News you may have missed #389

July 10, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • Secrecy over attack on Syrian nuclear plant unjustified, says ex-CIA chief. The secrecy surrounding the Israeli attack on the nuclear plant in eastern Syria in September 2007 was justified only for the period immediately after the operation, according to the CIA head at the time, Gen. Michael Hayden. That secrecy had been meant to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from embarrassment that could have provoked him to retaliate, argues Hayden in an authorized scholarly journal article.
  • No proof yet of Colombian spying, says Ecuador. Ecuadorean Security Minister Miguel Carvajal said Thursday that allegations that Colombian security agency DAS spied on Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and other officials is “so far just a newspaper story”. Late last month, the Ecuadorean government threatened to break off diplomatic ties with Colombia over the media revelations.
  • GCHQ releases Stalin-era Soviet intercepts. A series of newly released telegrams and telephone conversations, intercepted by the UK’s General Communications Headquarters, paint a picture of Joseph Stalin’s regime in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

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Russia, US, in largest spy swap since World War II

July 9, 2010 by 3 Comments

Igor Sutyagin

Igor Sutyagin

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Russian and American governments have agreed to conduct one of history’s largest spy exchanges, as ten Russian agents captured in the US last month have been swapped for four Russian citizens imprisoned by Moscow for spying for the US and Britain. The ten Russians arrested by the FBI in June were non-official-cover (NOC) operatives, otherwise known as ‘illegals’, a term used to identify deep-cover intelligence operatives not associated with a country’s diplomatic representation. According to reports, they were all instructed by the SVR, Russia’s equivalent of MI6, which is responsible for all foreign intelligence operations abroad, to plead guilty to “acting as unregistered foreign agents” a charge not equivalent to espionage in either seriousness or repercussions. They were then legally forbidden from ever returning to the United States and summarily expelled. They were taken from the courtroom directly to the airport, where they boarded a plane to Vienna, Austria. In return, Russian government sources have confirmed that four Russian citizens, arrested in recent years for spying on behalf of the US or Britain, will be released from prison and delivered to US authorities. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #388

July 8, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Political policing rising in US, ACLU report warns. A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union chronicles government spying and what it describes as the detention of groups and individuals “for doing little more than peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights”.
  • Mistrust still marks ISI-CIA ties, say US officials. John Tierney, chairman of the US House Armed Services Committee, told a Pakistani delegation that there is mistrust between the CIA and ISI, according to a report by the Pakistan Senate’s Standing Committee on Defence. Regular intelNews readers should not be surprised.
  • Britain releases secret document at heart of UKUSA agreement. Authorities in the UK have released a six-page document dating from 1946, which describes the “British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement”, known as BRUSA, later UKUSA. The deal has tied the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand into a worldwide network of electronic listening posts.

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Ex-Panama dictator Noriega describes ‘friendly ties’ with CIA

July 7, 2010 by 2 Comments

Manuel Noriega

Manuel Noriega

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Panama’s notorious former dictator, Manuel Noriega, has described what he called his “long, friendly relationship” with the CIA in court testimony in France where he is defending charges of money laundering. Speaking on the second day of his trial in Paris, Noriega argued that millions of dollars he deposited in several French bank accounts were CIA payments for his services, not income from illicit drug sales. Panama’s former strongman described in his testimony how he gained power with the help of the CIA in the small but strategically important Central American nation, in 1983. He also listed the services he provided to the CIA during the closing stages of the Cold War, in relation to Cuba, Nicaragua and Iran. But Noriega, who was deposed during the 1989 US invasion of Panama, said the US leadership and the CIA turned against him after he repeatedly refused to take part in a series of covert operations against the leftist Sandinistas government in neighboring Nicaragua. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #387

July 6, 2010 by Leave a comment

  • Blackwater to ‘abandon US government market’. Erik Prince, occasional CIA operative and CEO of Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, has said in an interview that he is tired of Congressional oversight regulations and plans to abandon US government business forever. Meanwhile, there are reports that Xe has just won a $100 million contract to guard CIA facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
  • Congress won’t back down on CIA oversight battle. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is battling a veto threat by US President Barack Obama, as well as against the CIA and powerful House and Senate Democrats and Republicans, over Congressional oversight of US intelligence services.
  • Mossad chief to step down after eight years. Mossad Director Meir Dagan’s request to extend his term by another year has been denied, and he will step down in three months’ time, according to Israeli media reports. The chief of Dubai Police, which exposed a January 2010 Mossad assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, said Dagan’s ousting is related to the botched operation.

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Retired US colonel charged with smuggling weapons to Somalia

July 6, 2010 by 5 Comments

Somalia

Somalia

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A retired US Air Force colonel, who was charged with weapons smuggling during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, has been indicted again, this time for trying to smuggle automatic weapons into Somalia. US federal authorities accuse Joseph O’Toole, now 79, of conspiring with Israeli citizen Chanoch Miller, formerly an aeronautics engineer with Israeli defense firm Radom Aviation, to transport nearly 2,000  AK-47s from Bosnia to Banderal, Somalia. The smuggling operation, which employed forged end-user certificates issued in Chad, violated US weapons export control regulations, which are in compliance with a United Nations weapons embargo to war-ravaged Somalia. This is the second time O’Toole has been indicted with conspiring to smuggle weapons. In 1989, he was charged of working with fellow-American Richard St. Francis and Israeli alleged ex-Mossad operative Ari Ben-Menashe, to sell several US C-130 cargo airplanes to the Iranian government. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #386 (Israel edition)

July 5, 2010 by 4 Comments

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News you may have missed #385

July 4, 2010 by 1 Comment

  • Indian, Pakistani spy chiefs meet in Islamabad. The meeting between the Director of India’s General Intelligence Bureau, Rajiv Mathur, and his Pakistani counterpart Javed Noor, took place in the aftermath of the arrest of Madhuri Gupta, second secretary at the Indian high commission in Islamabad, Pakistan, who is accused of passing on secrets to Pakistan’s ISI spy agency.
  • CIA releases documents on Korean War. The US Central Intelligence Agency has released a document collection that includes more than 1,300 redacted files consisting of national estimates, intelligence memos, daily updates, and summaries of foreign media concerning developments on the Korean Peninsula from 1947 until 1954.
  • Lebanon to probe top government officials in Israeli spy ring case. The arrest of a senior Lebanese phone firm manager, who is accused of spying for Israel, has prompted prosecutors to ask that several senior government officials be stripped of their immunity so that they can be investigated in relation to a nationwide crackdown on alleged Israeli spy rings in the country.

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News you may have missed #383 (Russian spy ring edition IV)

July 2, 2010 by 4 Comments

  • Analysis: Why Russia and the US still spy. The sensationalist media coverage of the FBI’s recent bust of a Russian spy ring in the US has failed to examine this development in light of the post-Cold War relations between Russia and the United States. The fact is that espionage will continue, even as the United States and Russia work out a new post-Cold War modus vivendi, says Peter Earnest, a 35-year CIA veteran.
  • Analysis: The lure of the SVR. For most Russians, getting a job in the country’s vast bureaucracy is a happy career step. Even more glamorous is the FSB, Russia’s ubiquitous domestic intelligence service. But the most prestigious agency of all is still the SVR, Russia’s equivalent of MI6, which is responsible for all foreign intelligence operations abroad, including the long-term, deep cover espionage ring just busted by the FBI. The Cold War may be over, but the SVR still offers a globe-trotting career for a small, elite group of ambitious graduates with the right connections.
  • Analysis: Was the Russian spy operation worth the trouble? The FBI has alleged no espionage or loss of classified materials as a result of the operations of the 11-member Russian spy ring. Indeed, much of what it maintains the Russians were seeking could be gleaned from a Google search. So the wider ramifications of the spy arrests may turn out to be primarily political rather than cloak-and-dagger.

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Analysis: What we know about the Russian spy ring case

July 2, 2010 by 2 Comments

SVR seal

SVR seal

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
If you are frustrated with the increasingly idiotic and sex-obsessed media coverage of the Russian spy ring recently busted by the FBI, you are not alone. Less than a week since news of the arrests in the US of ten alleged deep-cover agents of Russia’s SVR intelligence agency emerged, sensationalist media hacks have left no stone unturned. Thankfully, Stratfor Global Intelligence has produced an excellent early summary of this developing story, complete with a useful diagram of the known members of the SVR spy ring. The summary correctly points out some of the critical issues in the espionage case, including the fact that the 11 suspects appeared to be primarily run out of the SVR residence at the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York, and not out of the Russian Embassy in Washington DC. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #382 (Russian spy ring edition III)

July 1, 2010 by 4 Comments

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News you may have missed #381 (Russian spy ring edition II)

July 1, 2010 by 3 Comments

  • Accused Russian spies lived perfect Boston lives. It is almost certain that the members of the Russian spy ring, arrested by the FBI last weekend, trained for years in Moscow’s most elite SVR intelligence school to pass as Canadians or Americans. Their real-life identities and backgrounds may never be learned.
  • Russian spies blended well, sought contacts. The 11 people arrested and accused of being members of a Russian spy ring operating under deep cover in America’s suburbs were active in the East Coast networking circuit.
  • Kremlin adopts calmer tone on US spy affair. Moscow on Wednesday softened its initially furious reaction to this week’s spy scandal in the US, when it said that the arrest of 11 people accused of working for Russian intelligence would not have a negative impact on bilateral relations. Earlier in the week, Vladimir Putin had accused US authorities of having “gone on a rampage”.

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Wanted Russian spy ring member skips bail in Cyprus

July 1, 2010 by Leave a comment

Achilleos Hotel

Achilleos Hotel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Police in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus have issued an arrest warrant for a member of an alleged Russian spy ring in the United States, who had been released on bail following his capture on Tuesday. The FBI says that Christopher R. Metsos, who holds Canadian citizenship, was the financial go-between in the 11-member Russian spy ring, which was busted in a series of coordinated raids across several US states on Saturday. On June 25, Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Metsos, who escaped arrest in the US because he was in Cyprus, where he had arrived on June 17. He was arrested at the island’s Larnaca International Airport on Tuesday, while trying to board a flight for Budapest, Hungary. Remarkably, however, Metsos was soon released on bail, awaiting an extradition request from Washington. Predictably, on Wednesday, he failed to report to Larnaca police, as stipulated in his bail release court order. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #380 (Russian spy ring edition I)

June 30, 2010 by Leave a comment

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FBI busts alleged Russian spy ring, 11 arrested [updated]

June 29, 2010 by 7 Comments

Anna Chapman

Anna Chapman

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Ten members of an alleged Russian spy ring operating in America’s East Coast were arrested in a series of coordinated raids on Sunday. US Department of Justice insiders said that the arrests, which took place in Arlington, New Jersey, New York, and Boston, marked the culmination of an FBI counterintelligence operation initiated during the second administration of President Bill Clinton. It appears that the alleged Russian agents were non-official-cover (NOC) operatives, otherwise known as ‘illegals’, a term used to identify deep-cover intelligence operatives not associated with the diplomatic representation of the Russian Federation in the United States. Eight of the arrestees were married couples and all were using fake identities. Almost all are fluent in several languages; they include “Vicky Pelaez”, who worked for a New York Spanish-language newspaper, another woman identified as “Anna Chapman” (see photo), and “Mikhail Semenko”, who is said to be fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, and even Mandarin. An eleventh alleged member of the spy ring, named as “Christopher R. Metsos”, remains at large and is wanted by the FBI was captured by Greek-Cypriot authorities at Larnaca airport earlier today, while trying to board a flight for Hungary. Read more of this post

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