In addition to the US usage of “laser spying” against the Russians, Nasa technology that has previously been used to detect faint radio signals from space, is now being used to eavesdrop on a room where the curtains are blocking the windows. Using a “horn antenna” this “microwave” technology can blast a wave of energy that is between 30GHZ and !00Ghz through a building wall. If people are speaking inside a room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing will be vibrating, and cause a modulation of the radio beam as it reflects from the surface. It is then amplified and analyzed.

Simpler systems using the planted bug can also use a laser beam to transmit conversations. Such a device was found in the offices of Trinidad & Tobagos’s director of public prosecutions this year.

Yury Schmidt, the esteemed human rights attorney, cautioned that the efficacious prosecution throughout Russia of scholars and researchers as spies in the last ten years has been coupled with harsher sentences. Four years ago, the former general director of the Central Machinery Construction Research Institution, Moscow scientist Igor Reshetin, was found guilty of handing over technology to the Chinese and received a sentence of eleven and a half years in a penal colony. He had justified his actions, claiming the technology’s nonclassified status permitted its export and international dialogue. Physicist Valentin Danilov in 2003 likewise was convicted of placing classified information in Chinese hands, and drew a similar sentence of 13 years in a penal colony. In fact, the only instance of acquittal in an espionage or treason case in the legal annals of the Soviet Union and modern Russia was that of the aforementioned researcher and ecologist Alexander Nikitin, the skillful defense having been mounted by the already heralded Mr. Schmidt. Nikitin, a onetime naval captain and submarine officer, authored a study on the environmental risks of radioactive waste and decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines, expressly in northern Russia, for the Norwegian ecological organization Bellona, resulting in an accusation of high treason being levelled against him.

As regards the current case, Afanasiev and Bobyshev disavowed any wrongdoing and contended that the Harbin period was devoted solely to teaching and, furthermore, that the contents of the lectures were under the strict supervision of the Military Mechanical University. Schmidt indicated that should convictions of the two men be secured, the prison terms would run from 12 to 20 years. The public will be barred from the proceedings.

So-in is believed to have been in charge of North Korea’s nuclear and missile development sector and is given credit by the North Korean state media for the country’s first satellite launch. He is accused of assisting his father, Kim Song-il, in delivering top secret documents on nuclear development to a foreign agency. Song-il was also a nuclear researcher, working at the Yongbyon Nuclear Complex.

So-in’s arrest follows several other high profile detainments in North Korea. Pak Kyong-chol, an official in the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, was also sent to a labor camp for spying. Kim Won-bom, a chief in a North Korean military bureau, was arrested after $1.5 million in U.S. currency was found in his home and a senior official of the Majon Mine was arrested after allegedly selling government information for $100,000.

WikiLeaks has been strongly criticized for publishing about 77,000 secret U.S. documents in July about the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said that the leak, made “from the comfort of an office,” endangered the lives of many soldiers and others who are risking their lives for their countries’ security.

McClelland’s criticism hasn’t exactly discouraged WikiLeaks in its mission to expose clandestine government activity indiscriminately. Indeed, there’s buzz that WikiLeaks intends to publish a second round of sensitive U.S. government documents on October 18, this time about 400,000 documents pertaining to the war in Iraq.

Don’t think anyone’s going to wade through all those documents for golden nuggets of information that could jeopardize U.S. military and intelligence operations overseas? Think again…the world is crawling with terrorists itching to get their hands on every one of those hundreds of thousands of documents.

In fact, the October 18 date of release was leaked by several ex-WikiLeaks members who believe releasing the information so early will have serious repercussions for U.S. collaborators and informants in Iraq, whose covers may be compromised as a result.

On the flip side, how much government cover-up is too much? Topics like Guantanamo, the use of waterboarding and civilian death tolls are along the lines of what WikiLeaks aims to expose. But how selective is WikiLeaks about what it publishes…does the team weigh the potential dangers of releasing each document?

It’s not such a stretch to suggest that Assange – computer programmer, hacker (who got in trouble with the law back home in Australia) and whistleblower – is on the radar of intelligence agencies around the world. Assange certainly thinks so…he keeps his whereabouts on the DL, operates on a ‘need to know’ basis and often believes he is being followed. Indeed, he keeps on the move, never staying in one place for too long. Sounds paranoid, but he might just have good reason to be.

When Attorney General McClelland was asked to confirm rumors that Assange was being tracked by Australian intelligence, and that U.S., Britain and Sweden had access to that information, he responded vaguely, saying that he couldn’t comment, but that the U.S. does in fact cooperate internationally on a number of matters. No kidding!

In Australia, the Defense Signals Directorate, the intelligence agency responsible for SIGINT (signals intelligence) and information security, said formally that they have not been monitoring Assange, but ASIO (like the FBI), ASIS (like the CIA) and the federal police declined to comment on the topic.

So what beans were spilled? Not anything too incriminating…indeed the fact that Hague’s words actually drew the attention of the British press is a testament to how hush-hush these topics have been traditionally.

Bernard Jenkins, the Conservative chairman of the commons public administration select committee was questioning Hague on his foreign policy strategy. Seeing as the UK’s new government has done away with the foreign office’s strategy department, Jenkins wanted to know whether soldiers and spies stationed overseas are now being expected to cobble together their own strategy on the fly.

Hague responded as follows: “No. That is the absolute opposite of what I am saying. The strategy of the country comes from the prime minister, the national security council, the foreign secretary. They have to be the people who think together about this and use every possible source of advice about it, including the advice and the varied opinions of the people who work in their department. So, no, we are not leaving it to the spy in a particular location or the soldier in a particular location.”

Aha…so they do exist!

It has been said that Hague should have offered a ‘no comment’ on intelligence-related topics instead of responding directly to the query about spies, but then again, it’s a little bit ridiculous to continue the charade that British spies don’t exist. Apparently, it’s extremely easy to ‘spot the spy’ in any British embassy, mostly because they think so highly of themselves (à la James Bond). True or not, spies are no secret…most countries have their own network of operatives (though some more extensive than others) stationed around the world…

As per a DEBKAfile exclusive, members of the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) clashed with plain clothes members of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) outside a luxury high-rise building in Northern Tehran’s most exclusive neighborhood, Shaid Babee, or Mini City.

Of course, the Iranian government hushed up the scuffle, given the internal weaknesses and suspicions it gives evidence to. Despite the regime’s best efforts, though, it is becoming well known that the IRGC, who head up Iran’s nuclear program, suspect highly ranked Iranian politicians of selling/trading Iran’s nuclear secrets to Western intelligence agencies, in return for favors. On the flip side, MOIS is furious about the rumors that Ahmadinejad’s nearest and dearest are not absolutely respectful of and faithful to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

The events that led to the shoot-out are as follows:

Intelligence Ministry agents helped themselves into the luxury apartment of an IRGC officer. They found bugs and other spy surveillance gadgets hooked up in the apartment as well as in others that they searched in the building. Just as they were leaving, with the items found in hand, they were blocked by men in civilian clothing, who tried to pry the spy devices from them.

MOIS backed up, secluded themselves in the building and called for more agents. However, their back-up was delayed by more men in plain clothes, who had set up a road-block. Shooting ensued and spread, and it is not known how many casualties were caused by the gunfire.

Eventually MOIS identified IRGC as intelligence – both groups had called in for reinforcements – and then MOIS handed over their loot. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out the intricate surveillance system was installed by a different agency altogether – Shahid Fahmideh – that reports to Ayatollah Khameini and the IRGC’s Nuclear Administration.

Looks like within the world of internal Iranian intelligence, no one trusts each other. Each group thinks the other is passing on the secret sauce (nuclear in nature) to the enemy, in exchange for personal interests, influence and power. Of course, these sorts of internal systemic cracks are the last thing Iran wants leaking from its tightly managed, precarious regime.

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?” they asked. “Open-embrace tango, with space between the dancers, or close embrace, where you dance chest-to-chest?”

“Iranian-style,” said Ahmadinejad. “We lead, holding the Americans by the jugular, pulling them one step forward and pushing them two steps back.”

“What if they refuse to dance?” asked the aides.

“They won’t,” Ahmadinejad chuckled. “It’s been 31 years since our Islamic revolution, and the Americans still haven’t learned they’re dancing to our tune.”

An imaginary dialogue, of course, but a plausible one, considering how Iran toys with the world, thus far with impunity.

Is it a coincidence that suddenly last week, when the Iranians apparently realized that, this time, the superpowers and other UN Security Council members were serious about imposing sanctions, a Turkish-Iranian nuclear agreement was brokered, with the Brazilian president’s help? The terms of the deal are nearly identical to those that Iran first accepted, then rejected, last year. A tango.

The deal has Iran exchanging Iranian-enriched uranium, which when further enriched could be used in a nuclear bomb, for fuel rods. However, Iran agreed to exchange only half the quantity of enriched uranium it reportedly possesses. What’s to stop it, for example, from enriching the other half further for use in a bomb?

At the heart of this crisis is Tehran’s argument that it has a sovereign right to possess nuclear technology, combined with its refusal to play by the rules of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which Iran signed in 1968, and which prohibits development of nuclear weapons. The issue isn’t Iran’s right to create electricity from nuclear power, rather the fact that an Iran with nuclear weapons would constitute a regional superpower. It would place Ahmadinejad’s hands on the oil spigots of the Gulf states, and perhaps those of Saudi Arabia as well.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, endangering the West’s oil supply, the U.S. and its allies attacked Iraq. But the world could not do the same with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Intelligence records show Iran started working toward nuclear weapons as early as 1990, long before Ahmadinejad became president. This came to light in 2002, with the public revelation of the existence of a nuclear facility at Natanz. International scrutiny followed. Iran’s then-president, reformist Mohammad Khatami, insisted that his country’s ambitions were solely for nuclear energy. He assured his countrymen that this would enhance Iran’s technological capabilities, thus elevating Tehran’s status in the region and worldwide, while bolstering national pride and demonstrating defiance to the bullying foreign powers.

When Ahmadinejad first assumed office, he wasted no time in declaring that nuclear research would proceed regardless of what the Europeans and the Americans did or said. He told parliament on August 6, 2005: “I don’t know why some countries cannot understand that the Iranian people will not succumb to force.” Ahmadinejad’s subsequent rhetoric shows that he, like his predecessor Khatami, continues to see the president as the one who will protect Iran from condescending foreigners trying to stop it from becoming nuclear.

Iran has the know-how, technology and materials to build a nuclear bomb. What it needs now is time: to enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to build at least one such bomb. Then, Iran believes, it – and not the UN, the U.S., or the rest of the world – will be able to dictate the terms of any agreement it is a party to. To gain that time, Tehran is dancing the tango.

Whenever the world’s patience seems to be at an end, the Iranians hint that they are amenable to a compromise. When negotiations behind closed doors commence, and weeks are wasted on futile talk, public attention is deflected and Iran’s willingness to settle evaporates. One step forward, two steps back. Tango, Iranian-style.

The proposed UN resolution for sanctions is important because it came immediately after the announcement of the Iranian-Turkish deal, indicating that the powers weren’t taken in by it. But even a UN-drawn line in the sand will not deter Iran. Cuba has been subjected to more severe sanctions since 1961, and yet maintained its defiance. Iran is unlikely to react differently.

The time has come for the countries of the world to recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran could bring their economies to their knees by hiking the price of Middle East oil astronomically, and that what is needed is more than rhetoric and mild sanctions against Iran. Now is the time to move, not just talk. As Eli Wallach said in the epic spaghetti Western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”: “When you have to shoot, shoot! Don’t talk.” If bold action is to be taken, it must be taken before Ahmadinejad appears on TV announcing that Iran has tested its first nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert. By then, the tango dance party will be over.

This op-ed was originally published in Ha’artez/International Herald Tribune on 05/28/2010

Indeed, China is on the verge of passing a law that would require telecommunications and internet companies to track, report and delete potential leaks of state secrets. China is thus seeking to tighten its control over these companies as well as expand its watchful eye by leveraging the companies’ inherent spying capabilities (think China’s cyber attack on the gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists in January).

Although penalties for violations of the new law have not yet been disclosed, the draft law’s definition of ‘state secret’ casts a very wide net, which would undoubtedly be open to government interpretation and abuse. Currently, ‘state secret’ is defined as: “information that concerns state security and interests and, if leaked, would damage state security and interests in the areas of politics, economy and national defense, among others.” The draft is in its third review, which is typically the last before passing into law.

China is home to the biggest population of internet users in the world – a whopping 384 million, but its government isn’t about to lose its grip on the flow of information to, from and among those people. Open communication breeds opinions, which breed dissent and in turn, unrest. The only way to avoid inevitable dissent and unrest, China reasons, is more stringent control and vigilance. Recent restrictions aimed at controlling and limiting information exchange include making it more difficult to register domain names and systematically removing unregistered sites.

At the slightest hint of unrest, China goes into hyper info-control mode, shutting off Twitter and Facebook, unplugging the internet and slowing down other methods of viral communication, like texting, to stem the natural flow of information. This very technique was used last July to stem news of violent ethnic riots breaking out in a Muslim region of western China. To China, twittering about the dissent is just as bad as dissenting, and now they’re going to leverage whatever means necessary – including private sector companies – to expand their spy network.

Google left China last month over censorship and cyber espionage disputes. Which company’s next?

Chung pleaded innocent, saying he wasn’t a spy, just an “ordinary man” with intentions of writing a book, which was his explanation for the hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents pertaining to the space shuttle, among other aviation, space and military data, that federal agents found at this home in 2006.

As an engineer working for Boeing and Rockwell, he had easy access to these documents. During his employment with these companies, he traveled back to China regularly, lecturing on his work and – as per the Court’s ruling – sharing secrets with the Chinese government, to the peril of the U.S.’s security and its economic and scientific advantage.

During his trial, the defendant told the judge that he loved the United States and wanted to live peacefully with his family, which includes children and grandchildren, in the United States – something that will now be rather difficult for him to achieve.

According to the prosecutors, Judge Carney said he wanted to make an example of Chung, that his trial and conviction should be a message to China to “stop sending [their] spies” to the U.S. According to the Court, Chung spied on behalf of China for three decades. In addition to the aforementioned documents, officials found in his home correspondence and journals logging the communication Chung had with Chinese government officials over the years. In one response to a written request from China, Chung wrote that he wanted to “make an effort to contribute to the Four Modernations of China.”

His defense team called Chung a “pack rat.” He kept everything, they said, but shared nothing. The U.S., hypersensitive of its vulnerability to China’s encroaching spy network, clearly did not buy this argument.

James Fondren, 62, was sentenced today to 3 years in prison and a subsequent 2 years of supervised release. Once a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Fondren got into “consulting” after retiring from the military. And by that we mean that he got involved in espionage by sharing classified intel on U.S.-China military relations with Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Taiwan.

In March 1999, Kuo and Fondren travelled to China together, where Fondren met Kuo’s Chinese government contact. Fondren and the government official proceeded to exchange emails over the course of the next year. Hired into the civilian role of Deputy Director of the U.S. Pacific Command’s Washington Liaison Office, Fondren continued to associate with Kuo, providing him with so-called opinion papers in exchange for payment.

According to Fondren, the papers were a mix of publicly accessible news and his own personal opinion, but the court obviously found otherwise. At the Pacific Command, Fondren had top-secret clearance and access to a classified computer. He certainly had the means to provide Kuo with more than just personal opinion, and it didn’t help his case that Kuo testified against him.

U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton decided to issue a milder sentence than the 6.5 years requested by the prosecution because the information Fondren shared didn’t really compromise U.S. national security. Only convicted of 3 of the 8 counts brought against him, Fondren still plans to appeal the decision. His lawyer argues that Fondren did not realize Kuo was a spy.

Given the recent hubbub in the news about China’s aggressive cyber espionage – many say that the Google attack was neither the first nor the last – Fondren’s not likely to get much sympathy in the public eye.

China’s Internet spying used to be fairly focused on acquiring defense and military information from the U.S. As such, the U.S. intelligence and defense community could better focus their retaliatory as well as preemptive defense mechanisms. As China’s interests have expanded to economic and industrial secrets, their cyber attacks are now more than ever before looking to tap into that unique brand of American innovation that the U.S. is so well known for.

Google believes that the hackers responsible for the January 12 attack were after the gmail account information of Chinese human rights activists. The company also reported that intellectual property was stolen.

Apparently Chinese cyber attacks on U.S. companies are common, but most companies don’t volunteer the information for fear that it will speak poorly of their online security. Google’s willingness to call China out, threatening even to leave the Chinese market as a result of the attack and the censorship its search engine is subject to in China, has caused other big companies – like Adobe Systems – to report similar attacks.

According to Alan Paller, Director of Research at the SANS Institute, a computer security firm, says, “The odds of the 25 biggest companies in California not being fully compromised by the Chinese is near zero…That is true of companies across the country.” So, really, no company is safe from the unrelenting force of Chinese espionage.

Paller describes China’s approach to hacking as a massive sweep. No rock is left unturned in search of information that could give China a competitive advantage. Once again, China’s strength in numbers gives it an edge. And, according to Congress’s U.S.-China commission, the U.S. is struggling to keep up.

Even though Obama has emphasized the importance of protecting the online world for both the public and private sectors, how is a question that remains unanswered. Right now, it looks like China might just be winning this war, especially given the recent directive by the White House National Security Council, which basically tells the U.S. spy community to remove China from its primary priority list for intelligence gathering.

CIA Director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair have objected, referring in part to China’s aggressive cyber attacks. Proponents of the directive don’t seem to think the priority downgrade will significantly affect intelligence operations aimed at China, but if that were truly the case, why issue the directive in the first place…?

Obama openly reprimanded the intelligence community and has just released a preliminary report reviewing the incident and the intelligence community’s failure to predict and prevent it.

In a nutshell, the report describes Abdulmutallab’s father’s visit to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, and confirms that the intelligence community was aware of an impending terrorist attack, that the dots could have been connected, but that they were not. It does not detail all the dots, i.e. the pieces of information. It does blame a failure of analysis and threat accountability for the attack, and includes a memo from Obama on the immediate measures that will be taken by the intelligence community to improve ‘dot connection’ and avoid future attacks.

Interestingly, it opens by saying that there are many such attacks that the intelligence community has prevented in recent years, many of which the American public will never be privy to. In addition to sending a shiver down our spines, this only serves to confirm the truth embedded in the Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller series. Terror plots are continually being detected, uncovered and interrupted by the intelligence agencies of the free world. Dan Gordon’s adventures will give you insight into that which the American public will never be privy to…

President Obama labeled the narrowly avoided terrorist attack an intelligence and security “screw up,” berating his spy chiefs for not putting together the pieces until after the Nigerian was on board. Officials did identify him for extra questioning in Detroit, but had his explosives operated according to plan, neither he nor the other 289 people on board would have been around to hear – let along answer – any extra questions.

Obama intends to release the report that explains what went wrong on the inside – that is, which pieces of data were not analyzed properly. Apparently the connection between the various strands of intelligence is pretty evident, and the public will be surprised that it slid by the country’s top intelligence professionals. Given the information the U.S. had on Abdulmutallab, he should have been on a no-fly list and should never have been allowed to board flight 253.

One of these pieces of information is that Abdulmutallab’s father recently paid a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, warning them that his son was becoming a radical. Abdulmutallab was allegedly recruited by Al Qaeda in London.

Obama is likely choosing to be so candid about the mistake to save himself trouble later on. A congressional committee investigation is expected to follow, so the truth would have come out sooner or later. Republicans already depict Obama as soft on national security, and this example is just what they need to back up the statement.

Although Obama believes the intelligence community should be held accountable for the error, it doesn’t look like anyone’s about to resign or get the boot due to the oversight. No re-orgs needed either…we’re told it wasn’t so much a case of poor infrastructure and lack of info-sharing (like 9/11), but rather a case of not pulling the right data together to get the big picture – data mismanagement, so to speak.

Abdulmutallab was indicted on December 26, 2009 and now faces trial for bringing a destructive device onto an airplane, attempting to blow up an airplane, the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and the attempted murder of 289 people.

But now, the world has yet another – seemingly more concrete – reason to distrust Iran. Published in The Times of London on Monday was a memo apparently leaked from the heart of Iran’s nuclear program, describing the country’s four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, otherwise known as a bomb trigger.

Rest assured, there is no civilian use for a neutron initiator, but of course the Iranians have dismissed the memo as an attempt to frame Iran. In fact, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast referred to the incident as a “scenario” dreamt up by the West.

The documents, whose authenticity and significance the U.S. plans to investigate, apparently includes a note on undercover testing: not only to see if the bomb trigger works but to ensure that whatever traces of uranium are left from the testing are not large enough to be detectable by the examining world.

Although U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley refused to discuss matters of intelligence, he did say, “Iran has yet to really come to… the international community and address our concerns in a meaningful way.”

According to the report in The Times, intelligence agencies dated the memo to early 2007, but the US-based Institute for International Science and Security (ISIS), that was consulted before the piece ran, has cautioned against jumping to conclusions. ISIS believes further document assessment is necessary before the memo can be accurately authenticated, dated and fit into the context of Iran’s nuclear development history.

The timing of the article, though, supports Hillary Clinton’s bid for additional UN sanctions against Iran, and highlights how close Iran is to losing its chance at a diplomatic approach to nuclear and other issues: 2009’s very close to being over…

According to Prince, who has been accused of all sorts of misconduct as the head of Blackwater, the assassination team did travel to Germany with the intention of killing the Al Qaeda financier Mamoun Darkazanli. Which of course contradicts Panetta’s statement that the squad never went into action. Prince goes further to say that neither the CIA station chief nor the host country (Germany) was alerted to the team’s presence — very much a breach of CIA rules of conduct.

Prince feels like he’s been “thrown under the bus”…he was working with the CIA to protect the U.S., and now’s he’s fending for himself, at the helm of a company that is dealing with a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five former employees. But surely there’s a reason behind all the investigations and bad publicity…

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