News you may have missed #306

• Sweden jails Chinese man for spying on Uighurs. Sweden has jailed Babur Maihesuti, a.k.a. Babur Mehsut, a dual Chinese-Swedish national who was caught monitoring the political activities of Sweden’s Uighur community on behalf of Beijing. The latter has denied any connection with the alleged spy.
• Pakistan follows US directive on ISI chief. The director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, will remain in his post for another year, the Pakistani government has announced. Even though Pasha had a row with CIA director Leon Panetta last November, the US pressured Pakistan to keep him, as the White House has “come to believe that keeping Pasha in place will facilitate efforts to flush out Taliban safe havens from Pakistan”.
• Dubai tells spies to…leave. Laughable publicity stunt by Dubai Police, who have asked all spies “currently present in the Gulf” to leave the region within a week. “If not, then we will cross that bridge when we come to it”, warned Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan.

North Korean defector emerges in Austria after 15 years

Kim Jong Ryul

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A defector, who was once a member of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s political protection team, has suddenly emerged in Austria, 15 years after faking his own death. Kim Jong Ryul is an East German-trained engineer who returned to North Korea in 1970 to work for Kim Il Sung, whose government tasked him with translating nuclear documents and making secret trips to the West. However, on October 18, 1994, while on a government-sponsored trip to Bratislava, Slovakia, he disappeared without trace. The North Korean government presumed he had been killed. But Kim had actually entered Austria, where he lived for 15 years as a defector. On Thursday, he gave a press conference in Vienna to promote a book about his life, written by journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi, who based it on over 80 hours of interviews with Kim.

News you may have missed #305

• So is America engaged in cyberwar, or not? US Army says yes, but Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration insists “there is no cyberwar” going on.
• Indian spy master among Victims of recent Kabul blast. The victims of the February 26 suicide attacks in Afghanistan included Nitish Chibber, an undercover RAW (Indian spy agency) official assigned to the Indian consulate in Kandahar.
• FBI paid racist informant ‘in excess of $100,000′. White supremacist radio talk-show host Hal Turner is being tried for threatening three Chicago-based federal appeals judges, by writing on his blog that they “deserve to be killed” for upholding a gun control ordinance. He has also disclosed that the FBI paid him “in excess of $100,000″ over a five-year period.

The day a CIA-trained cat was run over by a taxi

Experiment fail

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A newly declassified report shows that the US Central Intelligence Agency terminated an ambitious project to embed an elaborate wiretap mechanism in a cat, after several failed attempts at controlling the bugged cat’s behavior in real-life situations. The document (.pdf), entitled “Views on Trained Cats [Redacted] for [Redacted] Use”, dates from March 1967. It wraps up by stating that “the environmental and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that, for our [redacted] purposes, [using bugged cats] would not be practical”.

News you may have missed #304

• Interesting history of former German embassy building in DC. When the State Department took the building over in 1945, officials found $3 million in American currency that was reportedly designated for espionage payments.
• Number of Dubai killing suspects at 27. Another person has been added to the list of suspects in the January killing of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, bringing the number of identified suspects to 27. Some say the number will exceed 30 before too long.
• Robert Baer on Dubai assassination. Stepped-up surveillance technology may be tipping the scales in the cat-and-mouse game between spies and their targets. Former CIA operative Robert Baer on the Mossad’s recent Dubai hit and the current state of spycraft.

Analysis: Iranian spymaster a major player in Iraq

Qassem Suleimani

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Newsweek’s Chris Dickey has penned an accurate analysis on Qassem Suleimani, leader of the mighty Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) unit tasked with exporting the Iranian Revolution abroad. Relatively little is known about Suleimani, a soft-spoken intelligence operative who oversees Iran’s links with Shiite movements in the Middle East and beyond. His influence inside Iraq has grown in recent years. Although the Quds Force intelligence network in Iraq was solid before the 2003 US invasion, the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime turned Suleimani’s agency to what is probably the most powerful organized intelligence force in the country. Indeed, Suleimani’s links with the Kurdish north and with the Shiite paramilitary groups in Iraq is so encompassing that, as Dickey correctly notes, “this 53-year-old Iranian general could pull the strings that make or break the new government in Baghdad”.

News you may have missed #303

• Don’t share telecoms data with US, Hezbollah warns Lebanon. Hezbollah has warned the Lebanese government against sharing telecommunications information with the United States. Apparently the US embassy in Beirut sent out a request for “very detailed information on the mobile phone service providers in Lebanon — the stations, the antennas, technical information”. The request probably pertained to Hezbollah’s privately-owned telecommunications network in the country.
• Using intelligence from the al-Mabhouh hit. “While the 22-hour period depicted in the Dubai police surveillance video showcased the tactical capabilities of the various teams, it hardly tells the whole story. In order to pinpoint the location of al-Mabhouh on the day of his killing, the organization responsible for this operation would have had to have tracked al-Mabhouh for months, if not years”.

MI6 employee arrested for trying to sell documents

Daniel Houghton

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
British authorities have detained a former MI6 employee after he was caught trying to sell classified documents to MI5 spooks posing foreign agents. Daniel Houghton, 25, who was arrested on Monday at a central London hotel, worked for MI6 between September 2007 and May 2009. During the course of his employment, he apparently stole MI5 (and not MI6, as has been suggested) electronic documents, classified secret and top-secret, by copying them to CDs and DVDs. He then attempted to sell the material, which is said to relate to “techniques for intelligence collection”, for £2 million ($2.9 million), to MI5 agents posing as intelligence handlers of an unspecified foreign intelligence service.

Italy busts arms smuggling network, arrests Iranian intelligence agents

Masoumi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Italian authorities have announced the arrest of two Iranians and five Italians on suspicion of smuggling European-made weapons and explosives to Iran. Italian police said the Iranians involved in the operation, which breached an international embargo on Iran, are “believed to be members of the Iranian secret services”. They are Ali Damirchiloo, 55 (occupation unknown), and Hamid Nejad Masoumi, 51, an accredited journalist and Iranian state television correspondent, who has lived in Italy since 1995. Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for two more Iranians, Hamir Bakhtiyari Reza and Bakhtiyari Homayoun, who are also believed to be intelligence agents and are thought to have managed to escape to Iran.

News you may have missed #302 (NSA edition)

• Former NSA tech chief doesn’t trust cloud computing. Brian Snow, the former US National Security Agency technical director, told a conference that he doesn’t trust cloud services and bluntly admonished vendors for leaving software vulnerabilities unpatched, sometimes for years.
• Former key NSA official relocates to Silicon Valley. Prescott Winter, formerly chief information officer and chief technology officer at the US National Security Agency, has joined ArcSight Inc., a Silicon Valley developer of security and compliance management tools for government and private industry. Revolving doors galore!
• NSA cybersecurity role worries civil liberties groups. The Obama administration’s plan to bolster US cyber security calls for greater cooperation between private companies and the National Security Agency. But civil liberties advocates are sounding alarms about the NSA’s role, because of the secretive nature of the agency and its role in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

CIA technical expert arrested for pilfering equipment

An analyzer

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A CIA communications technology specialist has been charged with selling CIA communications equipment to a private broker. FBI counterintelligence agents arrested Todd Brandon Fehrmann on February 26, several weeks after he sold $60,000-worth of equipment to Massachusetts-based Bizi International, Inc. Fehrmann’s CIA connection is concealed in the FBI affidavit, but The Washington Times says US government officials and even Fehrmann himself have now confirmed that he worked for the agency. The pilfered equipment appears to have included a dozen portable spectrum analyzers –handheld devices used to detect and gauge cell phone signals, among other things.

News you may have missed #301

• Six more arrested in Lebanon for spying for Israel. The Lebanese army has arrested at least six more people in southern and northern Lebanon, among them former army officers, on suspicion of spying sharing information about the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah with Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Dozens of alleged Israeli spy cells have been uncovered in Lebanon in recent months.
• Survey of US spy agencies’ web presence. US intelligence agencies are using the Web to share information and engage the public. Some offer mobile versions and social networking tools –others badly need an update.
• Danish journalist admits using job as cover to spy for Israel. Herbert Pundik, a Danish former newspaper editor, has admitted he used his journalism credentials to spy for Israel for a decade in the 1960s, saying he felt an obligation as a Jew.

Al-Mabhouh was drugged, not electrocuted

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Members of an Israeli assassination squad, who killed a senior Hamas official last month in Dubai, drugged him with a strong anesthetic before suffocating him to death, according to a new police report. Initial accounts of the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found dead in his luxury hotel room in the United Arab Emirates in the morning January 20, 2010, stated that he had been severely electrocuted, and then poisoned, before he was suffocated to death. But, according to Dubai Police deputy commander, Major General Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina, new forensic test reports suggest that, at the time of his death, the Palestinian official was under the influence of succinylcholine, a powerful muscle-relaxant and sedative, which is often dispensed to patients in emergency hospital wards, because of its rapid onset.

News you may have missed #300

• Indonesian activists capture government spy. Activists of the United Indonesia Movement (GIB) have captured a military intelligence officer, identified only as E.S., who was allegedly spying on their plans to prepare an anti-government rally on Tuesday. Last August, the Indonesian government denied rumors it planned to begin spying on Mosques around the country.
• Former Monaco head-spy recounts meeting with Prince Albert. Former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer, who until recently was spymaster to Prince Albert II of Monaco, recounts how he was appointed to lead the principality’s intelligence service by the Prince himself.

Australia investigates more alleged Israeli spies

ASIO HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is among a number of Western intelligence agencies investigating at least three dual Australian-Israeli citizens, who are suspected of being Israeli spies. Citing “two Australian intelligence sources”, the Sydney Morning Herald said that the investigation into the three suspects began last year and is not connected to the January 19 assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. At least three of the 26-member Mossad hit squad that killed al-Mabhouh used forged Australian passports to enter and exit the United Arab Emirates.

News you may have missed #299

• US lawmaker wants to stop CIA agents working second jobs. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) says she will offer an amendment to the Intelligence Reauthorization bill later this week that would put new rules into place on the practice of intelligence officers who take second jobs in the private sector.
• Poland admits to aiding CIA. After human rights groups revealed evidence that showed CIA rendition planes landing in Poland in 2003, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency has admitted for the first time that Poland played a role in the controversial US program.
• Former Romanian-German spy fired for secret past. German author Peter Grosz was fired on Thursday from his role as director of the theater festival in the German city of Oppenheim, following revelations that he had spied on fellow authors for Romania’s Securitate communist secret police during the 1970s. Large numbers of Romanian former intelligence agents now reside in Germany.

News you may have missed #298

• Senior officers charged in Turkey coup plot. One of the world’s most important Muslim countries, which has been called the bridge between Europe and the Middle East, is witnessing a brutal clash between the Islamist government and the secular but anti-democratic military.
• Cryptome online again after Microsoft backs down. On February 24, the freedom-of-information website Cryptome was removed from the Web for refusing to take down a leaked copy of the Microsoft Online Services Global Criminal Compliance Handbook. But Microsoft’s move backfired, leading instead to widespread attention to (and republication of) the very document it tried to suppress.

Israeli agents tried to obtain Australian passports in 2004

Ali Kazak

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Yesterday’s revelation, that three members of the Mossad hit squad that assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January, used Australian passports, has shocked Australian public opinion. In reality, however, the Australian government had been warned in as early as 2004 that Israeli agents were trying to obtain Australian passports for use in international espionage operations. In March of that year, Ali Kazak, who was the Head of the General Palestinian Delegation to Australia and New Zealand, publicly revealed that Israeli Mossad agents had approached members of the Middle Eastern community in both countries, seeking to purchase usable passports. He even said that one Mossad agent active in Sydney had managed to acquire as many as 25 Australian passports before returning to Israel.

News you may have missed #297

• Australia to use spy agency to combat human smuggling. The Australian government is preparing to afford increased powers to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), in order to direct its resources against human smuggling. Among the changes are proposals to alter the official government definition of “foreign intelligence”, so as to cover human smuggling practices.
• Three Lebanese charged with spying for Israel. Lebanon’s military prosecutor indicted three Lebanese with spying for Israel on Wednesday, as part of a broader espionage investigation lasting nearly a year, in which at least 27 suspects have so far been detained.
• Analysis: CIA and Pakistan work together, but do so warily. The CIA and its Pakistani counterpart, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, have a long and often tormented relationship. And even now, they are moving warily toward conflicting goals, with each maneuvering to protect its influence after the shooting stops in Afghanistan.

Ireland seeks Israeli spy who assembled forged passport data

Al-Mabhouh

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As the number of suspects involved in the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh rose to 26 yesterday, Irish government sources said they suspect an Israeli agent in Dublin of orchestrating the acquisition of several Irish passports used in the assassination. Six of the 26 identified members of the Israeli hit squad who killed al-Mabhouh in Dubai last January used forged Irish travel documents to enter the United Arab Emirates from a variety of international locations. There are rumors in Dublin that at least three more forged Irish passports, which were utilized in the assassination operation, will soon be added to the growing list. According to Ireland’s Independent newspaper, the unnamed Dublin-based Israeli spy collected and collated most of the misleading information that was used to apply for the passports, under the names of real, living Irish citizens, all of whom have now been traced by Irish authorities.