Nigeria: House approves maritime security establishment March 17, 2010 (Ed: extracted) The House of Representatives is pushing ahead with the creation of a separate armed organisation to combat lawlessness in Nigeria’s maritime sector, with the adoption of its committee’s recommendations to establish the Maritime Security Agency (MASECA). During a public hearing on the bill in January the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), opposed the establishment of the body, saying it will duplicate their functions of regulating activities in the nation’s coasts. The Navy argued that the creation of such a body will retard the development of the force since the new body will be competing for “scarce resources” from government. It said its constitutional policing functions will be breached by the body which, according to the Navy, would not have the capacity and training to function properly. “The Agency would surpass the Nigerian Navy as the dominant force in Nigeria’s maritime domain,” the force said in its presentation during the hearing in January. “Simply put, the Maritime Security Agency would be a coast guard more powerful than the NN but without qualified personnel and assets in the first five years.” The committee said the new body will deal more with intelligence gathering and has already in its inventory, Radars, Unmanned Air Vehicles and Maritime Patrol Aircraft. Lawmakers on Tuesday adopted most of the recommendations of the House committee headed by Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi which include a provision that the head of the organisation will report to the President, through the National Security Adviser. The Agency, to be headquartered in Abuja, will be funded by the government and from additional maritime levies, and would have more security instruments that will enable it fight piracy more than the existing (NIMASA), the bill said. http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/News/5541712-147/house_approves_maritime_security_establishment.csp
Reports from 7-17 March 2010
Africa: 1 Nigeria: House approves maritime
security establishment 2. Nigeria: Jonathan sacks National Security
Adviser 2. Nigeria extradites Al-Qaeda suspect 3. Botswana: DIS a success - Seretse Europe: 4. Britain: Intelligence and Security
Committee publishes 2 annual reports 7. Nokia accused of selling spy equipment
to Iran 7. Bulgaria: Defence Minister: Govt, not
president should control intelligence 8. Germany: Platzeck’s Brandenburg
chancellery infiltrated by Russian spies US 9. Pentagon to investigate intelligence unit
that allegedly used contractors 10. Obama, Hill wage intel turf battle Australia 11. ASIO feels the strain as raw recruits take
key jobs Asia 12. India needs real-time decision-support
system to track terror 13. India to create money-laundering
database Middle East 14. Iran’s cyber-police hack US spy sites 15.Iran’s spies show how it’s done People 16. Israel spymaster and Mossad founding
father David Kimche dies at 82 17. US: Obama’s TSA nominee an
intelligence expert 17. Pakistan: Head of spy agency gets term
extended History Noteworthy Books
SA Intelligencer Number 72 18 March 2010
Initiator: Johan Mostert
Contributions and enquiries [email protected]
Africa
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Nigeria: Jonathan sacks National Security Adviser By Ihuoma Chiedozie, Abuja, 9 Mar 2010 (Ed: extracted) Acting President Goodluck Jonathan on Monday sacked the National Security Adviser, Maj.-Gen. Sarki Mukhtar (rtd), and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Aliyu Gusau (rtd), who held the same position during the Olusegun Obasanjo administration. Mukhtar’s removal followed a meeting of the National Security Council over the renewed violence in Jos, Plateau State. The short statement, which was titled “Gusau replaces Mukhtar as National Security Adviser,” reads, “The Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has appointed Lt.-Gen. Aliyu Gusau (rtd) as National Security Adviser. “He replaces Maj.-Gen. Sarki Mukhtar (rtd). Our correspondent gathered from a reliable source in the Presidency that Mukhtar’s removal was one of the “measures being taken to stabilise the security situation in the country.” It was gathered that Jonathan felt that the reoccurrence of the crisis in Jos, as well as recent security challenges in several parts of the country, suggested that the NSA was not on the top of his job, hence the need for a change. The source added that reports available to the Acting President also indicated that there were serious lapses on the part of the security agencies.
“The Acting President did not mince words in informing them (security chiefs) that they must perform or resign, or lose their jobs; he made it clear that the administration would not joke with the security of the lives and property of Nigerians in any part of the country. Also, it was gathered that recent reports linking Mukhtar to underground moves to replace Yar’Adua in 2011, or even become vice-president in case Jonathan emerges
substantive President, did not help his cause. Feelers in the Presidency indicate that Gusau is highly regarded in the government, and is seen as a stabilising force, especially in the manner he carried out the same assignment for Obasanjo. A source informed our correspondent that Jonathan wondered how the roving band of killers, believed to be behind the attacks, were able to plan and carry out the attacks
without attracting the attention of security agencies, who were supposed to be carrying out serious surveillance activities in the town. The security chiefs were also directed to investigate and find out how their officers in Jos were unable to get wind of the latest attacks, despite their surveillance activities.
http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201003093485678
Nigeria extradites Al-Qaeda suspect Cover Stories Mar 9, 2010 (Ed: extracted)
ABUJA— A TERRORIST suspected to belong to the Al-Qaeda network, Ibrahim Haman Ahmed, who was extradited to the United States of America by Nigerian government officials had been on the wanted list of the United States Central Intelligence Agency for more than two
years, security and diplomatic sources in Abuja told Vanguard, yesterday.
The man who was allegedly trained by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and working for the Al-Shabaab group in Somalia, was said to be the most senior figure of the terrorist organization in Nigeria. He was said to be trying to recruit young Nigerian Muslims to join the terrorist organization.
Interim Pres Jonathan
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Ahmed’s arrest and extradition to the United States was, however, said to be connected to his role in fighting the government of Somalia where he was said to have spent eight months. He was extradited from Nigeria to the United States through the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. Before then, he was said to have hidden somewhere in Sokoto and moving around the north western states of
Kano, Katsina, Kebbi and Zamfara states where he was said to have been targeting western educated youths for recruitment.
The arrest of the terror suspect who is suspected to be from Eritrea has, however, heightened American concerns about Nigeria which is seen as an emerging haven for Muslim terrorists around the world.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/03/09/nigeria-extradites-al-qaeda-suspect/
Botswana: DIS a Success - Seretse 11 March 2010
Justice and Security Minister, Ramadeluka Seretse on Tuesday said that since its establishment two years ago, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) has successfully delivered on its mandate of ensuring the nation's security and providing information to decision makers.
Seretse made these comments during his request of P3.2billion total budget for the financial year 2010/11. The ministry covers the department of Botswana Defence Force (BDF), Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS), Botswana Police Service (BPS) Prisons and Rehabilitation, and Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crimes (DCEC).
"The DIS has uncovered some networks operating in Botswana thus threatening our national interests. Such groupings were involved in the areas of terrorist related activities, fraud and money laundering, drug trafficking and distribution, human smuggling and trafficking, white collar crime and official corruption, weapons smuggling and distribution, illicit diamond dealings and corporate tax evasion to mention but a few," the minister said.
He said that some suspects have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted, saving the government millions of Pula. He said that
commercial banks are targets for fraudsters while schools are in danger of drug dealers. "The other area of concern has been the unauthorized distribution of generic pharmaceutical drugs by some local pharmacies acting in concert with some medical practitioners to fleece unsuspecting patients," he said.
He said that it is necessary for the DIS to acquire necessary infrastructure for its operations. "It should be noted that acquisition of offices, residential houses, security equipment and the building of communication infrastructure, takes a bigger share of the DIS budget during this financial year," said the minister.
The minister further revealed that government has deferred the construction of seven police stations and hundreds of staff houses during the 2010-11 financial year due to budgetary constraints.
The minister said that the rollout of Cluster Policing, Merger of two police forces and the introduction of Automated Fingerprint Identification System has led to a slight decrease in crime.
"The crime index for Penal Code offences declined from 53 crimes per 100 people in 2008 to 52 in the year 2009," he said. He added that even the number of road
Botswana Minister of Justice, Defence and Security
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accidents has gone down whilst fatalities went up. "The increase in fatalities is a function of the occupancy rate of vehicles involved in fatal accidents," he said.
Seretse said that the Automated Fingerprinting Identification System (AFIS), which automates the collection of fingerprints and palm prints data, has been completed. "This system will allow for efficient and effective tracing of fingerprints of people who commit crime. The system is currently being rolled out to out-stations, and to date 30 police stations out of 46 targeted have been covered," he said.
On the state of prisons, the minister said that they currently have a holding capacity of 4,219 inmates but there are 4,861 inmates. He said the escape from prisons by some inmates remains a serious challenge as 32 such cases were reported last year while 10 others involved immigration detainees.
"Therefore, the department needs to do more to curb further escapes by stepping up security installations in the prisons such as introducing guard dogs for patrol purposes, improved security fencing and improved surveillance," he said.
Minister of Justice, Defence and Security, Ramadeluka Seretse had a difficult time in Parliament on Wednesday evening trying to repair the damaged reputation of his last born organ - Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS).
After the majority of MPs hit hard at the security organisation, accusing it of eavesdropping on people's phone conversations, and that it is a terror squad instead of protecting people, Seretse put the blame on phone hackers.
He claimed that there are criminals, just like internet hackers, who target telephone conversations so that they can acquire information from unsuspecting users.
However, Seretse assured the House that the nation is safe from the DIS, and that they must feel free wherever they are and speak freely on their phones. "DIS is here for you, feel free wherever you are, speak freely on your phones," he declared.
This is despite complaints from opposition MPs and outspoken MPs from the ruling party that the DIS is following them and listening to their private conversations. It is said that even some ministers are afraid of speaking on their phones.
http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/201003120740.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/201003150160.html
Britain: Intelligence and Security Committee publishes Two Annual reports March 14, 2010 Spyblog (Ed: Excerpted) The Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, who is supposed to provide the public with independent scrutiny of the secret intelligence services, has actually written two Annual reports in the last 9 months.
The Intelligence and Security Committee's Annual Report for 2008-2009 was laid before Parliament today by the Prime Minister. A copy of the Report can be found here. A copy of the Government Response to the
Intelligence and Security Committee's Annual Report 2008-2009 can be found here.
These Annual Reports are not an adequate mechanism for holding the secret intelligence agencies to account, either for their waste of public money, or for how well they are doing their job. The debate on the Intelligence and Security Committee Report is scheduled for this Thursday 18th March 2010.
GCHQ - Government Communications Headquarters
Europe
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Nevertheless, work to tackle the threat of electronic attack is about a third below the level planned. We have been told that the shortfall is because of the difficulties GCHQ has had in recruiting and retaining skilled internet specialists in sufficient numbers - although specialist recruitment campaigns have been set up to try and address this problem. The loss of 35 laptop computers discovered back in 2008, including 3 which could have held Top Secret information.
MI5 - Security Service
The Security Service has continued its rapid recruitment programme and plans to grow to around 4,100 staff by the end of 2010/11 (compared with current staffing of approximately 3,500).We have since been informed that this target has been reduced to 3,800 MI6 - Secret Intelligence Service
MI6 still seems incapable of managing its capital expenditure and IT project finances.
This is the second year in a row that the Secret Intelligence Service has failed to manage its capital spend across the financial year, putting both efficiency gains and value-for-money gains at risk.
SIS has now appointed a senior official to manage IT budgets across the Service, an area where this kind of expenditure surge has been particularly prevalent. We hope that this appointment will help the department to plan more effectively and organise capital spending across the year.
SIS recruited 204 new staff during 2007/08, against a target of 230 (the remainder having been selected but had not yet started). As at 31 March 2009, SIS had 2,253 staff; this is predicted to increase to 2,527 by March 2010.
On the second point, the Chief explained that, due to the time taken to train new staff, and the time required for them to accumulate sufficient experience, the recent rise in staff numbers had yet to result in any real increase in terms of the numbers of staff
who were actually deployable. As a result, SIS has reviewed its training arrangements and the Intelligence Officer New Entrants Course (IONEC), which was previously open only to Intelligence Officers and took six months, has been redesigned into two three-month modules open to a wider group of staff. SIS hopes that this will allow for the speedier deployment of new entrants into operational jobs and provide greater flexibility in terms of providing a greater number of staff who can do a wider range of jobs.
With the significant growth in staff numbers in recent years, as previously mentioned, SIS now has a higher proportion of younger and less experienced officers. This carries significant risk - one of the keys to managing this is ensuring that officers without sufficient experience can at least have access to the existing knowledge and
expertise within the organisation.
Backup Data Centre In SR07 we didn't bid for the funds to do a new resilient facility. So we have done the initial study with the other two Agencies and that came back with a costing of about £*** million to £*** million. Prior to that GCHQ had done its own independent study on building a resilient data centre for itself and the prices were in that same sort of ballpark. As a result of those pieces of costing work, the three Agencies have concluded that none of the three of us have the funding within our baselines to pay that sort of bill. So we will be attempting to make the case in the next spending review to obtain the funding to do that. (Oral evidence - GCHQ, 24 January 2009). So none of the three UK intelligence agencies have their own, or a shared, properly resilient secure offsite disaster recovery computer centre.
The National Security Forum
107. When the Prime Minister announced the National Security Strategy in March 2008, he also outlined plans for a National Security
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Forum87 to advise the Ministerial Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development (NSID) on the strategy. The Cabinet Office told the Committee that it is envisaged that the Forum would meet around six times a year and described its expected composition: We also note that the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy has yet to be appointed. The other Whitehall departments and intelligence agencies seem to be ignoring this National Security Forum.
SCOPE and CLiC
The SCOPE programme was established in 2001 as a major interdepartmental IT project designed to facilitate more efficient and effective information sharing across the wider intelligence community. It was intended to be delivered in two phases:
• Phase 1: connecting key departments (such as the Home Office and SOCA) to the existing secure communications network used by the intelligence community; and
• Phase 2: improving and expanding the secure communications network and extending the system's capabilities.
SCOPE has been dogged continually by problems and we have repeatedly voiced concerns about the programme. After a two-year delay, Phase 1 was eventually implemented in late 2007, and the Committee was assured (in January 2008) that concerted efforts were being made to ensure successful and timely delivery of Phase 2. However, just three months later, as we reported last year, the decision had been taken to abandon SCOPE Phase 2. We reported that we were appalled at what appeared to be a waste of tens of millions of
pounds, and said that we would be investigating why this vital project failed, the associated cost implications and the options for a replacement system.107
However, there seems to be a more modest replacement programme underway called Collaboration in the Intelligence Community (CLiC):
Following the failure of SCOPE Phase 2, GCHQ and SIS set up an initiative called Collaboration in the Intelligence Community (CLiC). This is intended to be a low-risk,
inexpensive approach, providing incremental changes to existing systems, and designed to address the intelligence community's most urgent IT collaboration requirements. The Chief of SIS
told us:
SCOPE Overseas
The SCOPE Overseas project was initiated in November 2005, with the aim of providing secure email between some overseas posts and other domestic users on the UK Intelligence Messaging Network (UKIMN).
The UK infrastructure for SCOPE Overseas became operational in mid-2008. There are now 12 posts connected. In May 2009 the FCO told the Committee that *** would be connected in the coming months. The system will be rolled out to around 40 posts by March 2010. There is currently no FCO funding for further installations beyond April 2010.
So after 5 years, only a maximum of 40 British Embassies or Consulates, even though the UK is diplomatically represented in of over 120 countries, have access to this secure email system ? That is totally unacceptable. Every single British Embassy and Consulate should have secure communications technology available.
http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/blog/2010/03/14/intelligence-and-security-committee-publishes-two-annual-reports.html
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Nokia accused of selling spy equipment to Iran 8 March 2010
A comprehensive electronic surveillance system that was sold by the Nokia Siemens Network Group to Iran is capable of spying on almost all electronic communications, according to its brochure.
“The system can monitor all voice and data communications very efficiently. In addition, it can snatch messages with content considered suspicious,” according to Professor of Data Network Technology at the Aalto University, Jukka Manner.
The system monitors internet communications in addition to text and multimedia messaging, mobile and landline telephone calls, instant messages, e-mail communications, telefax communications, data transfer over the mobile network and mobile telephone positioning. “What more would anyone need for monitoring?” asks Manner.
Helsingin Sanomat reports that Nokia Siemens has confirmed that the brochure the
newspaper acquired for the Monitoring Center was of the same system sold to Iran. However, the company adds that the version sold was a trial version and did not have the capacity for internet surveillance.
Lauri Kivinen, Nokia Siemens Networks Head of Corporate Affairs and soon to be Director
General of YLE, has been criticised in the media for failing to be aware or honest about his company’s dealings. Kivinen, who has also been criticised
by advocates of free speech, has maintained that there was a misperception about the Iran deal.
Nokia Siemens Networks has previously sold the network surveillance equipment under the Trovicor brand, an offshoot of Siemens, in 2008. That same year saw the company deliver the surveillance equipment to Iran Telecom. Prior to the joint venture, network equipment had also been sold by Nokia Networks to the same Iranian operator.
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/03/08/nokia-accused-of-selling-spy-equipment-to-iran/
Bulgaria: Defense Minister: Govt, Not President, Should Control Intelligence Domestic , March 16, 2010
The executive branch rather than the President should be in control of Bulgaria’s intelligence services, according to Defense Minister Anyu Angelov.
Speaking Tuesday evening, Angelov has made it clear he was expressing his personal opinion. He said the issue is yet to be discussed.
In his words, the transfer of the responsibility over the National Intelligence Service and the National Protective Service from the President to the government should not be approved before the end of the term of the acting President, Georgi Parvanov.
As the impeachment scandal between Bulgaria’s President and ruling rightist
majority is currently raging, media reports pointed to rumors that the Borisov government considered snatching the control of the intelligence services from the President.
Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, has repudiated these rumors in a timely manner saying that no such transformation will be carried out before the end of Parvanov’s term in 2012.
Bulgaria’s National Security Strategy, which is currently being drafted by an inter-institutional working group headed by Tsvetanov and is expected to be ready by the end of May 2010, is expected to find a long-
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term solution for the legal status of the two intelligence services in question.
According to Defense Minister Angelov, all of the country’s intelligence services should be answerable to one and the same institution.
Currently, Bulgaria’s Military Intelligence answers to the Defense Minister, while the “civilian intelligence”, the National Intelligence Service, and the National Protective Service are under the command of the President.
General Angelov said that even though there has been some healthy competition between the two services, oftentimes they became redundant as they submitted one and the same pieces of information.
According to the Defense Minister, the Military Intelligence, the National Intelligence Service, and the National Protective Service (even though the last one is not technically an intelligence body) could be set together in
one and the same group whose head should be proposed by the Prime Minister.
In its recently released annual Human Rights Report on Bulgaria, the US State Department has pointed out that “The National Intelligence Service and the National Protective Service, which answer to the president, continued
to operate in the absence of judicial, executive, and legislative oversight.”
It has also noted the bill to reform Bulgaria’s State National Security Agency (DANS) adopted in November 2009 which “removed organized crime, drugs, dual-use goods, and transborder crime from the agency's jurisdiction and prohibited DANS from conducting controlled delivery and undercover operations. DANS is now strictly responsible for domestic intelligence analysis.“
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=114267
Germany: Platzeck's Brandenburg chancellery infiltrated by Russian spies Published: 13 Mar 10 The chancellery of Brandenburg Premier Matthias Platzeck has been infiltrated by spies working for the Russians, according to a magazine report.
Focus news magazine said on Saturday that despite the spies being uncovered, they were not prosecuted but simply moved to different jobs within the state authorities. In two cases the spies even moved jobs within the state chancellery – still within immediate reach of Platzeck, the magazine said.
One of the suspects is a high-ranking governmental civil servant, who according to files in the Czech interior ministry, had close contact to the Cold War-era Prague secret service.
The German secret service bugged and watched him for five months, during which time he met with a Russian secret agent handler. He has been given different work
within the Brandenburg state administration. A further connection was made between the head of the special Russian section for infiltration of German security institutions, and a woman working at the Brandenburg state chancellery.
This emerged during what the magazine described as intensive bugging of the Russian embassy in Berlin. It is thought the woman may have been recruited by the Russian services while studying in Moscow. She has also been moved within the chancellery.
Bulgaria's Defense Minister Anyu Angelov. Photo by BGNES
Matthias Platzeck
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A third alleged spy in the Brandenburg capital Potsdam was recruited by the Moscow secret service during the Cold War, and given false papers before he was hired by the chancellery to organise trips for Platzeck to Moscow.
Platzeck has come under fire for leading a coalition of his own Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the socialist Left party, which
includes many former members of the communist party and is considered untouchable by many mainstream parties.
Leading a state which was part of former East Germany, he has also called for reconciliation with those who ruled or supported the one-party state.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100313-25859.html
Pentagon to investigate intelligence unit that allegedly used contractors Washington Post, March 16, 2010 (excerpted)
The Pentagon said Monday that it was looking into allegations that a Defense Department official had set up an intelligence unit staffed by contractors to hunt insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan under the guise of social and cultural information-gathering.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to confirm or deny whether a criminal investigation had been opened into activities by Michael D. Furlong, a former Special Operations officer who now works as a senior civilian officer for the Joint Information Operations Warfare Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Tex.
Furlong's operation, which included numerous former intelligence and Special Operations officials now in the private sector, raised hackles at the CIA, where it was considered "a semi-independent intelligence-collection operation in a war zone," according to a U.S. official familiar with the agency's concerns.
Unease about Furlong rose to the highest levels of the intelligence agency, with several briefings provided to CIA Director Leon Panetta.
Although the military apparently terminated the operation late last year, Geoff Morrell, spokesman for Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates, said Monday night that the Pentagon was "in the process of trying to get to the bottom" of the allegations "and determine if any policy or legal guidelines were ignored." If so, he said, "the department will take immediate corrective action and quickly pursue accountability through appropriate channels."
The U.S. Strategic Command, the parent organization of the information operations center, confirmed that Furlong is a full-time civilian employee but did not respond to requests to clarify the nature of his job.
The allegations of a contractor intelligence operation first appeared Sunday night on the New York Times Web site, which said that the operation was designed to help track and kill suspected militants. It noted that it is illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Agreements with the government of Pakistan also prohibit the U.S. military from conducting undercover operations there.
The number of government agencies working in Afghanistan -- many of them involved in intelligence work -- and the expansion of vaguely defined "information operations" and "strategic communications" by the military have led to overlap and confusion. The situation has been compounded by the Obama administration's expanded mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
United States
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According to several government and civilian sources, Furlong's operation was funded under a $24.6 million contract by the Defense Department's Joint IED Defeat Organization, which was set up early in the Iraq war to combat insurgents' roadside bombs. His operation was part of a larger military information program, called Capstone.
In an August review of Afghanistan operations, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in that country, wrote that "CAPSTONE contracts . . . should be supported as these will significantly enhance . . . monitoring and assessment efforts."
Morrell called information operations "an essential weapon in modern warfare." Among the private firms working with Furlong was International Media Ventures, a relatively new "strategic information" company formed by retired Special Operations officers. Military officials stationed in Afghanistan said that Furlong referred on a number of occasions to work he was doing with former CIA officer Duane Clarridge. Among a number of activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Clarridge was privately retained last year to negotiate with insurgents who had kidnapped New York Times reporter David Rohde. Rohde eventually escaped.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/15/AR2010031504151.html?nav=rss_nation/special
Obama, Hill wage intel turf battle Washington Times, Wednesday, March 17, 2010 (Ed: excerpted)
The Obama administration and Capitol Hill are engaged in a major turf battle as lawmakers face fresh resistance from the White House over a push to increase their oversight of the nation's intelligence agencies.
Both houses of Congress have passed bills that would force officials at the CIA and other intelligence agencies to notify a broader group of lawmakers of key operations and give congressional investigators greater latitude to examine the intelligence community. But as House and Senate negotiations try to hammer out a final agreement, the White House - which itself has had a turbulent relationship with the intelligence community - this week said either of those moves could draw a presidential veto.
Top Democrats said the negotiations are at a delicate state and that the heart of the dispute is the balance of power between the executive and the legislature over sensitive intelligence policies and operations.
In a sharply worded letter to the negotiators obtained by The Washington Times, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter R.
Orszag said the White House is trying to give Congress access while letting the intelligence community do its work effectively.
He said the current provisions "undermine this fundamental compact between the Congress and the president regarding the reporting of sensitive intelligence matters ... an arrangement that for decades has balanced congressional oversight responsibilities with the president's responsibility to protect sensitive national security information."
The question of oversight of the intelligence community has proved a touchy subject for Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue since Mr. Obama's election.
The House and Senate bills would overhaul the current system of notification, under which the chairmen and ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees - along with party leadership in both chambers - are kept apprised of covert intelligence activities. Though different, both the House and Senate bills require that all members be informed of either the "main features" or "general
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information" of activity that the so-called "Gang of Eight" is briefed about.
The bills would both also give Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, jurisdiction over intelligence matters to conduct oversight investigations. The tug of war has produced some strange bedfellows - several Republicans are backing the Obama administration's opposition to the GAO provisions, for example, while House and Senate Democrats are at loggerheads with the Democratic president.
The final House bill keeps the current information-sharing structure, but requires that all members be given "general information" regarding a Gang of Eight notification. It also demands that the administration provide the legal authority under which it is conducting a given intelligence activity.
The Senate version of the bill also includes the legal explanation provision and requires the administration to brief the entire committee on the "main features" of an activity shared through a Gang of Eight briefing.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/17/obama-hill-wage-intel-turf-battle/
ASIO feels the strain as raw recruits take key jobs March 7, 2010
ASIO is putting young, inexperienced officers in senior jobs, as the domestic spy agency struggles to absorb an influx of recruits hired in an unprecedented expansion of the organisation. Key positions in combating terrorism and detecting foreign spies are being left vacant as ASIO trains new officers, recruited in slick advertising campaigns targeting generations X and Y.
ASIO's staff has doubled in the past six years, but two-thirds have less than five years' experience, according to its unreported submission to the Joint Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee last month. While the submission says it has benefited from the skills brought by new staff, it reveals the proportion of seasoned agents is falling, with ASIO struggling to maintain the number of officers in key intelligence roles.
As the organisation expands, officers have been rapidly promoted beyond their level of skill, at a time when the federal government's new counter-terrorism white paper warns the threat of terrorism is ''a persistent and permanent feature of Australia's security
environment''. ''The need to fill critical senior officer vacancies, particularly in the intelligence-focused areas, has drawn heavily on officers with limited or narrow experience in the organisation and who may not have well-developed leadership skills,'' the submission says.
ASIO's workload has increased exponentially since the September 11, 2001, terrorism
attacks in the US, and the Bali bombings in 2002. Its budget for this year is more than $400 million, four times more than in 2003. Under legislation introduced in Parliament last month,
combating people-smuggling will be added to its responsibilities.
The organisation's $606 million headquarters being built on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin - dubbed the Lubyanka on the Lake by Canberra wits - will house a new multi-agency counter-terrorism control centre. The submission reveals an organisation straining under huge expansion.
It is struggling to attract enough linguists and recruits from ethnic backgrounds, with skills critical to preventing home-grown terrorism
Australia
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and catching foreign spies. It also reveals that coping with a massive influx of new staff - numbers have doubled since 2003 to 1609, and will peak at 1860 next year - has distracted the agency from its key functions, as it juggles its human resource management.
It says the growth ''has occurred at a time when there has been little, if any, relief in the rapid operational tempo'' - jargon for the growing pressure of its intelligence work.
The organisation is overwhelmingly young: half the staff have been in the agency three years or less, their median age is 36, while only about 300 have more than 10 years' experience. Only about 18 per cent of ASIO staff are intelligence officers - the people who detect evidence of terrorism or espionage - and the proportion is ''growing slowly'', with the area ''difficult to grow and sustain''.
At the same time, it appears ASIO staff are happy in the service - only 4.5 per cent of staff left last year, a dramatic fall on the previous year.
The expansion has created other problems: checking the background of potential recruits means ASIO officers are diverted from their intelligence and security roles.
A $2 million advertising campaign last year attracted 12,550 applicants. Of those, 564 underwent ''Top Secret (Positive Vetting)'', a detailed examination of their background to ensure they can be trusted with secrets.
ASIO aims to vet applications within 16 weeks, but sometimes it can take more than six months, ''particularly for applicants who have complex backgrounds, or when there are matters that need to be resolved''.
''The long lead times associated with the recruitment and vetting process result in critical vacancies remaining unfilled for extended periods.''
Recruiting linguists remains a ''challenge''. While it has recruited ''a larger number'' of staff from ethnically diverse backgrounds, ''a range of cultural and other factors'' mean the ethnic diversity of ASIO's workforce is below Australian Public Service levels.
A younger workforce, in which women account for 45 per cent of the total, creates other issues. They are in an age group that has families, leading to an increase in the number taking parental leave and working part time.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/asio-feels-the-strain-as-raw-recruits-take-key-jobs-20100306-ppta.html
India needs real-time decision support system to track terror PC NATION, March 12, 2010
Home Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday called for a sound real-time decision support system to track down terrorists and organised criminals who had developed various channels of communication with the help of technology. “The terrorists and organised criminals have developed overt and covert technologies, including Information Communication Technology. This has made the job of law and order professionals far more challenging than ever before,” he said addressing the Silver Jubilee function of the National Crime Record
Bureau. The Home Minister said the country needed solutions that could offer robust, real-time and validated decision support systems for the police leadership to evolve remedial and pro-active strategies. “The sheer magnitude of crime in a federal polity of our geographical size makes this task a really challenging one,” he said.
Chidambaram added that the challenges posed by criminality in general and other more serious manifestations of crime in particular like terrorism, insurgency, Leftwing
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extremism, trans-national crimes, drugs and arms trafficking, cyber crimes tend to establish that war against the Indian state was being fought more in the hinterland than on the borders.
“Today we are fighting our battles on individual pitches. We need to connect, coordinate and supplement our efforts both at micro and macro levels,” he said. Referring to the Home Ministry’s Rs 2,000 ambitious Crime, Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) project, the Home Minister said a conscious decision has been taken to mandate the NCRB to roll out the CCTNS. “Through the CCTNS, we intend to create a national databank of crime and criminals and their biometric profiles,” he said. This database will have a handshake with databases of 21 other agencies of the criminal justice system like courts, jails, immigration
and passport authorities, and subsequently be extended to other national agencies through the NATGRID so that terror and crime could be fought more professionally.
“It will also create a mechanism to provide public services like registration of online complaints, ascertaining the status of case registered at the police station, verification of persons etc,” he said. Chidambaram, however, expressed disappointment over the initial delay in implementation of the CCTNS project. “If we remain firm, determined and have complete control, it is possible to limit the slippage in some stages”.
He admitted that, though the initial easy tasks of the CCTNS project had been completed, the key works were yet to be done and hoped that the NCRB would be able to do it efficiently and in time
http://www.dailypioneer.com/241498/India-needs-real-time-decision-support-system-to-track-terror-PC.html
India to create money-laundering database NEW DELHI, March 9 (UPI)
The Indian government is setting up a centralized database to coordinate intelligence from central security agencies in its battle against money laundering and terrorist funding.
The database would act as a "ready reckoner" for different security, as well as law and order enforcement, groups, a report by the Press Trust of India said.
Sources in the home ministry said the goal is to greatly improve detection of illegal money movement within and outside the country and among groups or institutions using banks and other intermediaries.
The database would be created by the Financial Intelligence Unit-India, the national agency responsible for processing and analyzing information relating to suspect financial transactions.
The government announcement comes after an alarming increase in the numbers of suspicious and counterfeit money transactions in 2009. A finance ministry report said, the Financial Intelligence Unit-India detected 4,400 suspicious transactions last year, more than double the figure for 2008.
Banks also reported a major surge in counterfeit currency transactions. They reported just less than 8,600 incidences of receiving counterfeit money in 2008 but noted more than 35,700 last year.
The government also received 69 requests for information from foreign financial intelligence units while Indian institutions sent 17 similar requests to other countries, it said.
The government often works with foreign police organizations to investigate money laundering which is usually connected to
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cross-border drug dealing, as was the case in early December.
Indian police in New Delhi acting with British police arrested Naresh Kumar Jain, suspected of being one of the world's leading underworld bankers and also wanted in the United States.
The Serious and Organized Crime Agency in the United Kingdom had had Jain, 50, under investigation since 2006. Agency officers said they believe him responsible for laundering millions of dollars, including drug money in Britain, of profits from organized crime in the past several years,a report in The Guardian newspaper said at the time.
Jain, also known as Naresh Patel, was arrested in April 2007 by Dubai police but jumped bail in 2008. He allegedly ran his operations out of Dubai and was capable of shifting up to $2.2 billion of money a year to any country of a client's choosing.
Much of Jain's money was suspected of being moved by the informal hawala, an honor-based money transfer system primarily in the Middle East, East Africa and South Asia. His property in Dubai was searched and police said they found banking and wire-transfer evidence of layering, a money-laundering technique to disguise the origin of sham commodities trading that had links to a finance company in Manhattan, The Guardian report said.
The U.S. government seized $4.3 million of Jain's money and another $2.3 million from his business dealings worldwide has been frozen.
Jain remains in jail in New Delhi but insists that India's Narcotics Control Bureau has framed him, according to a report by the Press Trust of India. His suspected accomplice in hawala, Pakistani national but Dubai-based Ahmed Parvez, is being prosecuted in Italy, the bureau said.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2010/03/09/India-to-create-money-laundering-database/UPI-40151268140680/
Iran's cyber-police hack US spy sites Policing, 15th March 2010
Iranian security forces have arrested 30 people accused of waging cyber-war against the country with the backing of the United States.
A few hours after announcing the arrests the Islamic Revolutionary Guards said they had hacked 29 websites they allege are funded by US spooks. The sites use a cover of human rights activity to disguise an espionage network.
Tehran's Public and Revolutionary Court said on Saturday that the network of sites was designed to collect information about Iran's nuclear programme. The sites were also accused of: "provoking sedition and illegal
demonstrations and rallies through releasing unreal and unfounded news and reports after the June presidential elections ... providing media and news support for the Jundollah terrorist group and the monarchist opposition groups."
The network was accused of distributing 70 million copies of US-made anti-filtering software.
Iranian authorities said the sites were funded by the US via opposition groups like the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization and monarchist groups.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/15/iran_cyber_war/
Middle East
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Iran's spies show how it's done
13 March 2010 (ed: Excerpted)
The dramatic arrest of Abdulmalik Rigi, Iran's most wanted man, on February 23 continues to be shrouded in mystery. But with information and insights gleaned from security sources in Tehran, Asia Times Online can reveal some of the most intricate background details leading to this stunning arrest. The imagery - and the concomitant political message - was compelling. The image of a young man being surrounded by balaclava-clad security officers by the side of a small commercial plane was designed to send the strongest possible message to Western intelligence services, their political masters and the Western public in general. If the West led by the mighty United States has failed in its nearly nine-year pursuit of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his
deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, embattled Iran managed to get its man with minimal political and economic cost. Aside from frustrating American subversion efforts in Iran's southeast, the capture of the Jundallah leader sends an unmistakable message that in the intelligence wars of the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran has once again seized the initiative. The repercussions of this will be felt across all spheres and at all levels, boosting Iran's diplomatic and political posture in the region, and thus making the country less vulnerable to American and Israeli bullying.
Iranian authorities believed their country to be immune from the kind of Sunni militant terrorism that had plagued neighboring countries, in particular Pakistan and Iraq. The idea that Shi'ite-majority Iran with its deep-rooted culture and civilization and strong sense of national identity and cohesion could fall victim to indigenous practitioners of this retrograde and savage form of terrorism
hadn't even crossed the minds of many Iranian security officials. This is not so much a failure at the intelligence and security levels, but an indication of profound cultural arrogance and misplaced self-assuredness. Jundallah's strong religious and sectarian rhetoric, coupled with its tactics of suicide bombings and beheadings (painfully reminiscent of the atrocities perpetrated by Sunni jihadi groups in neighboring Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan), was a major shock to Iranian security officials, who by 2004 had
begun to realize the extent of the problem, and quickly took remedial action. The Islamic Republic prides itself on having efficient and adaptive security and intelligence services. Iranian officials often cite the successful experience of
these agencies in countering a broad range of security and
intelligence threats, including terrorism by left-wing and secessionist groups and intense espionage and subversion activities by Western intelligence services, over the past 30 years to underscore their skills and capabilities. It seems that the full gamut of these capabilities was deployed against Jundallah and its local allies in Iran and Pakistan to great effect, to the extent that the group is now for all intents and purposes decapitated and probably a spent force. Using old tribal espionage networks established decades ago, the Ministry of Intelligence successfully penetrated Jundallah, recruiting many of its members, including top commanders. Although security sources in Tehran decline to comment on the matter, sources close to Jundallah-centered investigations in Tehran and Zahedan (capital of Sistan and Balochistan province) claim that the Ministry of Intelligence had recruited Rigi's younger brother, Abdulhamid.
Abdulmalik Rigi
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Certainly, the behavior of Abdulhamid Rigi and the leniency afforded him by Iranian security and judicial authorities has raised many questions and lends credence to the suspicion that Abdulhamid was recruited as an agent, probably in late 2007.
Despite having been tried and sentenced to death for several murders, Abdulhamid has regularly given interviews to Iranian media since his ostensible "arrest" in 2008. In these interviews he has claimed to have met American diplomats and secret agents in Karachi and Islamabad in Pakistan, thus buttressing the unflinching belief of Iranian intelligence chiefs that Jundallah has had a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tail all along.
But there is something distinctly unusual about Abdulhamid Rigi's media appearances insofar as he seems more like an enthusiastic and skillful prop for his new masters rather than a captured and broken terrorist leader.
The precise details surrounding Abdulmalik Rigi's arrest are the subject of considerable debate. The Iranian government is content for confusion to prevail, especially since it feels it has succeeded in achieving two immediate post-arrest public relations
objectives; to depict the operation as an all-Iranian affair (with no assistance rendered by any foreign intelligence service) and to paint Rigi as an American agent.
By any standard, Abdulmalik Rigi's arrest is a major success for the Islamic Republic's intelligence services. This dramatic operation has boosted the morale of Islamic Republic loyalists throughout the Middle East and caused considerable dismay and embarrassment to Iran's Western enemies.
Whether the Islamic Republic will be able to reap the full political and diplomatic dividends of this major intelligence success will depend on large measure to what extent Iranian policymakers can think imaginatively about all the conflict points between Iran and the United States, especially in regards to policy towards Pakistan and Afghanistan and the nuclear standoff. It will also depend on to what extent Iran can keep up the momentum of this success in the intelligence and security sphere with a view to continuing to deter Israeli military aggression, either against Lebanon or Syria, or far less likely against Iran itself.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LC13Ak01.html
Israel: Spymaster and Mossad founding father David Kimche dies at 82 Former top Mossad operative David Kimche, one of Israel's top diplomats and a classic intelligence and spymaster, died Monday at the age of 82. Kimche joined the Mossad spy agency in the early 1950s, and was in essence one of the organization's founding fathers, among those who designed its doctrine and modus operandi. He was involved in just about every aspect of the Mossad over the course of his service, eventually reaching the position of deputy head of Mossad. Kimche left the Mossad in 1979, after almost 30-years, due to a quarrel with the then Mossad Chief Yitzhak Hofi. Shortly after his retirement, Foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir, who he knew from their Mossad days, appointed him the foreign ministry's director general. Kimche was Israel's point man in the Iran-contra affair, in which Washington authorized Israel to sell U.S. weapons to Iran in violation of an international embargo. Kimche left the foreign ministry after six years turned to private business, amongst other places in Africa and the Persian Gulf, and continued to serve in various public capacities. In his last years, Kimche was involved in initiating peace talks with the Palestinians, he was the president of the Israel Council of Foreign Relations, and two years ago he signed a petition supporting talks with the Hamas.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155157.html
People
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US: Obama's TSA nominee an intelligence expert March 9, 2010
President Obama on Monday nominated a new head of the Transportation Security Administration, a retired Army general and intelligence expert who would oversee the nation's airline passenger screening system. Robert A. Harding would be the fifth person in nine years to head the agency and, if confirmed, would arrive as the Obama administration adjusts security operations in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day airliner bombing.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-tsa-nominee9-2010mar09,0,5621298.story
Pakistan: Head of Spy Agency Gets Term Extended March 9, 2010
Pakistan's top spy can remain in his position for another year, Pakistan's army announced today, keeping in place a three-star general who United States officials have become convinced is committed to flushing militants out of his country.
Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director-general of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, would have had to take mandatory retirement later this month without the one year extension, which was officially declared today but informally granted weeks ago.
United States officials, many of whom are deeply suspicious of the ISI's relationship with the Taliban, have come to believe that keeping Pasha in place will facilitate efforts to flush out Taliban safehavens from Pakistan. The ISI leads Pakistan's efforts against al Qaeda and the Taliban, and works closely with the CIA.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/10/90186/pakistani-spy-chief-crucial-to.html
Britain: ‘Spyclists’ spread alarm : Hitler Youth had Britain on edge Wednesday, March 10, 2010 (excerpted)
LONDON (AP) — Clouds of war were gathering over Europe, and the English police officer was concerned. A group of black-clad Germans had been spotted heading for London — by bicycle.
Newly declassified British intelligence files reveal the ripples of alarm that spread through the country as Hitler Youth cyclists toured Britain in 1937. Reports of sightings poured in from local police amid fears the teenagers might be two-wheeled “spyclists” scouting the country for a future invasion.
He enclosed a clipping from the local newspaper, which failed to convey much sense of menace. It recounted how “the homey atmosphere familiar at an English fireside at the Christmas season prevailed when the Spalding Rotary Club entertained a party of German youths to a sausage-and-mashed potato supper.”
Another police report warned that the Germans were “in possession of cameras” and had been seen taking pictures. Another document described how a Hitler Youth group was kept under surveillance as it arrived at London’s Liverpool Street station, dressed in black shorts, brown shirts,
History
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backpacks and “various pictorial Scout movement badges.” The undercover agent reported that “there was no untoward incident” as the Germans took the subway across town.
However, organized groups of Hitler Youth also toured other nations in the 1930s that eventually became the victims of Nazi aggression, such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia. They reportedly took part in reconnoitering roads and bridges and in other activities that helped the Nazis map their invasion routes.
Still, the MI5 spy agency did not appear to have been overly alarmed by the Hitler Youth presence. MI5 chief Vernon Kell responded to one report on the cyclists with a note: “Should they come this way, which is unlikely, I will let you know any information that I can obtain.”
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/mar/10/spyclists-spread-alarm/
Germany/Vatican: Nazis planned to infiltrate Vatican with spies dressed as monks Rome: 15 Mar 2010
Germany hatched a plan during World War Two to infiltrate the Vatican with spies disguised as monks, according to secret MI5 intelligence reports.
Officials in Germany thought the idea of agents posing as monks and priests in a cloister would be the perfect cover for them. A Nazi sympathiser
living in Rome came up with the idea and it was quickly seized upon by officials in Berlin who saw it as the ideal opportunity to keep up with Allied activity in the city.
The plan is revealed in MI5 reports held at the National Archives in Kew and which have now been declassified - and it comes just days after other files revealed how Germany had also tried to infiltrate the Boy Scouts. Operation Georgian Convent as it was called involved the purchase of a building in Rome by Michael Kedia, a Russian anti communist Nazi sympathiser from Georgia (Russian Republic of) who was also known to British intelligence.
Officials in Germany thought the idea of agents posing as monks and priests in a cloister would be the perfect cover for them and enable them to covertly carry out spying work as during the war the Vatican remained neutral. Money was provided from Germany and a building to be used as the Georgian cloister was bought by Kedia in the Monteverde district of Rome, just to the north of St Peter's.
Six agents were sent to the cloister to pose as monks and seminarians but they aroused the suspicion of Vatican officials for their lack of knoweldge on Catholic doctrine - and their interest in women. However, the plan was thwarted after a tip off to the Vatican who wrote a letter to Germany's Ambassador for the Holy See saying it had been informed of the plot and "deplored" by it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7441937/Nazis-planned-to-infiltrate-Vatican-with-spies-dressed-as-monks.html
Photo: GETTY
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US: How Reagan's propaganda succeeded Robert Parry, Consortium, 8/3/10 (Ed: Excerpted – thanks Nel Marais!)
In the 1980s, CIA propaganda experts and military psy-war specialists oversaw the creation of special programs aimed at managing public perceptions in targeted foreign countries as well as inside the United States, according to declassified documents at Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Library.
These recently discovered documents buttress previously disclosed evidence that Reagan’s CIA Director William J. Casey played a key behind-the-scenes role in pushing this political action initiative, which recruited well-heeled private-sector conservatives to subsidize the secretive government operations.The documents show that Casey used a senior CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist named Walter Raymond Jr., who was placed inside the National Security Council in 1982, to oversee the project and to circumvent legal prohibitions against the CIA engaging in propaganda that might influence U.S. public opinion or politics.
In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, those and other conservative foundations poured millions of dollars into right-wing think tanks, media outlets and anti-journalism attack groups that targeted American reporters who challenged the Reagan administration’s propaganda. The early planning papers also indicated a desire to use this relatively overt system to funnel money to pro-U.S. trade unions in Asia, Africa and Latin America in support of a variety of political operations, including setting up television stations and funding print publications.
Eventually, Casey’s concept of a global initiative led to the founding of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 ostensibly for the purpose of promoting foreign democratic institutions. But the NED also created a cover for the United States to funnel money to pro-U.S. groups in hostile countries. And it subsidized Washington’s growing community of neoconservatives who wrote op-ed articles in leading newspapers and went on TV news shows advocating an aggressive U.S. foreign policy
www.consortiumnews.com/2010/030810.html
Top 10 Think Tanks – Worldwide (Non-US)
1. Chatham House, UK
2. Transparency International, Germany
3. International Crisis Group, Belgium
4. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Sweden
5. Amnesty International, UK
6. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), UK
7. Adam Smith Institute, UK
8. French Institute of International Relations, France
9. Center for European Policy Studies, Belgium
10. German Institute for International and Security Affairs, (SWP, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik), Germany
Source: 2009 Global Go To Think Tank Rankings (TT Index) last version.pdf
Noteworthy
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Developing a Common Understanding of Unconventional Warfare Lieutenant Colonel Mark Grdovic, USA, Special Operations Command Central in the latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly.
The current USSOCOM- and USASOC approved UW definition is significant for several reasons. First and foremost, it provides instant clarity to decisionmakers. With clarity come credibility, confidence, and trust, all of which are essential in the relationship between the special operations community and senior decisionmakers. Secondly, this definition brings a degree of accountability previously absent from this topic. Specifically, it ensures that individuals and organizations possess the associated professional knowledge and operational capabilities to claim proficiency in UW.
www.ndu.edu%2Fpress%2Fjfq_pages%2Feditions%2Fi57%2Fgrdovic.pdf
An Insider's Guide to 150 Spy Sites in London (Paperback)
by Mark Ian Birdsall (Author), Deborah Plisko (Author), Deborah McDonald
To most people, they are just anonymous flats, houses and buildings scattered around London.
But for those fascinated with the secret world of spies and the work of the intelligence services, they are places of mystery and intrigue. Now, dozens of locations where both domestic and foreign spies have “lived, worked and played” have been brought together in a new book — The Insider's Travel Guide to 150 Spy Sites in London, written by professional spy-watchers Mark Birdsall and Deborah Plisko.
Sso far as they could establish, none of the buildings and sites in the book were still used by intelligence services.
I-SPY LIST OF ESPIONAGE SITES
• Café Daquise, near South Kensington station East European cuisine is still served at this café where Christine Keeler, the call girl at the centre of the Profumo scandal, would meet her lover, Eugene Ivanov, a Soviet embassy attaché at the nearby Soviet Embassy.
• Brompton Oratory, Brompton Road Behind a marble pillar on the right inside the front door can be found a dead letter drop site used by the KGB in the height of the Cold War.
• 54 Broadway, close to St James's Park station Home to MI6 for many years from 1926 onwards, despite a sign on front door saying it was the office of a fire extinguisher company. There was a secret entrance at the rear at 21 Queen Anne's Gate. The building is now leased as offices.
• Imperial House, 80-86 Regent Street Used in the Thirties by Russian spies, it was later established as a base for the British intelligence services for concealing front companies and agent handlers. Now private offices and apartments.
Books
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• 19 Upper Cheyne Row, Chelsea Now a private property, this was once home to a front company used by businessman and MI6 agent Greville Wynne. Wynne used it to recruit and “turn” Oleg Penvoksy, a Soviet intelligence officer who later spied for Britain.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23812350-declassified-secret-london-haunts-of-the-real-life-spooks.do
A History of the Egyptian Intelligence Service: A History of the Mukhabarat, 1910-2009 Owen L. Sirrs
This book analyzes how the Egyptian intelligence community has adapted to shifting national security threats since its inception 100 years ago. Starting in 1910, when the modern Egyptian intelligence system was created to deal with militant nationalists and Islamists, the book shows how the security services were subsequently reorganized, augmented and centralized to meet an increasingly sophisticated array of challenges, including fascism, communism, army unrest, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, conservative Arab states, the Muslim Brotherhood and others. The book argues that studying Egypt's intelligence community is integral to our understanding of that country's modern history, regime stability and human rights record; Intelligence studies have been described as the 'missing dimension' of international relations. It is clear that intelligence agencies are pivotal to understanding the nature of many Arab regimes and their decision-making processes, and there is no published history of modern Egyptian intelligence in either a European language or Arabic, though Egypt has the largest and arguably most effective intelligence community in the Arab world.
Publishing the Intelligencer is a labour of love, an awareness campaign, and an educational vehicle. It will not be used for commercial purposes and email addresses are confidential. Previous editions can be found at http://4knowledge-za.blogspot.com/
Notice: The SA Intelligencer does not confirm the correctness of the information carried in the media, neither does it analyse the agendas or political affiliations of such media. The SA Intelligencer’s purpose is informing our readers of the developments in the world of intelligence for research and environmental scanning purposes. We only use OSINT from free open sources and not those from fee-based sources. The SA Intelligencer contains copyrighted material - the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We do not take responsibility for the correctness of the information contained herein. The content has been harvested from various news aggregators, web alerts, lists etc. This work is in the Public Domain. To view a copy of the public domain certification, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
Contact Dalene Duvenage at [email protected] should you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe.
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