Category: An Operative's Perspective
It’s one thing to stay on top of all the international espionage news – it’s another thing all together to read between the lines and figure out what’s really happening. Below you’ll find the incisive thoughts, musings and analysis of an operative who used to work undercover for the U.S. government. For two decades, Haggai Carmon, an international lawyer and the author of the Dan Gordon Thriller Series, chased multimillion dollar, white-collar fraudsters (and sometimes terrorists) to thirty countries around the world. For the perspective of an insider, you’ve come to the right place.
Pentagon Pushes For Greater Spy Powers
Picture this spy: A Syrian soldier, wearing mufti, dressed in a suit, fluent in Syrian and Iraqi Arabic. He’s in a rattletrap taxi in Syria going to meet an agent who says he can offer rebels the Syrian government’s order of battle. The spy, from Army intelligence, has spent 18 months cultivating this connection. The source…
The Swiss government’s decision, on February 12, to freeze Hosni Mubarak’s assets in Swiss banks will probably cause sleepless nights to other Middle Eastern rulers who liked to keep themselves in the sun and their assets in the dark. (Cynics will wonder what the Swiss government suddenly discovered that it didn’t know about…
A Cyber War Against Iran: Whodunit?
By Haggai Carmon
The Iranians are frantically looking for those responsible for infecting their nuclear and industrial facilities with Stuxnet, an extremely sophisticated and dangerous viral computer malworm.
The Iranians should also worry what could come next in this cyber war. Their country’s electrical system may fail. Valves and spigots of a sewage treatment facility could be turned…
Iranian Scientist Shahram Amiri Answers Some Questi ...
By Haggai Carmon
I don’t purport to suggest that Shahram Amiri or the Iranian intelligence services read my July 13 Op Ed (in which I posed ten questions following Amiri’s public surfacing in the U.S.) and then rushed to respond. That said, Amiri’s July 15 appearance on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s public television offered some answers,…
One Dead Israeli Spy, Two Theories of Double Loyalt ...
By Haggai Carmon
In June 2007 Ashraf Marwan, an Egyptian businessman, fell to his death from the balcony of his London apartment.
Did he fall, jump or get a push? These questions have lingered for the past three years and remain unanswered. If he was murdered, then his death could help us figure out whether Marwan was a loyal…
Ten Questions Regarding the Case of the Missing Ira ...
By Haggai Carmon
Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, went missing in May 2009 during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Other than the fact that Amiri subsequently resurfaced in the U.S., almost everything else in the espionage-thriller style case is disputed publicly. The barrage of information offered during the past 5 weeks makes it difficult to distinguish…
U.S. v. Iran: Winds of War or Psychological Warfare ...
By Haggai Carmon
Did Brigadier-General Mehdi Moini, who commands Iran’s Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC) in the Iranian West Azerbaijan province, fail to read events through, or was he conducting psychological counter-warfare? Moini was interviewed by the Iranian television channel Press TV, following media reports on the presence of American and Israeli forces in Azerbaijan along the…
A Russian-U.S. Spy Swap: What’s the Rush?
By Haggai Carmon
At this very moment, there are growing rumors about plans for a prisoner swap that would return ten suspected Russian spies to Russia, in exchange for an imprisoned Russian military researcher Igor Sutyagin, who was convicted of espionage in 2004. The rumors also suggest that the U.S. has compiled a list of 11 Russian…
By Haggai Carmon
Is there a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that needs Turkish or Iranian support? Not according to Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, who wrote just last week, “Visiting Gaza persuaded me, to my surprise, that Israel is correct when it denies that there is any full-fledged humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” Based on…
The Russian Sleeper Spy Ring in the U.S. — Pr ...
By Haggai Carmon
This week the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York filed criminal complaints against ten alleged Russian sleeper agents in the U.S. Although the cases concern U.S. national security, the sleepers were not indicted for espionage but rather for lesser charges of money laundering related felonies and for failure to register as foreign agents, under…
The Sick Man Upon the Bosphorus: Déjà Vu?
By Haggai Carmon
On May 14, 1876, the New York Times ridiculed the Ottoman Empire, reminding its readers that “It is now some twenty years since we began to hear about the ’sick man upon the Bosphorus,’ yet the same sort of talk, under somewhat different conditions, is current today. The Ottoman Empire seems to have as many…
Tango with Tehran
By Haggai Carmon
Time has come for the world to recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran could bring the economy to their knees by hiking the price of Middle East oil, and that what is needed is more than rhetoric and mild sanctions against Iran.
“Let’s tango with the Americans,” said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to his aides.
“What style?”…
A Dangerous Tit-for-Tat
By Haggai Carmon
Iranian officials are accusing the United States of trying to encourage a “velvet revolution” in Iran. That term was first used in 1989 to describe the nonviolent revolution in Czechoslovakia that overthrew the communist government. And indeed, as part of its velvet war against Iran, the United States is broadcasting cultural programs in Farsi…
Bracing for the worst
By Haggai Carmon
While the world eyes Dubai’s failing economy with great concern, across the bay, Iran sees opportunity. Dubai is the only oil-free city-state of the United Arab Emirates. Until mid-November, it was best known for its spectacular economy and luxurious high-rises.
Intelligence services the world over, however, have long regarded Dubai as a rat’s nest of…
Beware of ‘diplomatic immunity’ scams
By Haggai Carmon
The email message below has been circulated on the Internet and is just one example of many. This one is obviously a scam, but some are more convincingly written and somewhat harder to see through. I strongly recommend that diplomatic missions advise their staff of this type of scam, which targets individuals who may…