Archives:
U.S. getting soft on Cuban spies?
On October 13, 2009, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard will issue new sentences for Fernando González, Luis Medina and Antonio Guerrero, three members of the Cuban Five spies. The latter two have been serving life sentences and…
Lebanon: Israeli spy toll increases
On Tuesday, Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper published a detailed update on the 22 most recently arrested ‘Israeli spies’ – part of the spy hunt that has been going on since April of this year. In case you were wondering, when…
Australian domestic spy chief speaks of threats to ...
David Irvine, who for many years headed Australia’s ultra secretive foreign intelligence agency (ASIS), recently shifted into a domestic intelligence role, and now – 4 months in – he’s started to talk about where the country’s at. As head of ASIO, Australia’s internal spy agency, Irvine is expected to…
Moroccan-born ‘Belgian spy’ gets life sentence
Although he claims that his contact with terrorist organizations the world over was all part of his undercover work for the Belgian government, the Moroccan courts believe otherwise and have jailed Abdelkader Belliraj (51) for the remainder of his life. He has been convicted of leading a terrorist…
Guinea pig spy flick flops
G-Force reviews are out and the consensus is: cool idea, great visual execution, star-studded cast, but the movie falls short of real innovation and interest. Just in case you’re not familiar with the concept: A team of three guinea pigs plus one mole are trained as federal spies. They are given…
UAE tries to spy via BlackBerrys
BlackBerry users in the UAE recently found out that a regular software update they were encouraged to download by the state-controlled service provider Etisalat was really a spy program that once installed, would give the government access to…
U.S. spy chief in favor of less secrecy
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this Wednesday, July 22 and it seems he’s looking to involve the private sector in intelligence operations. This is an indication of a few things: 1. the recognition of the need to bring in…
25 yrs after death, British double agent’s memoir ...
A quarter century after his death, Anthony Blunt – a British spy secretly working for the Russians – reveals some of the details of his clandestine life in a 30,000-word manuscript, which he penned after his very public exposure as a…
Germany gears up for Chinese spy scare
While China’s busy denying its hand in the decades-long economic espionage case that recently came to light in the U.S., Germany is ramping up to deal with a spy onslaught from the Chinese. According to the widely read German weekly Der Spiegel, a German intelligence agency has created the “China Task Force,” whose purpose is to…
Deutsche Bank spying on board members?
Germany’s biggest bank – Deutsche Bank – may face criminal charges for spying on board members who were suspected of being liberal with confidential company details. There’s also been talk of the bank spying on outspoken shareholder Michael Bohndorf. It is now up to state prosecutors…
China says U.S. lying about economic espionage
Last Thursday, July 16, Chinese-born engineer Dongfan ‘Greg’ Chung was convicted in the first economic espionage trial in the United States. China’s response to the implied accusation of being…
Need a light?
So you won’t be able to pick up a girl outside a bar by offering to light her cigarette with this lighter, but you may be able to pick up some incriminating evidence for later. Covering all the stops, this generic-looking…
Spies subsidize Chinese summer camp
The new approach in the U.S. intelligence community seems to be – let’s get them started early, real early. Plans for a ROTC-style program for college students with spy aspirations were announced recently, and now there’s news of the National Security…
China-born engineer guilty of economic espionage
At the beginning of June, the first economic espionage trial in the United States got under way. Today, about six weeks later, the verdict is in: an engineer who once worked for Boeing has…
Iran: nuclear weapons in 6 months?!
As spy agencies all over the West hazard guesses as to when Iran will officially join the ranks of nuclear world powers, a report recently issued by Stern, a weekly Hamburg publication, has sped up Iran’s trajectory substantially. Stern gives Iran 6 months, upon the…
China says has conclusive evidence against Australi ...
China has surprised just about everyone with its recent arrest of four employees of the world’s second largest mining company, Rio Tinto. The detainees – one Australian and three Chinese – have been accused…
Rush of cyber attacks in South Korea abates
The websites in South Korea that have recently been crashing under a series of Denial of Service (DoS) cyber attacks seem to be operating regularly again, since last Thursday’s assault. As a result, South Korea’s National Intelligence…
Spy charges against French woman baseless
The first time we got wind of the French woman who was recently arrested in Iran for spying, not too many details of her circumstances had yet been shared with the public – not even her name. Slowly, more information is…
Seven ‘spies’ beheaded in Somalia
In Somalia today, seven people were executed by the fanatic Islamic insurgency for being spies and followers of Christianity. The group responsible for the beheadings is Al Shabaab (Youth in Arabic), a rebel faction affiliated with Al Qaeda. Al Shabaab is committed to overthrowing the Somali government and imposing…
CIA misled Congress for 8 years
A group of seven Democrats, all members of the House Intelligence Committee, has just made public a rather controversial admission made by CIA Director Leon Panetta in closed-door testimony before the committee last month.
Panetta testified that the CIA routinely hid “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 through to June 2009. Although we do not know the…
Goldman code spy out on bail
Sergey Aleynikov – a Russian computer programmer who started working at Goldman Sachs in May 2007 and was recently accused of stealing code from the company – was released on $750,000 bail. In addition to…
British spy chief’s Facebook faux pas
Britain’s newly appointed spy chief has suffered his first international embarrassment and he hasn’t even started in his new role yet! Sir John Sawers (53), who will lead the UK’s MI6 intelligence agency come November, has been caught on Facebook with…
Iran arrests French woman for ‘spying’
France’s foreign ministry has appealed to the European Union for support in pressuring Iran to release yet another foreigner accused by the Iranians of spying. The French woman, an academic by profession, had been in Iran for…
CIA out to sabotage ex-employee’s writing career?
Stephen Lee used to work for the CIA as an operations manager. He now blogs for The Washington Examiner, and is getting the sneaky suspicion that his former employer is out to make his life in his new career a little difficult.
“I believe I am being subjected to a campaign of low-level harassment,” said Lee, who…
Former CIA spy laments Milan rendition
An ex-U.S. spy – once a CIA station chief in Italy – recently spoke to the Italian paper Il Giornale about his involvement in a 2003 CIA rendition heist, which took a Muslim cleric (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr) suspected of terrorist involvement from his home in…