Google

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Russia a ‘leading suspect’ in cyberespionage attack on US. I wrote on Monday about the cyberespionage operation that targeted a leading US defense contractor last March, and resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of classified documents. US Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, who disclosed the operation, said only that it was conducted by “a foreign intelligence service”. According to the last sentence of this NBC report, US officials see Russian intelligence as “one of the leading suspects” in the attack. ►►Al-Qaeda acquires Pakistani spy service manuals. Jamestown Foundation researcher Abdul Hameed Bakier reports that al-Qaeda operatives have managed to get access to espionage training manuals used by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI). Copies of the documents have apparently been posted on Internet forums that are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and bear the mark of the As-Sahab Foundation, al-Qaeda’s media wing. ►►Google-NSA collaboration documents to remain secret —for now. Even before Google shut down its operations in China, following a massive cyberattack against its servers in early 2010, the company has maintained close contact with American intelligence agencies. But after the 2010 cyberattack, some believe that Google’s relationship with the US intelligence community has become too cozy. In February of 2010, the ACLU said it was concerned about Google’s contacts with the US National Security Agency (NSA). Other groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), have filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking access to the inner workings of Google’s relationship with NSA. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #543 (CIA edition)

July 20, 2011 by Leave a comment

John Rizzo

John Rizzo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Ex-CIA officer warns of Israeli attack on Iran. Few in the CIA are more knowledgeable about Shiite politics than Robert Baer, a veteran of the Agency’s National Clandestine Service, who spent over 20 years in the Middle East, notably in Lebanon. Last weekend, Baer spoke to Los Angeles radio station KPFK, and said that “[t]here is almost near certainty [in Israel] that Netanyahu is planning an attack [on Iran] and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict”. Baer is not alone in issuing such warnings in recent months. Former Mossad director Meir Dagan has been echoing Baer’s concerns. ►►Campaigners seek arrest of ex-CIA legal chief. We have written before about John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s former Acting General Counsel, who has been termed “the most influential career lawyer in CIA history”. Some readers may remember that Rizzo retired hurriedly from his post in 2009, amidst fears that he could get in trouble for acting as what some observers termed “a legal enabler” of the CIA torture practices under the George W. Bush administration. Now a group of human rights campaigners in Britain and Pakistan are seeking Rizzo’s arrest for his role in justifying the CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, the legality of which is often questioned by experts. The CIA has refused to comment on the campaign to indict Rizzo. ►►Analysis: The fallout from the CIA’s vaccination ploy in Pakistan. We wrote on Monday that not everyone is amused by news that the CIA tried to collect DNA evidence on Osama bin Laden by running a phony vaccination program in Pakistan. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #542

July 19, 2011 by Leave a comment

Sir John Chilcot

Sir John Chilcot

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Ex-spy says MI6 cut corners to back Blair’s Iraq war case. Britain’s ongoing Iraq Inquiry headed by Sir John Chilcot, heard last week from a former spy, identified in documents only as “SIS2”. The witness said that MI6 was “probably too eager to please” the government and was guilty of “flying a bit too close to the sun”. He was referring to the intelligence support provided by MI6 in support of the case for entering the Iraq War, made by the Labour government of Prime Minister Tony blair in 2003. He also told the committee that “the pressure to generate results, I fear, did lead to the cutting of corners”. ►►Medical group criticizes CIA’s vaccination scheme. A whimiscal tone prevails in most articles on the recent revelation that the CIA tried to collect DNA evidence on Osama bin Laden by running a phony vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But medical groups engaged in organizing vaccination schemes are not amused. French-based international medical aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières has lashed out at the CIA because, it said, by using a medical cover for its assassination scheme, the Agency endangered those who conduct life-saving immunization work around the world. Read more of this post

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Bodyguard who killed Karzai’s brother was CIA agent

July 19, 2011 by Leave a comment

Wali Karzai

Wali Karzai

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The bodyguard who killed Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother was a trusted aide of British and American intelligence and had worked with US Special Forces in Afghanistan, before turning on his employer, according to American and British news media. Ahmed Wali Karzai, influential Afghan drug lord and CIA agent, was shot dead on July 12 by no other than his trusted bodyguard, Sardar Mohammad. The killing shocked Afghan and American officials, who believed Mohammad’s trustworthiness and loyalty to be beyond reproach. Initial reports blamed Karzai’s killing on internal feuds that often feature in bloody Afghan politics. But these early reports may need to be revised following the revelation in The Washington Post that Mohammad had been working closely for years with the CIA and US Special Forces in Afghanistan, prior to turning against his boss. According to the paper, not only was Mohammad working with the CIA, but two of his brother-in-laws served in the Kandahar Strike Force, a notorious paramilitary unit trained and armed by the CIA. Based on this new information, The Post explains Karzai’s killing as yet another spectacular triumph by Taliban intelligence, who must have managed to recruit Mohammad and turn him against the US-supported Afghan government. Commenting on Mohammad’s CIA background, an unnamed “Western intelligence analyst” told British newspaper The Independent that Karzai’s assassination is indicative of the Taliban’s “increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus” in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies “probably […] underestimate the [Taliban’s] intelligence components”, said the analyst, even though the latter “do have dedicated intelligence officers. And that’s not just about gathering information but also about infiltration, using whatever combination of blackmail or ideological levers [they need to]”. But there is also another possibility, which neither The Post nor The Independent appear to entertain: namely that Mohammad was still acting under the commands of the CIA when he killed Karzai. Read more of this post

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CIA bank accounts used to funnel oil deal money, court documents claim

July 18, 2011 by 15 Comments

CIA HQ

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Court papers in a bizarre lawsuit involving $258 million in missing funds from an international oil deal, appear to show that the funds were channeled to dormant CIA bank accounts with the help of an Agency employee. The case is being ignored by US media, but has attracted attention in the Irish press, because an Irishman, Ed O’Neill, is the primary defendant in the lawsuit. O’Neil was the main consultant broker who helped facilitate a 2008 oil deal between involving NIB Petroleum of Venezuela and Russia’s Gazprom, both of which sold oil to Turkey’s UP Petroleum. Among O’Neil’s tasks was ensuring that six consulting companies were paid a total of $258 million for helping facilitate the complex deal. The Turkish company, UP, paid the funds to O’Neil, but they never arrived to the six companies. The latter are now suing O’Neil for the missing money. But Irish quality broadsheet The Independent, says it has seen copies of the court papers, filed in the US state of Illinois. According to the documents, O’Neil told his clients, who were awaiting the money, that he was having trouble wiring it to them, and that he had enlisted the assistance of a friend of his, by the name of Carlos Jesus Navarro, who was a CIA operative. According to the testimony of the plaintiffs, O’Neil told them that Navarro had access to several dormant CIA bank accounts, which could be used to wire the money around the world. With Navarro’s alleged help, the funds were then transferred to banks in Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and the island of Guernsey, before making their way to the Cayman Islands. From there they were transferred to Germany’s Commerzbank, and finally to a Bank of America branch in New York City. The money was supposed to be transferred one last time to the plaintiffs’ bank accounts in Chicago; but this last transfer never took place. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #540

July 17, 2011 by Leave a comment

Jim Judd

Jim Judd

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►► Bulgaria bars ex-spies from holding diplomatic posts. Bulgaria’s conservative-majority parliament has voted to bar individuals who once worked for the country’s communist-era secret service from holding top diplomatic jobs. The aim of the legislation is what Eastern European countries call ‘lustration’, namely the process of cleansing of their security and intelligence agencies from Soviet-era operatives. The practical problem with that, of course, is that, in doing so, Eastern European intelligence services do away with some of their best-trained operatives. Moreover, there is nothing to suggest that Bulgaria’s post-communist spy agencies are significantly more law-abiding than their communist-era predecessors. Regular IntelNews readers might remember our coverage of Operation GALERIA as a case in point. ►► Ex-spymaster says Canada is too concerned about torture. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) struggle to isolate itself from complicity in torture by US and British spy agencies has reached the “point where we were probably alienating foreign partners” by not sharing intelligence. This is the opinion of Jim Judd, former Director of CSIS. He also argued that “strident anti-torture interpretations” would affect “everything and anything CSIS did, with respect to foreign intelligence agencies”. Judd, a career spy who retired in 2009, is considered something of a hawk, and probably rightly so. ►► NSA whistleblower requests reduced sentence (update: No jail time for Drake, judge releases him saying he has been through “four years of hell”). Thomas Drake was a senior official with the US National Security Agency. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #539

July 16, 2011 by Leave a comment

Milt Bearden

Milt Bearden

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Former CIA officer urges US-Pakistan reconciliation. During the 1980s, CIA officer Milt Bearden managed the CIA’s covert assistance to the Mujahedeen, who were fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan. This means Bearden was dealing with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI) on an almost daily basis. He has now written an article for Foreign Policy journal, in which he advises CIA and ISI officials to “cut through the shrillness, the schoolyard taunts that characterize […] the current feud between their services; decide on what is worth fixing; agree on important common goals; and get to work”. He also reminds policymakers in Washington that America’s “influence in the Indian Ocean is slipping as China and India flex their growing economic muscle”, and that the US needs Pakistan’s assistance to remain relevant in that part of the world. ►►Pakistan spy director comes to US following aid cut. Meanwhile, Washington’s decision to withhold nearly a billion dollars in annual military aid to Pakistan has shaken up Islamabad. The Associated Press reports that high-level US-Pakistan meetings are quickly “unfolding”. One such meeting involves ISI’s fiery Director, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who just made an emergency visit to Washington, reportedly “for talks”. Pakistani officials insist, however, that “the trip was planned for some time”. Sure. In case you are wondering, Pasha’s visit went “very well“, according to both US and Pakistani officials. ►►Secret CIA site in Somalia revealed. While most intelligence observers are concerned with the latest US-Pakistan spat, Jeremy Scahill, one of America’s most tireless investigative reporters, has revealed that the CIA maintains a large secret site in Somalia. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #538

July 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

Wali Karzai

Wali Karzai

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►Egyptian diplomat dead in London after bizarre suicide attempt. Police in London are trying to solve the mysterious apparent suicide of Ayman Mohammed Fayed, a 41-year-old employee of the Egyptian embassy, who plunged to his death from one of the embassy’s third-floor windows last week. Embassy officials said he did so after hurriedly signing a brief suicide note to his family. Interestingly, one witness saw him trying to get back into the building from the window, apparently having changed his mind about killing himself. But, says The Daily Mail, he seems to have “lost control and fell”. The death does not seem to be related to the political changes that have taken place in Egypt this year. ►►CIA agent Wali Karzai dead in Afghanistan. Another death, that of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother, has featured all over the news media in the past few days. Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan drug lord and influential strongman, was shot dead by his bodyguards last Tuesday. Wali Karzai’s role as a CIA agent is less widely advertised in obituaries (with a few notable exceptions). IntelNews readers will remember that, in October of 2009, The New York Times revealed that Wali Karzai had been financially sustained by the CIA ever since the initial US invasion of Afghanistan, in 2001, and that he was still —as of 2009— receiving “regular payments” from the Agency.  Read more of this post

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Exclusive: intelNews readers get 20% off espionage conference online video pass

July 15, 2011 by Leave a comment

Bruce Riedel

Bruce Riedel

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
It is not every day that $19.95 can get you direct video access to a five-day intelligence and espionage conference. Plus, intelNews has worked out a deal with conference organizers for a further 20% discount off the final price of the event. The conference, which will take place in New York from July 18-22, is entitled Spies, Technology and Espionage. It is an ambitious collaboration between the New York-based Chautauqua Institution, the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, and online conference channel Fora TV, which will broadcast the five-day event in its entirety. It features lectures by big-name speakers, including Washington Post associate editor David Ignatius, CIA veteran officers Peter Earnest and Bruce Riedel, former CIA Director James Wolsey, as well as former MI5 Director Dame Stella Rimington. The timing of the conference has been carefully arranged to coincide with the run-up to the 10-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 events, which eventually sparked Washington’s so-called “war on terrorism”. The principal question leading the conference is what has America’s intelligence community learned in these ten years? Speakers will address several core themes, including the ways in which basic principles and practices of the intelligence profession have evolved in these 10 years. Another prominent theme for discussion will be the interface between intelligence operations and democratic accountability, and the resulting conflicts between espionage, covert operations, and America’s justice system. To learn more about the five-day conference, and to get your $19.95 video pass, which gets you a 60-day access, click here. IntelNews readers can get 20% off by entering ‘INTELNEWS’ (without the quotations) at the special coupon code field during checkout.

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News you may have missed #536 (US edition)

July 13, 2011 by 4 Comments

James Risen

James Risen

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
►►US federal agencies sitting on decade-old FOIA requests. In the United States, as Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are growing, a new study has found that eight government agencies are sitting on requests filed over ten years ago. According to the Knight Open Government Survey, conducted by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the single oldest request is now 20 years old. FOIA requires agencies to process and respond to a request within 20 business days. ►►US journalist seeks to avoid testifying at CIA agent’s trial. A sizeable percentage of FOIA requests are filed by journalists, who are also on the receiving ends of most intelligence-related ‘leaks’ in the United States. One of those journalists, James Risen, of The New York Times, has been subpoenaed by the Obama administration to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling. Sterling is a former CIA employee, who has been arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation MERLIN to Risen. MERLIN was a botched US effort to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon, in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program. Times lawyers argue that the First Amendment should shield Risen from having to testify at Sterling’s trial. ►►US intel research agency works on 3-D holographs. Also in the United States, IARPA, the US intelligence community’s technical research wing, has announced that it is working on a system that lets intelligence analysts collaborate with each other using “interactive 3-D holographic displays”. Through this system, IARPA hopes that intelligence personnel could take simultaneous virtual strolls through real-life target locations, help plan raids, etc.

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US summons Syrian ambassador for spying on protesters

July 11, 2011 by 1 Comment

Imad Moustapha

Imad Moustapha

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
American government officials acknowledged late last week that they warned Syria’s ambassador to Washington to stop his diplomats from spying on anti-government activists operating in the United States. The State Department said that Eric Boswell, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, summoned the ambassador of the Syrian Arab Republic, Imad Moustapha, and conveyed “a number of […] concerns with […] reported actions of certain Syrian embassy staff in the United States”. The concerns center on what appear to be confirmed sightings of Syrian diplomats conducting technical surveillance against Syrian and American citizens participating in demonstrations and other legal political activities in several US cities. There are also reports that intelligence gathered by Syrian diplomats in the United States is used by the Syrian security services in Syria to intimidate family members of Syrian and Syrian-American dissidents who are active in the United States. According to The Washington Times, the State Department was first alerted to the alleged political surveillance by the activists themselves, who began noticing in June the presence of suspected Syrian government informants in their Washington gatherings. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #532

July 7, 2011 by Leave a comment

Viru Hotel

Viru Hotel

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A new exhibition in Tallinn, called The Viru Hotel and the KGB, showcases the Soviet KGB operations in the Estonian capital’s most prestigious Soviet-era hotel. According to the curators, the 23rd floor of the hotel served as the KGB’s operational center in the city. The exhibition focuses specifically on KGB bugging technology during the last stages of the Cold War. Speaking of the Cold War, The Oak Ridger hosts an interesting interview with Francis Gary Powers Jr., son of the CIA pilot who was shot down over the USSR and later captured by the Soviets in 1960. Powers insists his father “never divulged America’s secrets” during his two-year imprisonment in Moscow. Interestingly, declassified documents from that time show that the CIA doubted Powers’ plane had been shot down by the Soviets, and believed the pilot had willingly defected to the USSR. In Canada, meanwhile, a new report to parliament by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS), claims that cyber-spying is fastest growing form of espionage in the country. The report also states that, as a matter of policy, CSIS views some private-sector cyberattacks as a national security issue.

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