Russia claims secret US-Georgia armaments channel

The PAC-3

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Several Russian newspapers carried lead articles yesterday, describing the alleged discovery of a secret Washington-led project of supplying the Republic of Georgia with $100 million-worth of US weapons supplies. The articles cited “anonymous Russian intelligence sources” in claiming that the US is in the process of secretly providing Georgia with, among other things, a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) advanced surface-to-air guided missile air defense system. If true, the allegations could raise eyebrows in Congress, as the PAC-3 cannot legally be exported by the US government without explicit Congressional authorization. But Russian media report that, according to secret documents acquired by Russian military intelligence, the US government plans to circumvent Congressional scrutiny by delivering the weapons to Georgia through a private exporter, Barrington Alliance Inc., headquartered in Chicago, of which little is known.

News you may have missed #0176

• Hungarian Cold War double agent dies at 71. István Belovai, a former Lieutenant-Colonel in the Hungarian People’s Army Military Strategic Service (HPAMSS), who secretly began working for the US in 1984, has died in Denver, Colorado. Belovai revealed to the CIA details of the so-called Conrad spy ring. He was arrested by Hungarian security agents in 1985 and fled to the US upon his release from prison, in 1991, after being warned that his life was in danger.
• US military spies to train Iraqi counterparts. The 201st Battlefield Support Battalion is training Iraqis on how to “coordinate spying from human sources, intercept cell phone and other electronic messages, do counterintelligence work, manage linguists, and monitor and target enemy positions, among other specialized tasks”.
• Swiss secret service chief calls for more spies. Markus Seiler, the head of the new Swiss Federal Intelligence Service, which combines the country’s foreign and domestic intelligence services, has called Switzerland “a stomping ground for secret services”, and has called for more counterintelligence personnel. He has also said that the intelligence services plan a greater presence in Swiss embassies around the world.

CIA documents shed light on eventful 1956 Soviet visit to Britain

Hugh Gaitskell

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A batch of declassified CIA reports obtained by the BBC sheds light on the diplomatic angle of a historic and eventful Soviet high-level visit to Britain in 1956. In April of that year, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, and Nikolai Bulganin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, arrived in Britain aboard Russian warship Ordzhonikidze, which docked at Portsmouth harbor. Their eight-day tour of Britain marked the first-ever official visit by Soviet leadership to a Western country. The tour ended badly, however, after a botched CIA/MI6 undersea operation, aiming to explore the then state-of-the-art Ordzhonikidze, ended in the disappearance of MI6 diver Lionel “Buster” Crabb. The body of Crabb, one of several MI6 agents involved in the operation, was never recovered. In 2007, Eduard Koltsov, a retired Russian military diver, said he killed a man he thinks was Crabb, as he was “trying to place a mine” on the Soviet ship.

News you may have missed #0175

• South Korean spy agency now regards North as ‘international affairs’. The Seoul-based National Intelligence Service (NIS) has relocated its unit that monitors North Korea under a department dealing with international affairs. The change, described as a “paradigm shift” by one South Korean official, apparently reflects President Lee Myung-bak’s view that the North Korean issue should be dealt more “from the international geopolitical perspective”.
• Robbery of S. African intel agent was planned, say officials. The robbery by five men of a woman said to be an agent of South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency “was conducted as though it was very well planned”, according to police.
• Interview with ex-West German spy master. Radio France Internationale has aired an interview with Hans-Georg Wieck, chief of the West German Secret Service (BND) between 1985 and 1990. Among other things, Wieck claims that BND had “well-placed” agents in East Germany, as well as in spy services of other communist, including the KGB.

Thatcher’s son was informant for South African spy service

Sir Mark Thathcer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The son of Britain’s former Prime Minister, Margaret (now Baroness) Thatcher, has admitted turning informer to a South African intelligence agency, in connection to a coup plot in central-west Africa which he was accused of having helped finance. In 2004, Sir Mark Thatcher was arrested by members of an elite anticorruption squad in South Africa, for his alleged role in a failed coup against Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the longtime dictator of energy-rich Equatorial Guinea. Several South African and European mercenaries, including Simon Mann, a British former Special Forces officer, and Nick du Toit, a South African arms dealer, were arrested in Zimbabwe during the planning stages of the failed coup. It soon became understood that the plotters wanted to replace Obiang with exiled opposition leader Severo Moto Nsa, probably in return for access to lucrative oil contracts.

News you may have missed #0174

• West feared German reunification in 1989, documents show. The fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago caused major anxiety in not only Eastern, but also Western capitals, to the point of outright opposition to a possible German unification, according to documents published last Friday by the National Security Archive.
• Convicted CIA agents also in Norway. At least two of the 22 (not 23, as the article mistakenly states) CIA agents convicted last week for the 2003 abduction from Italy of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, were also active in Norway, according to Norwegian daily Stavanger Aftenblad.
• Shin Bet tried to recruit alleged Israeli terrorist. Jack Teitel, an American-born Jewish settler who was recently arrested for allegedly having murdered two Palestinians, was asked by Israel’s internal intelligence agency to inform on extremist Israeli groups after the attacks, the agency said Friday.

CIA-DNI turf war over embassy posts continues

Joe Biden

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
This blog has kept tabs on the latest US bureaucratic turf war between the CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). It started last May, when when DNI Dennis Blair argued in a still-classified directive that his office should have a say in certain cases over the appointment of senior US intelligence representatives in foreign cities. Former CIA officials publicly denounced the directive, which would allow the appointment of non-CIA personnel to these positions for the first time in 60 years, as “simple insanity”. The turf war appeared to be close to an end in July, when the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence came out in support of the DNI, arguing that “some locations may give rise to circumstances where th[e CIA station chief’s] responsibility is best met by an official with expertise derived from another I[ntelligence] C[ommunity] element”.

News you may have missed #0173

• Russia, Georgia, in secret border reopening talks. Russia and Georgia, whose borders have been shut since the 2006 South Ossetia War, are in secret negotiations to reopen their only common border checkpoint, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper.
• Why Shin Bet is taking over Israeli domestic investigations. Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s domestic intelligence service, is overtaking the role of the police forces in solving criminal cases. The reasons are primarily political.
• Interview with Bruce Schneier. A Q&A session with the cryptography legend, author of Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear. Interesting quote: “[W]e now know that the NSA vacuums up all sorts of electronic communications, e-mail included. So maybe it would be a good idea for all of us to routinely encrypt our e-mail”.

US prevented Israel from bombing arms ship, says paper

The Francop

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Israel wanted to bomb a German cargo ship, which allegedly carried tons of weapons from Syria and Iran to Lebanon, but the plan was “rejected” by US intelligence, according to a London-based Arabic-language newspaper. An article in last Friday’s Asharq Alawsat appears to confirm earlier speculation that the ship, which was seized by Israeli commandos in a predawn raid on Wednesday off the coast of Cyprus, was first brought to the Israelis’ attention by US intelligence agencies on October 18. The newspaper alleges that the raid by Israeli commandos took place only after the US rejected an Israeli suggestion to bomb the ship while it was sailing through the Red Sea. An air attack on the cargo ship, named Francop, would have undoubtedly caused a multinational diplomatic episode. The vessel is reportedly German, leased by Greek-Cypriot charter company UFS Shipping International, and was sailing under the flag of Antigua & Barbuda, with an Egyptian crew and a Polish captain.

News you may have missed #0172

• Ex-Olympic Committee president was KGB agent: new book. Juan Antonio Samaranch worked as a secret agent for the Soviet KGB, whose agents helped him win his election to become the president of the IOC, according to The KGB Playing Chess, a new book published in Russia by Vladimir Popov, a former top official in the Soviet secret police.
• Do we really need an NSA data center in Utah? Interesting local opinion piece about the 1-million-square-foot data center to be built at Utah’s Camp Williams by the US National Security Agency.
• Visual ‘proof’ of Monaco’s Intelligence Service. We have written before about former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer, who until recently was spymaster to Prince Albert II of Monaco, and is now completing a book on his experiences in the tiny principality, a project he began after quitting his post. The question is, is there a Monaco Intelligence Service? Eringer says yes, and has published a purported MIS logoMIS identity card to prove it. and his

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News you may have missed #0171

• Court date for US couple accused of spying for Cuba. Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, who were arrested by the FBI last summer on charges of spying for Cuba for over 30 years, have a court appearance scheduled for Thursday. Meanwhile, the judge overseeing their case is trying to decide how to make evidence available for their trial while protect US intelligence sources and methods.
• CIA responds to declassification request…20 years later. The CIA has finally released a small number of documents relating to Manucher Ghorbanifar, a shady weapons trader who mediated between Washington and Tehran during the Iran-Contra scandal. The declassification comes two decades after the Agency was asked to release the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.
• Kalmanovic was Shin Bet informant, says Ha’aretz. It is well known that Shabtai von Kalmanovic, who was gunned down in downtown Moscow on Monday, had worked for the Soviet KGB. He confessed as much and was jailed in Israel in the 1980s for spying. But Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Kalmanovic was also “a Shin Bet [Israel's internal security service] informant”. In a new article, the paper says Kalmanovic “was a low-level informer for the Shin Bet” before his arrest for spying for the KGB.

News you may have missed #0170

• US wants to set up spy base in Afghanistan, says Afghan lawmaker. Ataollah Loudin, who chairs the Afghan parliament’s Justice and Judiciary Committee, told journalists that Washington wants to establish a base in Afghanistan “to collect intelligence on and organize espionage operations against Iran, Russia, and China”.
• CIA settles DEA agent’s lawsuit for $3 million. The US government has agreed to pay $3 million to a former US Drug Enforcement Administration agent who accused a CIA operative of illegally bugging his home.
• UN to help Colombia sort through spy files. Colombia’s government and the UN have reached an agreement that will allow the UN to participate in the cleansing of intelligence files belonging to the soon-to-be-dismantled DAS spy agency. Interestingly, the project will be used as a pilot example for a wider process which may be extended to the Colombian Armed Forces and Police.

Israeli commandos seize ship allegedly carrying tons of weapons

Israeli commandos

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A ship apprehended off the coast of Cyprus by Israeli commandos in a predawn raid on Wednesday was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons, according to the Israeli Navy. Israeli military officials told a press conference in Tel Aviv that the ship was loaded with “40 containers filled with 300 tons of weapons each”, hidden under several rows of civilian goods. Israel insisted that the weapons, which include missiles and rockets, originated from Iran and Syria and were bound for Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamic political and paramilitary organization that controls large parts of Lebanon. But the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, called the Israeli commandos “pirates” and said the seized ship was heading from Syria to Iran, carrying only civilian goods. Israel has yet to release evidence of the ship’s contents, or even name.

News you may have missed #0169

• An intel officer’s view on Fort Hood shooter. “Delve into Malik Nadal Hasan’s social network and check with intelligence sources to find out if he had ever had contact with [militant] organizations around the world”.
• Coup rumors circulating in Paraguay. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo has ordered the replacement of top military commanders, a day after publicly dismissing rumors circulating about a military coup. Did someone say “Honduras“?
• US embassy in Panama looking for spy cameras. Why is the US embassy in Panama City looking for “wireless spy cameras disguised as baseball hats, jackets, pens and handbags”?

Comment: Why the Italian Convictions of CIA Agents Matter

Sabrina DeSousa

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
An Italian court has convicted 22 CIA agents and a US Air Force officer involved in the abduction of a Muslim cleric from Milan in 2003. All but three Americans tried in the case received jail sentences ranging from five to eight years, for kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in broad daylight and for illegally renditioning him to Egypt, where he says he was brutally tortured before being released without charge. As intelNews has previously reported, it is extremely unlikely that the US will agree to extradite the convicted abductors to Italy. Washington has formally invoked the NATO Status of Forces Agreement, arguing that the offenders were operating “in the course of official duty” and fall therefore under US, not Italian, jurisdiction. But the convictions are important nonetheless, for three reasons.

News you may have missed #0168

• 1,600 suggested daily for FBI’s terrorist watch list. Newly released data show that, during a 12-month period ending in March this year, the US intelligence community suggested 1,600 names daily for entry on the FBI’s terrorist-watch list. The ever-churning list is said to contain over a million entries and more than 400,000 unique names, of which around 5 percent are US citizens or legal residents.
• German spies keep files on leftist politicians. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a domestic intelligence service, has kept tabs on 27 elected German lawmakers since 2005. All of those targeted are members of Germany’s Left Party. The news, disclosed during an internal German parliament investigation, is certain to upset members and supporters of the Left Party, which holds 76 seats in the country’s 662-seat federal parliament.

S. Korea arrests two for spying for US defense contractor

NorthropGrumman

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The government of South Korea announced the arrest on Tuesday of two former South Korean army colonels for allegedly leaking defense secrets to US defense contractor giant Northrop Grumman. South Korean authorities identified the individuals simply as “Hwang” and “Ryu”, and said they both worked for the Security Management Institute, a Seoul-based intelligence think-tank with strong connections to South Korea’s armed forces. Details are still sketchy, but it appears the two former army colonels used their military contacts to gain access to classified information on hardware purchase plans and operations of South Korea’s navy and coast guard. They then allegedly passed on this information to employees of Northrop Grumman, the world’s largest builder of military vessels and fourth largest defense contractor in 2008.

Convicted gun smuggler ‘worked for French intelligence’

Arcadi Gaydamak

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A shady gun smuggler convicted earlier this year in France for illegally selling weapons to Angola, was a French intelligence agent, according to a French newspaper. Speaking to Le Figaro, Charles Pasqua, France’s former interior minister, said that Arcady Gaydamak, who fled to Israel to escape imprisonment in France, was formerly an agent of DST, France’s domestic intelligence agency. Pasqua even said that Gaydamak, who holds Israeli, Russian and French citizenship, was secretly cited by former French President Jacques Chirac for his secret intelligence work. Speaking to Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, Gaydamak confirmed Pasqua’s revelations, and said his work was “so secret” that “the citations spoke of his contribution to ‘agriculture’ instead”.

News you may have missed #0167

• DAS official confirms Colombia spying on Ecuador. An official of Colombia’s DAS intelligence service has admitted Colombia “had an informant in the Ecuadorean security forces”. The revelation comes days after Venezuelan officials claimed they had uncovered Operation SALOMON, a joint Colombian-US espionage operation against Ecuador.
• Clinton meets Libyan ex-intelligence chief. While attending a regional-development conference in Morocco, US secretary of state Hilary Clinton met briefly with Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa. Kusa, who served as Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi’s intelligence chief during the 1990s, was expelled from Britain in 1980 for his alleged involvement in assassinating a Gaddafi opponent in London. Clinton has a talent for meeting with controversial foreign spies.
• Ex-Yugoslav secret agent arrested in Germany. German authorities have arrested a man with Croatian and Swedish citizenships, identified only as “Luka S.”, who allegedly participated in the 1983 murder of Stjepan Durekovic, an exiled Yugoslav dissident living in Germany. Another accomplice in Durekovic’s assassination, identified only as “Kronoslav P.”, was jailed in 2008.

News you may have missed #0166

• JFK Library releases new evidence on Diem assassination. This is a crucial new piece of the puzzle, for the release includes actual tape recordings of White House meetings, when US President Kennedy considered requests from South Vietnamese generals for US backing of the military coup that eventually ended Saigon leader Ngo Dinh Diem’s rule and life. See here for other recent declassifications on the Vietnam War.
• The US intelligence community writes the book on collaboration. More praise for Intellipedia, the US intelligence community’s version of Wikipedia, which has grown markedly since its formal launch in 2006.
• Israel admits spying on Lebanon. Israel has openly admitted to collecting intelligence in Lebanon, an uncharacteristically frank admission, which comes after Lebanon busted what has been described as the largest Israeli spy operation in the Arab world.