Analysis: Cyprus-Russia-Israel Arms Affair Points to Wider Questions

TOR-M1 radar

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Diplomatic observers were surprised in November 2008, when the then Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to meet his Cypriot counterpart, Dimitris Christofias, during the latter’s official visit to Moscow. Considering the traditionally close bilateral ties between Russia and Cyprus, the excuse from President Putin’s office, that he was too busy attending his United Russia party’s national conference, appeared unconvincing. An article published recently in Greek-Cypriot newspaper O Politis, traced the cause of the Russian President’s apparent snub to a 2007 attempt by the Cypriot government to hand over parts of a Russian-made missile system to Israel. The paper said the Cypriot plan was hatched in response to a request by Israeli intelligence officials, who were interested in acquiring technical insights into the Russian-made TOR-M1 surface-to-air missile defense system. The Israelis were concerned about the TOR-M1 because Iran was also said to be using a variant of the same system, which features a radar apparatus unknown to Israel, the United States or NATO. On the website of the Research Institute for European and American Studies, I explain what this alleged breach of trust between traditional Greek ally Cyprus and Russia may mean for the wider geostrategic balances in the east Mediterranean. Read article →

Privacy concerns as NSA admits “helping” Microsoft

Richard Schaeffer

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Security experts raised privacy concerns after a US National Security Agency official revealed that the Agency collaborated with Microsoft during the development stage of Windows 7. The revelation was made in a prepared statement by NSA information assurance director Richard Schaeffer, before the US Senate’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, which operates under the Judiciary panel. Speaking during a hearing on cybersecurity on November 17, Schaeffer acknowledged that the NSA drew on its “unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft’s operating system security guide”. Schaeffer ‘s prepared statement is available on video here (forward to 32^nd minute).

News you may have missed #0191

• Peru-Chile spy dispute deepens. Not only was senior Peruvian Air Force officer Victor Ariza, who was arrested in Lima last Saturday, a spy for Chile, but there were six other individuals involved in the ring, according to Peruvian authorities. Peru has even asked Interpol to get involved in the affair.
• UN-Iran in secret nuclear negotiations, says paper. The London Times has alleged that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is secretly negotiating a deal to persuade world powers to lift sanctions against Iran and allow Tehran to retain the bulk of its nuclear energy program, in return for co-operation with UN inspectors.
• Analysis: The real spy war between CIA and DNI. For months, the CIA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence fought an intense and acrimonious turf battle over covert action oversight and access to White House officials. Now new details are emerging about deeper and more sensitive conflicts between the two agencies, including which agency is responsible for oversight of the CIA’s controversial and classified Predator drone program.

News you may have missed #0190

• Indicted Liberian leader continues to allege CIA complicity. Former Liberian President, Charles Taylor, who is being tried at The Hague for war crimes, said his rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, exchanged information with the CIA, and continued to do so into his presidency. Talylor has made similar allegations before, but the US media is ignoring it.
• Debate on who should protect US computer networks continues. Cyber experts and intelligence officials continue to debate about whether the National Security Agency is the best-suited US agency for protecting the country’s critical computer networks from cyberattacks.
• Case of Pakistani ’spy’ arrested in India gets thicker. A Pakistani man arrested in India just as he was set to board a flight to Saudi Arabia, using a fake passport, “was a leader of some bigger ring spread across central and western Uttar Pradesh”, according to Indian officials. Meanwhile, the Delhi Police has arrested two more individuals in connection with the case.

FBI kept tabs on Pulitzer-winning author Studs Terkel for 45 years

Studs Terkel

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The FBI, which acted as America’s political police during the Cold War, spent several decades watching Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, who died earlier this year at age 96. The revelation was made by the City University of New York’s NYCity News Service, which acquired 147 of the 269 pages in Terkel’s FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request. The FBI said that it intends to keep the remaining 122 pages kept secret “because of privacy and other reasons”. The FBI appears to have opened a file on Terkel in 1945, in an attempt to discern whether he was affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

News you may have missed #0189

• Somali youths from Canada may have joined Al-Shabab militant group. It’s not only Somali-Americans who are going back to Somalia to join Al-Shabab. Canadian officials are worried the same thing may be happening in Toronto.
• New website examines intelligence contractors. The website Spies for Hire is a new project by Tim Shorrock, which aims to track the America’s most important intelligence contractors. The website expands on Shorrock’s 2008 book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
• MI6 chiefs to testify about Iraq War fiasco. Past and present chiefs of MI6, including Sir John Scarlett and Sir John Sawers, will be among the first witnesses to give evidence to the official inquiry into Britain’s entry into the Iraq War, it was disclosed on Monday.

A terrible week for German spy agencies

BND logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Germany’s largest intelligence agencies are in for a challenging few days, as two spy scandals are making headlines in the country’s media. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s foremost domestic intelligence organization, is firmly in the hot seat after it emerged that a woman it employed as an undercover informer was among seven extremists indicted for helping operate a hardcore neo-Nazi online radio station. The woman, who has been identified only as “Sandra F.”, had been hired by the spy agency to monitor the German People’s Union (DVU), a national socialist political grouping with substantial following in Brandenburg and Saxony.

CIA-DNI turf war enters new phase

Dennis Blair

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The CIA may have won a lengthy turf battle against the office of the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI), but the war between the two agencies continues. As intelNews reported last July, the dispute started when DNI Dennis Blair argued in a still-classified directive that his office, and not the CIA, as has been the case for over 60 years, should have a say in certain cases over the appointment of senior US intelligence representatives in foreign cities. A few days ago, when the White House finally came down in favor of the CIA, the imbroglio appeared to be ending. But now the DNI has hit back by announcing it will be evaluating all “[s]ensitive CIA operations overseas” including all of the CIA’s active paramilitary and espionage operations abroad.

News you may have missed #0188

• India arrests Pakistani ’spy’ carrying documents at airport. The Delhi Police says it arrested a Pakistani spy just as he was set to board a flight to Saudi Arabia, carrying with him a set of vital documents on Indian defense installations. The man was reportedly using a fake passport bearing the name “Aamir Ali”.
• Hezbollah claims infiltration of Israel. Lebanese militant group Hezbollah says it has infiltrated the security services of Israel and obtained vital documents regarding military activity, by “taking pictures and copying sensitive documents”.
• Spy arrest causes major Peru-Chile diplomatic row. A senior Peruvian Air Force officer was arrested in Lima on Saturday, on charges of spying for Chile. The spying affair caused the Peruvian delegation to pull out of an Asia-Pacific summit in Singapore on Sunday.

One third of Pakistani spy budget comes from CIA, say officials

ISI HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
As much as one third of the annual budget of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence has come from the CIA in the last eight years, according to a new report in The Los Angeles Times. The paper says that even more US dollars have been supplied to the ISI through a secret CIA monetary rewards program that pays for the arrest or assassination of militants wanted by Washington. The payments reportedly began during the early years of the George W. Bush administration, and are now continuing under the Obama administration, despite “long-standing suspicions” that the ISI and the Pakistani military maintain close links with the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and elsewhere.

News you may have missed #0187

• Cambodia arrests Thai for spying on exile leader. Cambodian authorities said the man, Siwarak Chothipong, who works for the Cambodia Air Traffic Service, spied on the flight itinerary of visiting former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been living in exile since a 2006 military coup in Thailand. The Thai government has rejected the charge.
• CIA’s Panetta to visit India. CIA director Leon Panetta will visit India for three days, starting on November 20. IntelNews will be keeping an eye on his visit.
• Former Monaco spymaster says prince invokes immunity. More on the saga of former FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Eringer, who until recently was spymaster to prince Albert II of Monaco, and is now suing him for €360,000 ($542,000) in alleged unpaid income. Eringer’s lawyers have accused Albert of invoking head-of-state immunity, “an absolute defense used by dictators around the world to avoid accountability in US courts”.

Abducted Iranian defense official reportedly held in Israel

 

Ali-Reza Asgari

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Iran’s former deputy defense minister, who went missing during a 2006 official visit to Turkey, was kidnapped in a joint Israeli-German-British operation, according to an Iranian newsmagazine. Brigadier general Ali-Reza Asgari, who once commanded Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, disappeared on December 9, 2006, from his hotel room in Istanbul, Turkey. Little more than a year later, Hans Rühle, former Director of Policy Planning in the German Ministry of Defense, wrote in Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung that Asgari was in Western hands and that “information was obtained” from him. Since then, other sources have alleged that Asgari defected willingly, including Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post and intelligence historian Gordon Thomas, in his 2009 book Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence (see intelNews book review).

News you may have missed #0186

• UN shares intel with Rwandan rebels, says paper. Rwandan daily The New Times has aired allegations that the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has an intelligence-sharing relationship with Hutu FDLR rebels, which runs “even deeper than earlier thought”.
• Pakistan militants target spy agency. Militants have stepped up their fight against the Pakistani government in western Pakistan, by ramming a truck bomb into the Peshawar regional office of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s main spy agency. This is the first large-scale specific targeting of intelligence agents in the region, outside of Afghanistan.
• US bases in Colombia to be used for spying, says Chávez. Venezuela’s President says he does not think that the new US bases will be used for counternarcotics efforts, but rather for “electronic spying”.

Book claims CIA turned blind eye on Pakistan’s post-9/11 terror links

J.L. Bruguiere

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A new book by France’s former leading investigating magistrate on counterterrorism affairs alleges that the CIA allowed the Pakistani army to train members of a notorious Islamist militant group, even after 9/11. In the book, entitled Ce que je n’ai pas pu dire (The Things I Would Not Utter), Jean-Louis Bruguiere says the US spy agency was aware that Pakistani army trainers worked with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group responsible for a series of sophisticated strikes in India, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The former magistrate bases his allegations on official testimony provided by Willy Brigitte, a French citizen from Guadeloupe, who was arrested in Australia in 2003, in connection with Lashkar-e-Taiba activities there. Soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan, Brigitte traveled to Pakistan aiming to join the Taliban insurgency, but was unable to cross the Pakistani-Afghan border.

News you may have missed #0185

• Article claims US employed cyberwar in 2007. A cover story in the Washington-based National Journal claims former US President George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to “launch a sophisticated attack [...] on the cellular phones and computers that insurgents in Iraq were using to plan roadside bombings”. IntelNews regulars will remember that we had suspected as much.
• Somali suicide bomb recruiter had US residency. Somali Mohamud Said Omar, who was arrested a week ago in Holland on suspicion of recruiting youth in Minneapolis for suicide missions in Somalia, has a US green card, Dutch media reported Friday.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial a huge challenge for US judiciary. The alleged 9/11 mastermind’s case poses the question of how to deal with what is likely to be an extremely large body of classified evidence that the prosecution will want to present.

Happy birthday, IntelNews

1 year intelNews

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A year ago today, on November 16, 2008, intelNews began its beta period, with a brief note I wrote on “Obama’s intelligence policy”. A year and over 750 postings later, Joseph Fitsanakis and I are still here, typing away on the ins and outs of the intelligence world. In these 12 months, we have enjoyed some welcome coverage in both the scholarly and popular press. We have also been threatened with a lawsuit, had our identities questioned, and denounced as “a very naive lot”, or as “spies” and “agent provocateurs” (in private correspondence). At the same time, we have seen visitor numbers rapidly exceed the 1,000-a-day mark and our email inboxes overfilled with messages, day after day. After 12 months of systematic blogging, one thing is clear: people around the world want to make sense of intelligence –that important, yet routinely unseen, parameter that shapes our lives through systems and techniques that remain largely unknown to the non-expert.

News you may have missed #0184

• Rumors of joint US-Israel-Egypt-Jordan spy meeting. Israeli site DEBKAfile is one of several Middle Eastern news outlets alleging that a secret meeting was held earlier this month between senior intelligence officials of the US, Israel, Egypt and Jordan.
• Germany won’t prosecute suspect in Litvinenko murder. Germany has dropped attempts to prosecute Dmitri Kovtun, a former Soviet military intelligence officer implicated in the 2006 killing in London of Russian former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Meanwhile the primary suspect in the case, former KGB bodyguard Andrey Lugovoy, who lives in Russia, said he may be ready to face questioning in the UK “under certain conditions”.
• FBI charged terrorism suspect after trying to recruit him. Tarek Mehanna, a Massachusetts man accused of plotting to kill Americans, was charged by the FBI only after he refused to work as an informant against Muslims, according to his lawyer. This is not the first time such allegations have surfaced.

News you may have missed #0183

• Did US Rep. Hoekstra compromise a secret NSA spy program? Rep. Peter Hoekstra (MI), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence panel, may have inadvertently compromised a sensitive National Security Agency email collection program while commenting on allegedly intercepted emails sent and received by Fort Hood shooter Malik Nadal Hasan.
• Blog requests readers’ help to examine released documents. Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog has issued a request for readers to help pore over thousands of US government documents relating to the proposed immunity for telephone companies involved in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The documents were released following a FOIA lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• An opportunity in Cuba for CIA field agents? They’d have to pose as McDonald’s restaurant workers.

Suspected IRA militant charged in undercover agent’s killing

Robert Nairac

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
A man suspected by British authorities to be a former member of the Irish Republican Army has been charged with participating in the killing of a British army undercover agent, who tried to infiltrate the IRA in the 1970s. Robert Nairac, a captain of the British Army’s Intelligence Corps, was among numerous British government agents who attempted to infiltrate the IRA from the 1960s onwards. Although educated at Oxford, Nairac studied Irish republican culture and put on a convincing Northern Irish accent in order to carry out the infiltration. His activities centered on patronizing various pubs in Catholic stronghold areas of Belfast, using the cover name “Danny McErlaine”, and pretending to be a member of the Official IRA (an IRA splinter faction) from north Belfast. But on May 14, 1977, a group of IRA members abducted Nairac from a pub in South Armagh and drove him to a remote location, where they interrogated him prior to executing him.

News you may have missed #0182

• China to keep Rio Tinto boss in prison. The Chinese government has extended (again) by two months a probe into Stern Hu, the jailed boss of Anglo-Australian mining corporation Rio Tinto. Hu was arrested by the Chinese last July on espionage charges.
• Czech spy agency objects to outing Cold War agents. Recently a Czech research center published an extensive list of names of agents of StB, the country’s main intelligence agency in the communist era. But StB’s post-communist successor, the ÚZSI, condemned the airing of the names, calling it “a massive violation of protection of sources that is part of intelligence work, which also may have a negative impact on the Czech Republic’s [current] interests”.
• Iran reportedly creates new domestic spy agency. A radical dissident Iranian group in Paris, with known ties to Washington, claims the Iranian regime has undertaken “the largest overhaul of the [country's] intelligence structure since 1989″.