Al-Qaeda book warns West is winning spy war

Abu al-Libi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A guidance report authored by an al-Qaeda field commander in Afghanistan says that Western-handled spies have infiltrated the organization’s networks and are sabotaging is activities. As intelNews pointed out on July 12, the report, penned by Abu Yahya al-Libi, also contains an illustrated essay on the CIA’s use of SIM cards planted on al-Qaeda militants’ cell phones to direct unmanned drone strikes. But most of the circular, entitled Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy, is devoted to cautionary advice on the “swarms of locusts” of Western-aligned spies, who have even penetrated “the military and financial supply roads of the mujaheddin, which are far from the enemy’s surveillance”.

Sweden expels Chinese diplomat after uncovering Uighur spy

Babur Mehsut

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
On June 16, intelNews drew attention to a little-noticed news report from Sweden concerning the arrest of an unidentified spy who was caught keeping tabs on an undisclosed immigrant group in the country. The spy turned out to be Babur Mehsut, a Uighur exile with dual Chinese-Swedish nationality, who was apparently monitoring the political activities of Sweden’s Uighur community on behalf of Beijing. Sweden’s security service (SAPO) and the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs have declined commenting on the case. However, Swedish authorities have charged Mehsut with “unlawful acquisition and distribution of information relating to individuals for the benefit of a foreign power”, and earlier this week ordered the expulsion of a Chinese diplomat stationed in Stockholm. China responded a day later with the expulsion of a Swedish diplomat from Beijing.

News you may have missed #0029

• Iranians revolting against Nokia for alleged spying complicity. Consumer sales of Nokia handsets in Iran have allegedly fallen by up to 50%, reportedly because of the company’s membership in the Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) partnership. As intelNews has been pointing out since last month, NSN allegedly helped supply the Iranian government with some of the world’s most sophisticated communications surveillance systems.
• Analysis: Why NSA’s Einstein 3 project is dangerous. This editorial argues that US President Barack Obama’s decision to proceed with a Bush administration plan to task the National Security Agency with protecting government computer traffic on private-sector networks is “antithetical to basic civil liberties and privacy protections” in the United States.
• New US government report says Bush secrecy hampered intelligence effectiveness. A new report from the Offices of Inspectors General of the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, CIA, NSA, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, says that the Bush administration’s decision to keep NSA’s domestic wiretap program secret seriously hampered the broader intelligence community’s ability to use the program’s output.

FROM OUR ARCHIVES: Charles Taylor was not acting alone

Charles Taylor

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As former Liberian President Charles Taylor becomes the first African leader to stand trial for war crimes, it is worth remembering that the 61-year old father of 14 was not acting alone. Taylor, who headed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), became the country’s President in 1997. He is currently being tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accused of indescribable violations of human rights, which he allegedly committed during his 14-year rule. He is also accused of conspiring to foment the brutal civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, which he allegedly funded through the Liberian diamond trade. But as I explained last February, Taylor’s diamond smuggling was facilitated by Roger D’Onofrio Ruggiero, an Italian-American 40-year veteran of the CIA, who worked with Taylor and others to channel diamonds into Europe through a number of front-companies. Taylor was also assisted by Ibrahim Bah, a Senegalese who in the 1970s and 1980s was funded by the CIA to join the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the war against the Soviet Red Army. It is unlikely, however, that Charles Taylor’s prosecutors at The Hague will be calling on these two witnesses during the trial. Witnesses aside, however, Charles Taylor’s trial may prove to be interesting on numerous levels. Yesterday, for instance, he told the court that his 1985 “escape” from the US maximum security Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts, which allowed him to return to Liberia and take over the country through a military coup, took place with US government assistance.

French intelligence agents posing as journalists abducted in Somalia

Hotel Sahafi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Foreign correspondents in Somalia have joined Reporters Without Borders (RWB) in condemning the alleged journalistic cover of two French intelligence agents, who were kidnapped on Tuesday in Somali capital Mogadishu. RWB director, Jean-Francois Julliard, said that if the allegations that the two French intelligence agents had pretended to be journalists are confirmed, it would be “shocking, because these are official agents on a mission for the French government, who have used the title of journalist as a cover”. In a telling move, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has refused to identify the two abductees, and has rejected calls to reveal the precise branch of the French government that sent them to Somalia. But the Ministry did admit today that the two Frenchmen were in the African country on “an official mission” to advise President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed’s crumbling Western-backed government in “security matters”. Speaking anonymously to the Agence France Presse news agency, a senior Somali government official revealed that the two abductees arrived in Mogadishu nine days ago in order to train “their counterparts in Somali intelligence agencies”.

News you may have missed #0028

• Iran could have the bomb in six months, says German intelligence. Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) alleges that if the Iranians “wanted to they could test a nuclear bomb within half a year.”
• Australian PM threatens China over Rio Tinto spy case. Kevin Rudd warned China it has “economic interests at stake”, less than a week after Beijing arrested the Australian chief of the Anglo-Australian mine company’s iron ore operations in China.
• 12 Mexico intelligence officers mutilated and killed. The mutilated bodies of the one female and 11 male federal intelligence officer were left in a heap beside a road in rural Michoacan state. Drug gangsters launched a brutal offensive against the Mexican government last Saturday, after the capture of their senior leader, Arnaldo “La Minsa” Rueda. “We’re waiting for you,” read a taunting sign left with the bodies.
• NRO releases unclassified portions of 2009 budget. The super-secretive US National Reconnaissance Office, which is in charge of US satellite spying, has released fragments of its FY2009 Congressional Budget Justification Book. Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago there were rumors circulating in Washington that NRO may be broken up into several smaller agencies.

Comment: Not So Fast, Cyberwarriors! [updated]

Hoekstra

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Rep. Peter Hoekstra wants to launch a cyberwar against North Korea. The Republican from Michigan, who heads his party’s delegation on the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, urged the US government last Thursday to “launch a cyber attack” or at least increase international sanctions on Pyongyang. Hoekstra urged this in response to a series of mysterious cyber-attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and US government websites for three days earlier this month. And he’s not alone. Last Friday, ABC News technology pundit Michael Malone effectively echoed Hoekstra and warned that “enemies of freedom everywhere” could use cyberterrorism to kill untold numbers of Americans by remotely controlling “fetal monitoring systems, surgical equipment, robotic bomb demolition equipment and ICBMs”. But South Korean cybersecurity specialists, who intensely monitor North Korean information systems, and were the ones who actually informed their US counterparts of the unfolding cyber-attacks on July 4, are not so sure that Pyongyang was behind the attacks.

Analysis: Ulterior Motives In Panetta’s Philippines Visit

Panetta, Arroyo

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Few heads outside Southeast Asia were turned last Sunday by CIA director Leon Panetta’s brief visit to the Philippines. Panetta arrived in Manila early Sunday morning and left at 10 p.m. on the same day. But he managed to squeeze in meetings with Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, as well as her most senior cabinet executives, such as Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. Panetta’s meeting with the President was brief, reportedly lasting around 30 minutes, but its significance was enormous for Washington’s continuing military and intelligence presence in the region. To understand the level of that commitment, one must consider the rare telephone call that US President Barack Obama recently placed to his Philippine counterpart. Read article →

News you may have missed #0027

• Former KGB captain still fighting deportation from Canada. IntelNews has been keeping an eye on the case of Mikhail Alexander Lennikov, whose deportation from Canada has been ordered by a court. Lennikov, a former KGB captain, claims that if deported back to Russia he will be treated as a defector by the FSB. IntelNews has also learned that Lennikov now maintains a public blog, which he updates daily.
• New book claims Errol Flynn worked as a Nazi spy. The Australian-born star, who became a Hollywood legend in the 1930s, was known for his anti-Semitic views. But now a new book claims that declassified CIA files prove Flynn collaborated with German Nazi intelligence in gathering information on German socialists who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
• Iranian spying allegations nonsensical, says France. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that Tehran’s claims that 23-year-old French student Clotilde Reiss was a spy in Iran are “stupid”. “Do you think my country would be so naive and shorthanded as to send a 23-year-old woman to spy in Iran? That’s stupid, it’s not possible”, said Mr. Kuchner during a visit to Lebanon.
• Interesting account of Israel’s only spy history memorial. Matti Friedman, of The Associated Press, has written an interesting account of the little known Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center in Tel Aviv.

The CIA in Iran Today: A Realistic Assessment

Iran protestors

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It is hardly surprising to witness the sudden cessation of the US media frenzy that placed Iran under the microspore last month. And yet I believe that now, as the regime in Tehran is redeploying its machinery of social control, is the perfect time to calmly and sensibly provide a rational assessment of what really took place in Iran in June, as well as the US involvement, if any. The CIA’s past shenanigans in Iran are by now widely known and understood –particularly by the Iranians themselves, who, regardless of their feelings toward the present regime in Tehran, are suspicious of collaborating with US agencies. But what is the US involvement in fomenting unrest in Tehran today? More importantly, to what extent can the CIA’s ongoing covert activities in the Middle East be said to have played a role in last June’s seemingly spontaneous popular uprising in Tehran? With this question in mind, I wrote The CIA in Iran Today: A Realistic Assessment, which you can now read in Jeremy Hammond’s Foreign Policy Journal. Here’s a tip: for the CIA’s intelligence directorate  analysts, the recent unrest in Iran was more like 1979 than 1953. Read article →

News you may have missed #0026

• US Attorney General considers torture probe. The Associated Press is among several news outlets reporting that Eric Holder is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the use of torture by US intelligence agencies after September of 2001.
• Iran’s invisible Nicaraguan embassy. The US State Department has been raising alarm bells about the Iranians supposedly “building a huge embassy in Managua”. But nobody in Nicaragua can find any super-embassy, The Washington Post reports.
• Kim Jonh Il likely to die soon, CIA tells S. Korean spy agency. According to South Korean sources, the CIA now believes that Kim Jong-Il’s chances of surviving the next five years are less than 30%. Last June, intelNews relayed reports that Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s third son, appears to be his father’s most likely successor.

Secret CIA program involved assassinations of suspects

CIA HQ

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Quoting “three former intelligence officials” The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the secret CIA program, which recently alarmed Congress, involved summary killings and assassinations of al-Qaeda operatives. Although the plan’s details remain highly classified, it appears that the CIA sought to set up specialized assassination squads, staffed with US Special Forces personnel, in an attempt to copy the Israeli Mossad Operation Wrath of God (also known as Operation Bayonet) of the 1970s. Wrath of God, which involved targeted assassinations of individuals allegedly behind the 1972 Munich massacre, was described by Canadian journalist George Jonas in his 1984 book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, which also formed the basis for Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich. The Wall Street Journal quotes an anonymous former US intelligence official who describes the CIA plan as coming “straight out of the movies [...]. It was like: Let’s kill them all”.

News you may have missed #0025

• BREAKING NEWS: Several news outlets are reporting this morning that it was former US vice-President Dick Cheney who ordered the CIA to conceal from Congress key information about a covert action intelligence program of an undisclosed nature. See here for more.
• New book claims Ernest Hemingway was KGB agent. The new book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press), co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, alleges that the Nobel prize-winning novelist was on the KGB’s list of agents in America from 1941, when he was given the codename “Argo” by the Soviets.
• Thousands of former Stasi spies still working in German civil service. A report in the German edition of The Financial Times claims that over 17,000 former members of East Germany’s Stasi remain employed as civil servants in reunified Germany. Stasi is the name commonly used for the Ministry for State Security, communist East Germany’s secret police.
• NSA director’s secret visit to New Zealand revealed. A reporter accidentally spotted Lieutenant-General Keith Alexander, director of the US National Security Agency, entering a Wellington building accompanied by security personnel. The revelation prompted a spokesperson at the US embassy in Wellington to admit that Alexander was indeed in New Zealand “for consultations with government officials”. The close signals intelligence relationship between the US and New Zealand have been known since 1996.
• Chinese national caught trying to purchase crypto hardware. Chi Tong Kuok was arrested by the FBI at the Atlanta International Airport en route from Paris to Panama, where he allegedly planned to purchase US military radios. The US government claims Kuok has admitted he was “acting at the direction of officials for the People’s Republic of China”.
• Taliban say cell phone SIM cards guide US drone strikes. A Taliban circular says SIM cards planted by informants in cell phones used by militants are used to signal American drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As IntelNews recently explained, there are suspicions that this and similar discoveries are gradually prompting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to stop using cell phones altogether.

Revelation of secret program prompted CIA spat with Congress [updated]

Leon Panetta

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
More information has emerged about the background to an ongoing dispute between the US House Intelligence Committee and the CIA, which intelNews has been covering since late last month. The Washington Post has now revealed that on June 24, CIA director Leon Panetta informed the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of his decision to terminate a CIA project, which the Agency had kept hidden from Congress since 2001. Nobody will publicly state what the secret project involved, except to say that it “was planned and never executed” and that it “never quite achieved its original concept” (whatever this means).

News you may have missed #0024

• Guantánamo prisoner asked to spy on homeland radicals. Umar Abdulayev, from Tajikistan, who has been held in Guantánamo for seven years, claims in court filings that he was visited by Tajik intelligence agents in Guantánamo, who asked him to spy on Tajik Muslim radicals in exchange for his release. Abdulayev has refused the offer and has asked for asylum at a third country.
• We were not hacked, says NZ spy agency. A New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) spokesman has denied the agency’s website was hacked on July 9. Those visiting the GCSB website on that day were presented with an error message.
• Saudi charity lawyers ask federal judge to outlaw NSA wiretap program. Saudi-based charity Al-Haramain was taken to court in September 2004 by the US government, which accused it of maintaining terrorist links. But its lawyers have managed to reverse the case, and may now be close to getting a US federal judge to rule against warrantless NSA wiretapping.
• Cyber attacks came from 16 countries. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) officials have disclosed that the cyberattacks that paralyzed major South Korean websites last weekend were mounted from at least 16 different countries. Earlier this week, NIS said it believed North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces were behind the attacks, which also affected US government websites.

Memo reveals Italians are listening in on confidential G8 discussions

Berlusconi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
London-based newspaper The Financial Times says the Italian organizers of the G8 summit are covertly listening in on confidential discussions between participating leaders. The paper bases its allegation on a leaked Italian memo it received “from a senior official, who requested anonymity”. According to the memo, the hosts of the summit, which is taking place in the Italian city of L’Aquila, are breaking strict diplomatic protocol by having a team of aides secretly monitor the confidential proceedings through concealed surveillance devices. The paper claims that the monitoring appears to be aimed at “transmit[ting] quicker advice” to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is officially chairing the summit. But it also alleges that the leaked memo, which was authored by the Italian organizers and addressed to the monitoring team shortly prior to the summit, points to the emergence of a split among the hosts, some of whom are concerned that the monitoring operation “amount[s] to spying”. Shortly after The Financial Times aired the allegations, a spokesman for prime minister Berlusconi categorically denied that there was any covert monitoring going on on the part of the G8 summit organizers. The summit is scheduled to end later today.

News you may have missed #0023

• Spies target Swiss banks for the secrets they hold. Jürg Bühler, acting director of Switzerland’s counter-intelligence agency, says foreign services are increasingly interested in the financial data locked in Swiss banks, especially as the global hunt for undeclared assets stiffens.
• South Korea says North was behind cyberattacks on S. Korean, US web sites. South Korean intelligence officials say they believe North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces committed cyberattacks that paralyzed major South Korean and US government websites last weekend. 
• British MP accuses government of outsourcing torture. Britain’s former shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has accused British intelligence services of “outsourcing torture”. He was commenting in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, who claimed he was offered bribes to drop allegations that he was tortured in Pakistan, while on British custody. 
• Philippines President to meet CIA chief. Leon Panetta will be meeting Glorya Arroyo next week in Manila, “to discuss security concerns and to map out ways to further strengthen the bilateral partnership between the Philippines and United States”.
• Former Turkey intelligence head questioned over alleged coup. The court case concerns Ergenekon, a shadowy ultranationalist network with strong links to the Turkish armed forces, which has reportedly been trying to stage a coup in Ankara.

Sex video prompts British diplomat’s resignation

Hudson video

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The British Foreign Office has confirmed that one of its officials stationed in Russia has resigned following the emergence of video footage which shows him cavorting with two prostitutes. British diplomatic sources have identified that James Hudson, a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, is indeed the man shown having sex with prostitutes in a black-and-white surveillance film, which was probably shot in a brothel in the Russian city of Ekaterinberg. Mr. Hudson was Britain’s Deputy Consul General in the city, also known as Yekaterinburg, which is a major industrial center and is described as “a key outpost for British trade”. The explicit video, which was anonymously posted on a Russian news website under the title “Adventures of Mr Hudson in Russia”, is thought to have been shot by agents of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in what is known in espionage circles as a “honey trap”.

Dutch spy service sued for raiding journalist’s home

van der Graaf

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Holland’s General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) has been sued by the country’s largest newspaper for bugging telephones belonging to its journalists and editors and for raiding the house of a reporter. Last June, the home of Jolande van der Graaf, who works for De Telegraaf newspaper, was raided by security agents after she authored two investigative articles dealing with AIVD’s intelligence failures in the Iraq War. The raid followed the arrest of an AIVD worker and her partner, also an ex-AIVD agent, who allegedly leaked classified information to De Telegraaf. Following the raid, the newspaper discovered that the personal and work phones of van der Graff, as well as other De Telegraaf journalists and editors, including the paper’s chief editor, Sjuul Paradijs, were wiretapped by AIVD in the course of its investigation.

Private companies to help NSA monitor US government networks

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
We have already mentioned on this blog that US President Barack Obama has decided to proceed with a Bush administration plan to use National Security Agency (NSA) assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. NSA is America’s largest intelligence agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security. Critics of the program suspect it may include EINSTEIN 3, a rumored joint project between the NSA and US telecommunication service providers, which requires the latter to route government data carried through their networks to the NSA, via secret rooms installed in exchange sites.