News you may have missed #0221

December 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Part 5 of CIA defector’s writings now available. Former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer has published the fifth installment of the writings of Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who defected to the USSR in 1985 (see here for previous intelNews coverage). In this part, Howard explains why Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), was a “good town for covert operations” and the KGB’s “favorite pad for launching agents into Western Europe”.
  • African Union investigates officials of spying. Two officials from the African Union Mission for Somalia (AMISOM) and the United Nations Support Office for AMISOM (UNSOA) are reportedly under investigation for passing on sensitive information on AMISOM and Somalia to the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the South African Secret Service.

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US government agent detained in Cuba for ‘aiding opposition groups’

December 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

Development Alternatives Inc. logo

DAI logo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
American authorities have revealed the arrest in Cuba of a US government worker, who was allegedly supplying telecommunications equipment to opposition groups. The unidentified man, who was reportedly detained in Havana on December 5, is said to work for a Maryland-based international aid group called Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI). This little-known organization works closely with the government-owned United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and last year was awarded a major government contract in “support [of] the rule of law and human rights, political competition and consensus building” in Cuba. There are reports, however, that the contract involved the clandestine supply of laptop computers and cell phones to Cuban groups antagonistic to the government in Havana. Read more of this post

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US forces helped assassinate top FARC commander in Ecuador

December 14, 2009 by 1 Comment

Raúl Reyes

Raúl Reyes

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
US military intelligence and combat troops helped Colombian forces assassinate a senior leftwing Colombian paramilitary commander on Ecuadoran soil last year, according to an Ecuadoran government report. As this blog reported last month, Colombia’s soon-to-be-dismantled DAS intelligence service admitted it paid “an informant in the Ecuadorean security forces” US$2.5 million to supply information on the whereabouts of Raúl Reyes, senior leader in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Reyes was assassinated along with 16 of his guerillas in a daring raid by Colombian forces, around a mile inside Ecuador’s border, on March 1, 2008. Now an Ecuadoran government report claims that Reyes’ killing, which sparked the so-called 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis between Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, was conducted with logistical and combat assistance by US forces stationed in Ecuador. Read more of this post

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Iranian defector briefed UN inspectors on Iran nuclear program

December 14, 2009 by Leave a comment

Iranian nuclear facility in Qum

Qum facility

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An Iranian nuclear scientist who vanished during a pilgrimage to Mecca last June has defected to the West and has briefed American and United Nations officials about Iran’s nuclear program. As intelNews reported on October 9, rumors have been circulating in the Arab press that Shahram Amiri, a senior figure in the Iranian nuclear research program, was not abducted by Saudi and Western intelligence agencies, as Iran claims, but actually defected to the West. Now British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph has cited “a source close to France’s overseas secret service, the DGSE”, who claims that Amiri’s defection was facilitated through a carefully planned intelligence operation involving the CIA, as well as French and German operatives. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0218

December 13, 2009 by Leave a comment

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US use of stealth spy drones in Afghanistan raises questions

December 11, 2009 by 3 Comments

RQ-170 Sentinel

RQ-170 Sentinel

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
On December 6, we posted a link to a photo of what appeared to be a classified US drone aircraft, which was published on a blog belonging to French newspaper Libération. Then, unexpectedly, on December 8, the US Air Force admitted that the mystery aircraft, dubbed ‘the Beast of Kandahar’ by aviation spotters, is the RQ-170 Sentinel, an unmanned, unarmed surveillance and reconnaissance drone with stealth capabilities, that is officially still in production by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin. That’s all well and fine. But the question is: why would the US be using a stealth drone against the Taliban in Afghanistan, who have no known antiaircraft radar systems, and are therefore unable to track enemy surveillance planes? Read more of this post

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Silence over sudden death of Jordan’s ex-spy chief in Vienna

December 11, 2009 by 5 Comments

Imperial Hotel, Vienna

Imperial Hotel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
There is widespread silence in Jordan about the sudden death of the country’s former intelligence chief, at his luxury Vienna hotel room, on Wednesday. The country’s tightly controlled press barely mentioned the news of the death of Field Marshal Said Bashir Saad Kheir, 56, whose body was reportedly discovered in bed by a maid in Vienna’s Imperial Hotel. Austrian police representatives have ruled out foul play in Kheir’s death, which they attributed to heart failure. But there is conflicting information about the purpose of the former spy chief’s visit to the Austrian capital, which is considered the world’s largest espionage hub, with the highest density of foreign intelligence agents on Earth. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0214

December 10, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Cuban Five member’s prison term cut to 30 years. A Miami court has reduced the earlier prison sentence of yet another member of the Cuban Five. Ramon Labanino has had his original sentence of life imprisonment cut to 30 years. The Cuban Five were sentenced in 2001 for spying on US soil for Cuba.
  • Part 3 of CIA defector’s writings now available. Former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer has published the third installment of the writings of Edward Lee Howard, a CIA officer who defected to the USSR in 1985 (see here for previous intelNews coverage). Did you know that “KGB officers always preferred Malév (Hungary’s national airline) whenever they crossed to [Western] Europe”?

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Suspects arrested for 1981 poisoning of Chilean ex-president

December 10, 2009 by 2 Comments

Eduardo Frei

Eduardo Frei

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A Chilean judge this week charged several people connected with the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, of complicity in the 1981 murder by poisoning of former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva. With the help of the CIA, Frei, a conservative centrist, became Chile’s elected leader from 1964 to 1970. In 1973, he supported the Augusto Pinochet junta movement against Chile’s elected President, Salvador Allende, but soon became disillusioned and opposed the military regime’s widespread human rights abuses. In November 1981, Frei checked into Santiago’s Santa Maria Clinic for a routine hernia operation. It was there, according to the court indictment, that several doctors connected with the Pinochet junta systematically poisoned the former Chilean President with thallium and small doses of mustard gas, which eventually killed him. Read more of this post

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Controversial Israel-Russia drone deal includes secret Iran clause

December 9, 2009 by 2 Comments

MK II UAV

MK II UAV

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
I have written before on this blog about a controversial $53 million agreement between Russia and Israel to provide Moscow with Israeli-made intelligence-gathering drones. The agreement, revealed last April, marked Israel’s first-ever sale of military systems to Russia, as well as Moscow’s first known purchase of a foreign weapons system. Last time I wroteintelNews received information that the Israeli move angered some US Pentagon officials. It turns out, however, that the Israeli-Russian deal contains a vital clause: the Israelis have agreed to provide Russia with as many intelligence-gathering drones as they want, and even allow them to reverse-engineer them, providing they cancel an agreement with Tehran to provide the Iranian government with Russian-made state-of-the-art air defense missiles. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0212

December 9, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Government investigator gets US passports using fake names. A GAO investigator managed to obtain four genuine US passports using fake names and fraudulent documents. He then used one of the fake passports to buy a plane ticket, obtain a boarding pass, and make it through a security checkpoint at a major US airport. The post-9/11 security environment in all its glory.
  • Documents on Argentina’s Operation MEXICO declassified. Operation MEXICO was the codename for a clandestine Argentine rendition program aimed at abducting and murdering leaders of the Montonero Peronist Movement, a leftwing militant group, living in exile in Mexico City in the late 1970s.
  • Mistrial declared in the trial of FBI informant Hal Turner. Turner will still face a single count of unlawfully threatening three Chicago-based federal appeals judges, by writing on his blog that they “deserve to be killed” for upholding a gun control ordinance.

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News you may have missed #0210

December 8, 2009 by Leave a comment

  • Turkey arrests secret service officials over coup allegations. The head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization’s (MİT) branch in the city of Erzincan, identified only as Ş.D., and two other regional MİT officials, are under arrest in connection with the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine network charged with plotting to overthrow the Turkish government.
  • European Union gives CIA access to Europe bank records. Some have condemned the agreement, due to come into force in two months’ time, because it contains no reciprocal arrangement under which European authorities can easily access the bank accounts of US citizens in America.

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Writings by CIA defector Edward Lee Howard published

December 7, 2009 by 3 Comments

Edward Lee Howard

E.L. Howard

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An extensive article on spy tradecraft, written by CIA case officer Edward Lee Howard, after he defected to the Soviet Union in 1985, has been published for the first time. Howard, the only intelligence agent known to have been trained by both the CIA and the Soviet KGB, joined the CIA in 1980, but began collaborating with the KGB in 1983, after the CIA fired him for repeatedly failing to pass a polygraph test. After he was exposed by Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB officer who allegedly defected to the US in Rome, Italy, Howard employed his CIA training to evade FBI counterintelligence agents and escape to Russia, where he lived until his death in 2002. In the early 1990s, the FBI tried to lure Howard to capture, using, among others, Bureau counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer. Eringer befriended Howard and, as part of the luring operation, commissioned the former CIA agent to write a book entitled Spy’s Guide to Central Europe. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0207

December 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

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US embassy worker caught monitoring Pakistan naval site

December 5, 2009 by Leave a comment

Abdul Ghafoor's US embassy ID card

Ghafoor's ID card

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Pakistani news outlets have reported the arrest last month of an employee at the US embassy in Islamabad who was reportedly caught monitoring Pakistan’s Naval Headquarters at Zafar Chowk, a site targeted by a suicide bomber on December 3. Leading Pakistani daily The Nation published the US embassy identity card of the man, Abdul Ghafoor, who was reportedly apprehended by Pakistani Naval Police and intelligence officers in the morning of November 18. Interestingly, Ghafoor, who was said to have been acting “suspiciously”, was found to be carrying a camera with him, and to be riding a motorcycle “with a number plate that was found to be fake when checked”. Several commentators have suggested that the case points to a routine surveillance operation, which warrants further investigation in light of the December 3 suicide bombing attack at the Naval Headquarters. Read more of this post

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