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Comment: Is Palestinian Fatah Spying for Israel?

April 18, 2010 by intelNews 8 Comments

Dahlan

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Gaza-based Palestinian movement Hamas has again accused a senior official of rival Palestinian group Fatah of spying for Israel. Speaking last week from Gaza Damascus, Syria, Hamas official Mohammed Nazal said that Fatah Central Committee member Mohammed Dahlan, who has been tipped for the post of Vice President in Fatah-controlled Palestinian National Authority, is actively gathering information on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Nazal said Hamas received a tip-off about Dahlan from a former security officer in the Palestinian National Authority, who appears to have defected to Hamas. The unnamed informant reportedly met with Hamas defense officials on Friday, and told them that Dahlan had asked him to “collect detailed information” about the March 26 execution of two Palestinians, who were accused by Hamas of working for Israeli intelligence. He also claimed that Dahlan showed him a lengthy list of known Hamas operatives and asked him to determine the precise location of their residences in the Gaza strip. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #330

April 15, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Pakistan released captured Taliban behind CIA’s back. IntelNews has not joined the chorus of commentators who have been claiming that the relationship between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate and the CIA has warmed up. It now appears that even as the ISI was collaborating with the CIA, it quietly freed at least two captured senior Afghan Taliban figures.
Kiwi activists accuse police of spying. New Zealand’s Peace Action Wellington has submitted an Official Information Act (OIA) request relating to domestic police surveillance, after accusing the police of “heavily spying on and running operations on protest groups”. It is not the first time that similar accusations have been directed against the country’s police force.
CIA suspected existence of Israeli nukes in 1974. Israel will neither confirm nor deny the rumored existence of its nuclear arsenal. But the CIA, which has kept an eye on Israel’s nuclear weapons project since at least the early 1960s, was convinced of its existence by 1974, according to a declassified report.

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News you may have missed #329

April 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Iran insists US hikers had intelligence links. Iran’s intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, has said that Americans Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal and Sarah Shourd, who were arrested on Iranian soil last July, “were in contact with intelligence services”. The evidence would “soon be made public”, he said.
Gerdes case shows difficulty of CIA jobs. The case of CIA employee Kerry Gerdes, who was recently convicted for falsifying interview reports while performing background checks on CIA employees and potential employees, reveals how difficult the job is for young CIA recruits, who expect it to be exciting or glamorous, according to seasoned investigators.
US still denying India access to Headley. There has been intense speculation in India and Pakistan that David Coleman Headley, a former US Drug Enforcement Administration informant, who was arrested by the FBI in October for plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper, is in fact a renegade CIA agent. Could this be why the US is denying India access to Headley?

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Analysis: Inside the US-Israeli intelligence relationship

April 13, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

US embassy, Israel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, authors of Friends in Deed: Inside the US-Israel Alliance, have produced a lengthy, well-researched and up-to-date essay on US-Israeli intelligence relations. The essay, which appears in the latest issue of Tablet, carefully examines the highly complex subject of the CIA’s associations with the Mossad and Shin Bet. The fact is that, despite their unquestionable alliance Israel and the US have for years been among each other’s primary intelligence targets. Melman and Raviv correctly remind us that, by as early as 1954, US officials at the US embassy in Tel Aviv had already discovered several microphones in the office of the ambassador. Two years later, US counter-surveillance experts uncovered electronic bugs at the Tel Aviv residence of a US military attaché. Since then, the use of bribes and even women by the Shin Bet to lure US embassy guards has been frequent –and mostly unsuccessful. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #327

April 10, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Cyberspies eyed Canadian visa applications. Personal information about Canadians applying for visas was swiped by cyberspies who hacked into Indian embassy computers in Afghanistan. The data theft was part of a wider cyberespionage operation launched by the underground hacking community in China and aimed primarily at political targets, according to academic researchers.
Israeli Arab jailed for spying on top general. Rawi Sultani, who is accused of informing Hezbollah of his membership in the same fitness club as Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as of methods of accessing the club, has been sentenced to nearly six years’ imprisonment.
CIA places American on assassination list. US-born al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Aulaqi, who now lives in Yemen, has become the first US citizen to be placed on a CIA “targeted killing” list, which requires “special approval from the White House”.

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Analysis: Canada becoming a heaven for spies claims ex-CSIS agent

April 9, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Juneau-Katsuya

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Canada is today one of the world’s safest and most attractive environments for international spies, according to a former officer in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who last September co-authored Nest of Spies with Montreal-based journalist Fabrice de Pierrebourg, says that Canada is doing little to combat increasing espionage activity within its borders by agents of friendly and adversary nations alike, including China, Iran, Israel, the United States, and France. Juneau-Katsuya suggests that international spying within Canada is encouraged by the country’s prosperity, its multicultural urban environment, advanced telecommunications infrastructure, as well as by its political or geographical proximity to major world powers, such as Russia and the United States. Read more of this post

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Interview with alleged CIA spy in Iran

April 9, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

A Time to Betray

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
US government-owned Radio Liberty has aired an interview with an Iranian defector who claims to have worked as a CIA agent in the 1980s and early 1990s. The defector, who goes by the pseudonym Reza Kahlili (codename ‘Wally’), has authored what appears to be a CIA-sanctioned book, entitled A Time to Betray, in which he says he was a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC is a sizable branch of the Iranian military that is ideologically committed to the defense of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Kahlili, who now lives in California, says he concluded his studies in the US and returned to Iran shortly after the Revolution. But he quickly became disillusioned with the Islamic regime, and in 1981 met with the CIA in the United States and offered them his services. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #326

April 8, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

US spends millions on deception operations. The US Joint Information Operations Warfare Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas has a 435-person unit tasked with “development of television commercials and documentaries, focus group and polling services, television air time, posters, banners, and billboards”, as well as “novelty items”. Novelty items? Jeff Stein takes a closer look.
Iranian embassy in Australia spying on activists. The Iranian embassy in Canberra has been accused of spying on Iranian opposition activists in Australia, collecting intelligence on their activities and reporting back to Tehran. The allegations come amid growing concern within Australian security services over the activities of Iranian government-backed militants in Australia.
Newsflash: Israeli, Iranian spies active in Gulf! The profound commentary by Dubai Police continues. Last time they warned all spies “present in the Gulf” to leave the region within a week. This time they are reminding us that “Israel and Iran have their spies active in the Gulf region”. You don’t say.

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News you may have missed #325

April 7, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA investigator sentenced. CIA employee Kerry Gerdes, who falsified interview reports while performing background checks on CIA employees and potential employees, has been sentenced to two months in prison and six months of home confinement.
President Ford authorized warrantless wiretaps, memo shows. Even though he replaced Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign the US Presidency over intelligence abuses, Gerald Ford secretly authorized the use of warrantless domestic wiretaps soon after coming into office, according to a declassified document.
Yemeni court upholds alleged spies’ sentences. Three Yemenis, who were accused last year by the government of having “links to Israeli intelligence”, have had their sentences upheld by an appeal court.

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Essential links on WikiLeaks video of Iraq shooting

April 7, 2010 by intelNews 4 Comments

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Whistleblower site WikiLeaks has released a leaked video taken from a US military helicopter in July 2007, showing US forces indiscriminately firing on Iraqi civilians, killing 12 people and wounding two children. The dead included two employees of the Reuters news agency. There are several edited versions of the video, which can be found in its entirety here. Cryptome offers a series of selected stills from the leaked WikiLeaks video, with some visual analysis of the footage. It is worth keeping in mind that the leaked video is of substantially lower quality than what the US helicopter pilots saw, because it was converted through several stages before it was released by WikiLeaks. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Can the CIA sabotage the Iranian nuclear weapons program?

April 7, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Shahram Amiri

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
There is no doubt that the CIA has been actively trying to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program since at least February of 2008, when US President George W. Bush authorized Langley to intensify its covert efforts against Tehran. It is also true that the US was able to partially sabotage Iran’s nuclear program by eliminating the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, and by employing scientific front companies and c ooperative suppliers, who gave the Iranians faulty hardware. The defection to Washington of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri provides recent evidence of the existence of a covert US project to “decapitate” the Iranian nuclear weapons program, by luring away leading Iranian researchers. On the other hand, it is worth wondering why the CIA chose to remove Amiri from the Iranian nuclear program, instead of asking him to remain an agent-in-place, which would have been far more beneficial for Langley. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #324 (CIA edition)

April 6, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Intelligence not hampered by waterboarding ban, says CIA’s top spy. Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.
CIA given details of British Muslim students. Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies. IntelNews has frequently reported on the CIA’s increased activities in the UK.
CIA death at Salt Pit gets fresh attention. Jeff Stein revisits the case of Gul Rahman, who died in 2002 after weeks of interrogations at the Salt Pit secret CIA facility in Afghanistan. His death was kept off the CIA books, and his body, which was secretly buried, has never been found.

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Situation report on the al-Haramain wiretap case

April 6, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Max Fisher of The Atlantic Wire provides an excellent situation report on the recent decision by a US district court, which faulted the US government for unconstitutionally wiretapping a US-based Saudi charity. The charity, al-Haramain, was taken to court in September 2004 by the US government, which accused it of having links to terrorist groups. But the charity has now successfully demonstrated that the National Security Agency (NSA) engaged in illegal spying against it, under the Bush administration’s STELLAR WIND warrantless spying program. Drawing from articles by a number of commentators, Fisher explains why the case took five years to conclude, pointing to the difficulty the plaintiffs had to prove that the NSA spied on the charity. Normally, this is close to impossible, as the NSA is not in the habit of disclosing information on its operations. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #321 (CIA edition)

April 3, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Uruguay ex-president sent to prison for 1973 coup. Declassified documents show that, at the time of the coup, Juan María Bordaberry told the US ambassador that “Uruguay’s democratic traditions and institutions […] were themselves the real threat to democracy”.
FSB ‘dropped the ball’ in Moscow metro bombings. Two Russian intelligence observers argue that Russia’s new strategy has shifted toward preventing coordinated actions by large groups of militants, which has come at the expense of taking measures to prevent individual suicide attacks, such as those of last Monday in Moscow.
Calls for expanded DoJ probe of FBI killing of Detroit imam. The US Justice Department is probing the killing of Detroit-area Islamic cleric Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who was shot dead during an FBI raid shortly after being indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit federal crimes. The FBI said Abdullah was shot after he opened fire, but critics say he may have been targeted for assassination.

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More on alleged Mossad spy arrested in Algeria

April 2, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Forged passports

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS| intelNews.org |
On March 29, intelNews reported on allegations by the Algerian government that an Israeli intelligence agent had been arrested in the country, after he was found to be carrying a forged Spanish passport. The next day, Algerian authorities identified the man only as “Alberto”, and insisted he was a member of the Mossad, Israel’s foremost external intelligence agency. News sources have now identified the man’s forged identity as “Alberto Vagilo”, which appears to be the name listed on his Spanish travel documentation. According to Algerian government officials, the man, whose year of birth is listed as 1975 in his Spanish passport, entered the North African country in mid-March, via a regularly scheduled flight from Barcelona, Spain. Read more of this post