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We use false passports too, Australians admit

May 27, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Julie Bishop

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli intelligence agencies are not alone in using false passports. In fact, intelligence and law enforcement agencies in Australia, the country that is currently involved in a diplomatic spat with Israel due to the latter’s use of forged Australian passports in spy operations, also use forged travel documents. This admission was made yesterday by Australian senior opposition politician Julie Bishop during a live session in the Australian parliament. The parliamentary debate concerned recent revelations that agents of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad used forged Australian passports during an assassination operation against Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found murdered in a luxury Dubai hotel last January. Australian government officials were quick to condemn Ms Bishop’s revelation as “a grievous breach of national security”. But Australian daily newspaper The Age reports that the opposition politician “merely made public an inconvenient truth”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #359

May 26, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Another alleged North Korean spy captured in South. A month after two alleged North Korean assassins, posing as defectors, were arrested in the South, Seoul has announced that another defector, an unnamed 36-year-old female, was captured for receiving “Seoul subway information from a former high-ranking subway official”, with whom she had a romantic relationship.
New book on GCHQ out in July. A new book on the history of Britain’s secretive General Communications Headquarters, authored by Warwick University Professor Richard J. Aldrich, is to be published in a few weeks. The book, entitled GCHQ: The Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most Secret Intelligence Agency, will be published by Harper Collins.
Ex-DIA officials skeptical about rumored new DNI. Two former top US Defense Intelligence Agency officials, Jeffrey White and W. Patrick Lang, say retired Air Force Gen. James R. Clapper, Jr., a leading candidate to be the next Director of National Intelligence, nearly wrecked the agency’s analysis wing when he ran the organization in the mid-1990s.

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Analysis: Axing of US DNI points to structural issues

May 24, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Although few American intelligence observers were astonished by last week’s involuntary resignation of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the silence by the White House on the subject has raised quite a few eyebrows in Washington. Admiral Dennis C. Blair, who became DNI in January of 2009, announced his resignation on Friday. Blair’s announcement came after a prolonged period of controversy, which included bitter infighting with the CIA, and culminated with the recent partial publication of a report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which blamed “systemic failures across the Intelligence Community” for the so-called Christmas bomb plot of last December. The problem is that Admiral Blair’s replacement will be the fourth DNI in five years, after John Negroponte, Mike McConnell and Blair himself. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #354

May 19, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Germany arrests Libyans on spy charges. Two Libyans have been arrested in Berlin on suspicion of working as secret agents, spying on members of the Libyan opposition in Germany. The two, identified only as 42-year-old ‘Adel Ab’ and 46-year-old ‘Adel Al’, are being held in custody in Berlin, pending possible spying charges.
Israeli handler discusses relationship with Hamas spy. Israeli broadsheet Ha’aretz has aired a fascinating interview with ‘Captain Loai’, a Shin Bet operative who handled Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a senior Hamas official, who was an informant for Israeli intelligence for at least a decade. Note the strong personal connection between handler and informant, which would be considered unprofessional in US intelligence culture.
Analysis: Iran’s murky link to al-Qaeda confounds CIA. It’s one of the enduring mysteries of the US ‘war on terrorism’: what will become of the al-Qaeda leaders and operatives who fled into Iran after 9/11 and have been detained there for years?

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Former CIA couple in effort to ‘un-demonize’ agency

May 18, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Mendez in 1990

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A husband-and-wife CIA team, who married after retiring from the agency, after a collective career spanning over half a century, are speaking around the country in an effort to “humanize [and] un-demonize the CIA”. Antonio (Tony) and Jonna Mendez joined the agency in the 1960s, and spent the next 25 years at the CIA’s Office of Technical Services. Tony was eventually promoted to Chief of Disguise, and later Chief of the Graphics and Authentication Division, whose mission is –among other tasks– transforming the identities of CIA field operatives, by supplying them with high-quality forged documentation for use in their various missions. In 1997, he was honored by the CIA as one of the “50 trailblazers” in the agency’s history. Jonna Mendez worked for 27 years as a spy camera expert, and was tasked with training CIA officers in the use of covert technologies. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #353

May 18, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Name of British Mossad agent handed to Interpol. Dubai police have identified another suspect in the January murder of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He is reportedly a 62-year-old British citizen, who is believed to be currently hiding in western Africa.
Russia jails man for spying for the US. Gennady Sipachyov, a Russian whose age and profession have been kept secret by Moscow, has been sentenced to a four-year sentence for allegedly emailing secret military maps identifying classified Russian military infrastructure to the US Pentagon in 2008. Earlier this month, a Russian court rejected an appeal by another alleged US spy, Igor Sutyagin.
Bulgarian government wants to copy CIA. Bulgaria’s Defense Minister, Anyu Angelov, has proposed the merging of intelligence services to create a mega-structure of the CIA type. Meanwhile, a panel investigating Bulgaria’s communist-era police files has exposed two of the country’s former counterintelligence heads as former communist state security agents.

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Was release of French ‘spy’ part of Iranian-French deal? [updated]

May 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Majid Kakavand

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
This blog has closely monitored the case of Clotilde Reiss, a French language assistant who was arrested in Iran last year on accusations of being a ‘nuclear spy’. Despite the obviously nonsensical nature of the allegations, Reiss, a 25-year-old Farsi-speaking French-language assistant at the University of Isfahan, was forced to confess to her ‘crime’ on Iranian television. Last August, however, after spending nearly two months in the notorious Evin prison complex, Reiss was released on bail, on condition that she would remain confined inside the walls of the French embassy compound in Tehran. Then, last weekend, her ten-year prison sentence was suddenly commuted to a fine of $285,000, and she was able to return home to France on Sunday. Why the sudden change of heart on the part of Tehran? Read more of this post

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Private US spy network still operating in Pakistan

May 17, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

US Pentagon

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Senior US Pentagon officials continue to rely almost daily on reports from a network of contracted spies operating deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to The New York Times. Last March, when the paper revealed the existence of the network, several senior US military sources expressed serious concerns about the operation, which some say borders on illegality, and is currently under investigation by the US government. Although The Times is apparently “withholding some information about the contractor network, including some of the names of [its] agents”, it appears that the network is staffed by former CIA and Special Forces operatives. The entire operation appears to be an attempt to evade some of the stringent oversight rules under which the CIA and the US Pentagon are required to operate. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #352

May 17, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA rewarded extraordinary rendition supervisor. A CIA counterterrorism official who supervised the agency’s extraordinary rendition and torture of Khaled El-Masri –a German citizen who was later found to be innocent– has been promoted twice since that episode.
US Pentagon picks contractors for intel IT. The Defense Intelligence Agency has picked 11 private contractors to compete for up to $6.6 billion in information technology contracts over the next five years. They include the usual suspects, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, General Dynamics Corp, and Northrop Grumman, among others.
Alleged spy’s lawyers threaten trial boycott in Israel. Lawyers representing Israeli citizen Amir Makhoul, who is accused of spying on behalf of Hezbollah, have threatened to boycott an upcoming trial hearing unless they are allowed to meet with their client.

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CIA ‘used fake British passports’ in kidnap operation

May 17, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

British passport

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities are looking into allegations that a team of CIA agents made use of forged British passports during an abduction operation in 2003. The allegations surfaced last week in Spain, where a team of prosecutors is currently investigating the activities of 13 CIA agents (11 men and two women) who appear to have used the Spanish tourist resort of Majorca as a base for conducting various operations around Europe. Following the example of Italy, which last year convicted several CIA operatives for illegally abducting a Muslim cleric in Milan, Spanish authorities are now considering issuing arrest warrants for the 13 CIA agents. They are all believed to have been involved in the abduction and rendition of German citizen Khaled El-Masri. El-Masri was abducted in Skopje, Macedonia, in 2003, and later transferred on a secret CIA flight to a Syrian prison, where he says he was brutally tortured. He was later released without explanation, once US authorities realized they had the wrong man. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #351

May 16, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Former CIA agent admits role in Plame case. In an extensive interview with Truthout, former CIA counterterrorism official John Kiriakou has disclosed for the first time his role in the events that led to the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Indian double agent refused Pakistani handler’s marriage proposal. Madhuri Gupta, second secretary at the Indian high commission in Islamabad, Pakistan, who was arrested for working for Pakistan’s ISI spy agency, had a “relationship of personal affection” with an aide of her Pakistani handler, but says she refused his offer of marriage.
US Pentagon details Cold War mind-control tests. More than 30 years after it was written, the US Pentagon has released a memorandum detailing its involvement in the CIA’s infamous Cold War mind-control experiments.

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News you may have missed #350

May 14, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Gulf authorities still silent on Iranian spy ring. The Kuwaiti government has banned local media from commenting on the recent busting of an alleged Iranian spy ring, and Gulf leaders still refuse to comment on the issue.
NSA head confirmed as chief of US Cyber Command. US Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, has been promoted to four-star general and will now head the US Pentagon’s new Cyber Command, as well as the NSA.
Venezuela to release more alleged Colombian spies. Three more of the eight alleged Colombian spies, who were arrested by Venezuelan government forces last month, are to be released. Four others were released on April 12, which leaves in custody only one of them, Luis Carlos Cossio, who has dual Colombian and Canadian citizenship.

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Analysis: Europe Offers Different Counterterrorism Approach

May 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Counterterrorism

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
I have in the past posed the intriguing question of whether US intelligence agencies should learn from the French approach to counterterrorism. This issue has now come up again in an interesting Washington Post essay, which examines the different approaches to Islamic militancy by American and European intelligence organizations. Some of these differences are undoubtedly contextual: there are no First Amendment rights in Europe, and European law enforcement and intelligence organizations enjoy a somewhat wider legal latitude in which to operate domestically. Moreover, the Europeans, especially the French and the British, have a longer experience than the Americans in dealing with armed insurgencies. But there are also critical differences in tactics. Importantly, the European approach to Islamic militancy has not only been more pro-active than the American, but also a lot more discreet and clandestine. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #349

May 13, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

New spy agency won’t spy…says Fiji government. Fiji’s head of defense, Ratu Epeli Ganilau, has argued that the proposed National Intelligence Agency will not be a spy organization. According to news reports, he is adamant that the use of the word “spying” is inappropriate to describe the agency’s mission.
Ex-CIA analyst lashes out at Ignatius. Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, currently senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, has accused The Washington Post’s David Ignatious of being a “chief CIA apologist”.

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News you may have missed #348

May 12, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

US knew Guatemalan Army was behind notorious 1982 massacre. Declassified documents released on May 7 show that US officials knew the Guatemalan Army was responsible for the 1982 Dos Erres massacre, one of Guatemala’s most shocking human rights crimes.
New presiding judge in US FISA court. Three years after he was first appointed to serve on the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), John D. Bates has taken over as the presiding judge. Last week, Judge Martin Feldman was appointed to serve on the secretive court, which reviews (and invariably approves) government applications for counterintelligence surveillance and physical search.
UAE security sector benefits from al-Mabhouh assassination. Business for security companies in the United Arab Emirates has been brisk, with some companies reporting a 40% increase in business, as hotels spend millions bolstering their security systems. Some attribute this to last January’s killing in Dubai of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, by a Mossad hit squad.