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News you may have missed #451 (history edition)

November 12, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

New book examines Powers-Abel spy exchange. A new book by Giles Whittell, entitled Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War, examines the Cold War legacy of US spy pilot Francis Gary Powers and Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel, both of whom failed in their most important missions. The two were exchanged between the US and the USSR on Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge, in 1962.
Newspaper sues FBI over civil rights informant. The Memphis Commercial Appeal has sued the FBI for “unreasonably withholding information” on the late Ernest Withers, a photographer who, unknown to the movement, was “advising the government of the plans and activities of civil rights leaders” during the struggles of the 1960s.
Female WWII spy reflects on “horrible and wonderful” life. Now 89, Rozanne Colchester, a British code breaker and postwar agent for MI6, recalls the “strange isolation” of Bletchley, the impact of the Cambridge spies, and meeting ‘Kim’ Philby.

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News you may have missed #450

November 10, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Nuke bomb material found in Georgia black market. Highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in the Republic of Georgia.
CIA Director warns against leaks. Asserting that lives have been endangered and sources compromised by “a damaging spate of media leaks” in recent months, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta reminded the spy agency’s employees Monday that unauthorized disclosures of classified information “cannot be tolerated”.
US issues new unclassified information policy. The White House has issued an executive order to establish a uniform policy for handling “controlled unclassified information” (CUI), which is information that is restricted from disclosure because it involves personal privacy, proprietary data or law enforcement investigations not relating to national security.

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News you may have missed #449

November 5, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Damning report on CIA attack on missionary plane. US Central Intelligence Agency officers involved with a secret counternarcotics mission in the Peruvian jungle routinely violated agency procedures, tried to cover up their mistakes, and misled Congress immediately after a missionary plane was accidentally shot down in 2001, according to a blistering CIA internal report released on Monday.
Israeli legislators call on US to release Jewish spy. Members of the Israeli Knesset are calling on US President Barack Obama to pardon American-born spy Jonathan Pollard, having been jailed in a maximum-security facility since 1985. George Bush refused to pardon Pollard in the last days of his presidency.
Analysis: Britain’s MI6 operates a bit differently than CIA. “Like the CIA, MI6 has a website, but while the U.S. agency site is only in English, MI6’s is also in Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese. Another sign of British sophistication: while the CIA site has games and quizzes for kids, the MI6 site gives short tests to allow potential recruits to assess their analytical and administrative skills”. Interesting comparative assessment by Walter Pincus.

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US considering CIA targeted killings in Yemen

November 1, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Yemen

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The White House is considering an unprecedented expansion of operations by the Central Intelligence Agency in Yemen, following last week’s foiled toner cartridge bomb plot. There are reports that the plot, which appears to have originated in Yemen, and was foiled through a last-minute tip from Saudi intelligence, may tip the balance in Washington in favor of those wishing to enhance the CIA’s activities in Yemen’s Sunni areas. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Obama Administration is close to authorizing the CIA’s use of unmanned drones to bomb suspected targets in Yemen, something that the Agency has been doing for over a year in Pakistan. But there also appears to be a wider consensus forming in favor of authorizing covert targeted killings inside Yemen by Special Forces operating on the ground under Langley’s command. This consensus appears to be forming in both civilian and military circles in Washington, despite fears that such tactics may backlash, leading to a severance of ties between the United States and the Yemeni government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Journal article mentions that the White House is now considering authorizing the CIA to conduct targeted killings “even without the explicit blessing of the Yemeni government”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #447

October 29, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

UK MI6 chief speaks publicly for the first time. Sir John Sawers, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, has delivered what he said was the first public address by a serving chief of the agency in its 101-year history.
WikiLeaks to release secret Russia, China logs. Whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which has published hundreds of US war logs, is preparing to release secret files from Russia and China, Russian newspaper Kommersant said on Tuesday.
Renegade CIA agent’s papers acquired by NYU. The private papers of the late Philip Agee, the disaffected CIA operative whose unauthorized publication of agency secrets 35 years ago was arguably far more controversial than anything WikiLeaks has produced, have been obtained by New York University, which plans to make them public next spring.

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WikiLeaks documents reveal CIA’s role in Iraq

October 29, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Along with unprecedented inside information on American military operations in Iraq, the 400,000 US military reports recently released by whistleblower site WikiLeaks provide several interesting snippets of the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in that ongoing conflict. Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog correctly notes that, unlike Afghanistan, where the CIA’s role has been relatively clear almost from the very start of the US invasion, the Agency’s function in Iraq has been something of a mystery for most outside observers. There has even been some speculation that the CIA has been sidelined in Iraq by a host of Pentagon-managed special operations outfits, including the Joint Special Operations Command. But the WikiLeaks documents, which are primarily composed of incident reports authored by US troops on the ground in Iraq, include frequent references to operations by “Other Government Agency” or “OGA” —a term usually reserved for the CIA in internal military documents. Collectively, the reports referring to OGA activities reveal significant paramilitary functions performed by CIA personnel until as recently as 2009. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #446

October 28, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

American pleads guilty to spying for China. Glenn D. Shriver acknowledged on Friday that he accepted $70,000 from Chinese spies as he attempted to secure jobs with the CIA and US Foreign Service that would have allowed him to expose US government secrets. He apparently spent two years going through the CIA hiring process and reached the final security screenings. But US intelligence sources say Shriver was discovered very early in the hiring process.
Obama widens CIA operations in Pakistan. The US is pushing to expand secret CIA operations in Pakistan. But Islamabad is so far rebuffing US requests to allow additional CIA officers and special operations military trainers to enter the country.
US spy balloons blew towards Iran. The latest WikiLeaks revelations show that on two occasions in 2006 American JLens spy balloons broke from their moorings in Iraq and drifted toward the Iranian airspace. No information on the balloons’ fate is reported in the war logs. Did Iran get hold of them?

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Proposed US-Chinese telecom deal worries US legislators

October 28, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Huawei HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Three US Congress members have raised security concerns about a proposed deal between American and Chinese telecommunications companies, claiming that it could facilitate Chinese espionage in the United States. The proposed collaboration is between US-based Sprint-Nextel and Cricket Wireless, and Chinese hardware manufacturers ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies. But three US Senators, Jon Kyl (R-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), have written to US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski, claiming that the ZTE and Huawei are effectively controlled by China’s civilian and military intelligence establishment. According to the legislators, if the proposed deal goes through the Chinese government may be able to use ZTE and Huawei to “manipulate switches, routers, or software embedded in American telecommunications networks so that communications can be disrupted, intercepted, tampered with, or purposely misrouted”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #445

October 27, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

WikiLeaks files show Iranian involvement in Iraq. The latest WiliLeaks release of nearly 392,000 US military reports from Iraq shows, among other things, that Iran was a major combatant in the Iraq War. According to the documents, Tehran’s elite Quds Force trained Iraqi Shiite insurgents and imported weapons like Explosively Formed Projectile bombs into Iraq for use against civilians, Sunni militants and US troops.
WikiLeaks founder on the run. Julian Assange’s fate seems as imperiled as that of Private Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old former Army intelligence operative under detention in the US for leaking Iraq and Afghan war documents to WikiLeaks. Last Monday, Mr. Assange’s bid for a residence permit in Sweden was rejected. His British visa will expire early next year.
Money problems of US spies may threaten US security. Elizabeth Bancroft The executive director of the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers, has suggested that government agencies should monitor intelligence service employees with security clearances, who may have fallen into bankruptcy during the ongoing economic crisis. Spy agencies are worried that financial problems might leave these employees open to bribery or blackmail.

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News you may have missed #444

October 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Kyrgyz leader says spies tried to kill him. Kamchybek Tashiev, head of Kyrgyzstan’s Ata-Jurt party, which won the most votes in the recent national parliamentary elections, has accused the country’s State Security Service chief, Keneshbek Dushebayev, of organizing an attempt to assassinate him on October 23.
Pakistan’s ISI organized Mumbai attacks, say Indians. A report by the Indian government, based on information provided by Pakistani-American informant David Headley, accuses Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Russian sleeper agents receive highest state honor. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has bestowed the country’s highest state honor on the Russian sleeper agents deported from the United States earlier this year as part of the countries’ biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

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News you may have missed #443

October 25, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

First budget cuts in a decade for UK spy agencies. Spending on Britain’s intelligence agencies is set to fall by 7%, for the first time in more than a decade. This is be expected to force MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to cap staff numbers, merge some of their operations, and scrap plans to modernize some of their buildings. Looks like even more British spies will be moving to Australia.
South Koreans arrested for trying to defect to North. Three South Koreans, including a medical doctor, are being investigated after allegedly trying to defect to North Korea from China. It is extremely unusual for South Koreans or other nationals to attempt to defect to the North.
Plame calls Fair Game movie ‘accurate portrayal’. CIA agent Valerie Plame has said the movie Fair Game, based on her book, is a “really good, accurate portrayal of what we went through, both personally and in the political maelstrom that we live through”. The Bush administration was accused of blowing Plame’s cover as retaliation after her diplomat husband openly challenged the reasoning behind the Iraq War.

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Iran admits some of its nuclear scientists spied for the West

October 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Ali Akbar Salehi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A top-level Iranian government official has admitted that some scientists and technicians in Iran’s nuclear energy program were successfully lured into spying for Israeli and Western intelligence agencies in the past. The disclosure, which was characterized as “stunning” by the Associated Press, marked the first-ever open admission by the Iranian government that the country’s nuclear energy program has been penetrated by foreign spies. It was made last weekend by Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Vice President and Director of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization. According to the Iranian government-controlled Fars News Agency, Vice President Salehi told an audience that individual scientists and technicians working in Iran’s nuclear program had used their access to classified relevant information to benefit from “foreign purchases and commercial affairs”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #442

October 21, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Israeli lobby intensifies Pollard release effort. As convicted spy Jonathan Pollard approaches 25 years behind bars, Israelis and others are renewing efforts to secure freedom for the former US Navy intelligence analyst, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for relaying military documents to Israel.
No compromise in WikiLeaks expose, concludes Pentagon. Much ado about nothing. The US Pentagon has concluded that no US intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs by the WikiLeaks website. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks is preparing to publish more revelations.
Niger ex-spy chief arrested. Seini Chekaraou, head of counterintelligence at the uranium-rich nation of Niger, has been arrested along with four senior members of the West African country’s ruling junta, allegedly on suspicion that they were “attempt[ing] to destabilize the [military] regime” that took power in the country last February.

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CIA sues former officer for publishing unauthorized book

October 21, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

The Human Factor

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The US Central Intelligence Agency has announced a lawsuit against a former officer who authored a book without the Agency’s prior approval. The book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (published in 2008), was written by a former CIA deep cover operative going by the pseudonym Ishmael Jones. Jones first submitted the book’s manuscript, which offers a highly unsympathetic account of the CIA, to the Agency’s review board. However, when it became clear that the board’s decision would have been unfavorable, he published the book without approval, thus breaking what the CIA claims is his legal obligation to abide by the review board’s decisions. The CIA filed a lawsuit against Jones in July, but only announced it this week. It seeks access to the financial proceeds of The Human Factor, as well as to prohibit further exposés from Jones. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #440 (USA edition)

October 19, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

US DNI scraps Intelligence Science Board. The newly appointed US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has disbanded an advisory panel set up after 9/11, and tasked with providing him with scientific advice, ranging from nuclear physics to forensics to the psychology of interrogation. There are rumors that Clappers intends to disband another 19 advisory boards, believing them to be inefficient.
Analysis: Uses and misuses of intelligence in four US wars. Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman assesses the success of the CIA’s intelligence analysis by measuring the Agency’s performance before and during four controversial wars: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
US Army awards medal to 95-year-old ex-OSS agent. George Vujnovich, a former agent of the US Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, is to be awarded the US Army’s Bronze Star for helping rescue 512 American airmen in the former Yugoslavia during World War II.