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Argos Media

Analysis: What journalist's release means for Iran, U.S. relations - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Iran US Roxana Saberi

shared by Argos Media on 12 May 09 - Cached
  • Iran's Judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said Monday that journalist Roxana Saberi's sentence was commuted as a gesture of "Islamic mercy" because she expressed regret and cooperated with authorities.
  • Some Iranian sources also tell CNN her release is a gesture to President Obama who publicly insisted Saberi had not been spying for the United States.
  • When she was first arrested earlier this year, Saberi told her father she had been caught buying wine, illegal in Islamic Iran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry then said she had been working without a valid journalist permit, and finally in a one-day closed door trial, she was accused, and convicted of spying for the United States. "Without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, she was carrying out espionage activities," Hassan Haddad, a deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Students News Agency on April 9. Her sentence -- eight years in Iran's notorious Evin Prison.
Pedro Gonçalves

Spies' Roots Reach Deep in Lebanon - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...23lebanon.html

Lebanon Israel Mossad Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 23 May 09 - Cached
  • When the Lebanese authorities announced the arrest of an Israeli spy ring late last year, the news aroused little surprise. It is no secret that Israel has long maintained intelligence agents here.
  • But in recent weeks, more and more suspects have been captured, including a retired general, several security officials and a deputy mayor. All told, at least 21 people have been arrested, and 3 others escaped over the border into Israel with the help of the Israeli military, Lebanese officials say.
  • The spying network’s extent has mesmerized the Lebanese and made headlines here. It has also infuriated Lebanese officials, who sent an official protest to the United Nations this week. On Friday, President Michel Suleiman complained about the matter in a meeting here with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
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  • Those accused of being spies are said to have used sophisticated surveillance equipment and satellite phones, sometimes ingeniously disguised in crutches or knapsacks. One of them, a car dealer in southern Lebanon, placed Israeli tracking devices in cars he sold to Hezbollah members, security officials say. Most seem to have been motivated by the promise of money. Some were caught by Hezbollah before being handed over to the Lebanese authorities.
  • The arrests have even become an issue in Lebanon’s coming parliamentary elections, with some analysts saying that, intentionally or not, they might benefit the political alliance led by Hezbollah, Israel’s primary nemesis here. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered an angry speech on Friday in which he called for all the captured spies to be executed and urged the Lebanese to help in capturing any remaining agents.
  • One of the important ones, the general said, was Ziyad Homsi. Mr. Homsi, 61, was the deputy mayor of Saadnayel, a town in the Bekaa Valley. According to a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al Safir, which has links to Hezbollah, Mr. Homsi had told interrogators he was assigned to meet Mr. Nasrallah, which he apparently failed to do. Israeli monitors planned to track his movements as he went to meet the Hezbollah leader.
Pedro Gonçalves

UN: Israel does not deny running spy ring in Lebanon - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/...1096992.html

UN Israel Lebanon

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Israel does not deny accusations that dozens of men arrested recently in Lebanon were spying on its behalf, according to a report published by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
  • Lebanese authorities in recent months claimed to have detained dozens of suspects in an espionage investigation, including several senior military officials. According to the UN report, the first arrest took place in June 2006 and the most recent took place in May 2009. Advertisement
Pedro Gonçalves

Homemade bomb on board plane raises tension ahead of Iran elections | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...mb-plane-tehran-iran-elections

Iran US Baluchistan Sistan-Baluchistan Khuzestan Ali Khamenei Hassan Firouzabadi Jundullah

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 01 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Rising political tensions in Iran ahead of watershed presidential elections on 12 June intensified today with the discovery of a homemade bomb on board a domestic airliner. The incident closely followed a fatal attack on a mosque that hardline Iranian leaders blamed on the US, Israel and Britain.
  • The Ahvaz incident followed an apparent suicide bombing on Thursday at a mosque in Zahedan, in Sistan-Baluchistan province in south-eastern Iran, which killed 25 people and wounded more than 100. Three men convicted of planning the explosion were publicly executed yesterday.
  • Khuzestan and Sistan-Baluchistan provinces have witnessed numerous attacks attributed to separatists, ethnic and religious groups, and mujahideen resistance fighters since the 1979 revolution. Oil-rich Khuzestan, which borders Iraq, is home to Iran's Arab minority. Sistan-Baluchistan, bordering Pakistan, has a high concentration of Sunni Muslims. Iran is predominantly Shia.
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  • A Sunni opposition group known as Jundullah (God's Soldiers), which Iran links to al-Qaida and the US, claimed responsibility for the mosque bomb.
  • The Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said a man claiming to represent Jundullah called it saying the bombing was a suicide attack aimed at Basiji forces, a religious militia, that were meeting in the mosque to co-ordinate election strategy.
  • Iran's leaders have repeatedly blamed US and Israeli "spy agencies" for arming and assisting insurgent groups, including dissident Kurds living in western Iran. They say the aim is to destabilise Iran and promote regime change.
  • Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader and a strong, public backer of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's bid to win a second term, added his weight to the claims. "No one can doubt that the hands of … some interfering powers and their spying services are bloodied by the blood of the innocent," he said.
  • Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, Iran's armed forces chief of staff, also blamed outside forces, pointing the finger at Britain in particular. "The attempts made by colonialism, Zionism and on top of them England for sowing discord between Shias and Sunnis have yielded no result," he said.
  • Any direct or indirect US involvement in fomenting pre-election tensions is considered unlikely, given Obama's new policy of engagement with Iran. Israel, which believes Iran poses an existential threat, takes a harder line.
  • Unconfirmed reports published in the US last year said the Bush administration obtained $400m in "off-the-books" congressional funding to finance covert operations aimed at assisting minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organisations inside Iran. It is unclear whether these alleged operations have continued since Obama took office.
Pedro Gonçalves

International News | Guidebook on Muslim spies reveals Qaeda's fear - 0 views

www.alarabiya.net/...78352.html

Al-Qaeda

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 11 Jul 09 - Cached
  • A new book published by the Islamist group al-Qaeda reveals the group is paranoid and faltering under international pressure and in "deathly fear" of United States counter terrorism measures in Pakistan, analysts said Friday. Al-Qaeda's 'Guide to the Laws Regarding Muslim Spies', a 150-page book written by al-Qaeda senior commander Abu Yahya al-Lini and recently posted on jihadist websites, accused "Muslim spies" within its own ranks of spying for the U.S. forces and providing them with information on al-Qaeda camps and safe houses.
  • Analysts in the U.S. said the book revealed a shift in al-Qaeda's well known triumphant tone to a more worried and paranoid one that signaled a weakening among its ranks. "In general, Al Qaeda speaks in a very triumphant tone but in the new book Al-Libi speaks of the group's dire straits and serious problems," said Daniel Lev, who works for MEMRI. "I haven't ever seen this kind of language from senior Al Qaeda commanders before," he added.
  • Analysts also said that a deep seated paranoia of hidden enemies was the main preoccupation of Lini's book which claimed that spying knows no bounds and could be the occupation of even the imam of a mosque. "The danger of these spies lies not only in the ability of these hidden 'brigades' to infiltrate and reach to the depths," Lini wrote, but "include the decrepit, hunchbacked old man who can hardly walk two steps; the strong young man who can cover the length and breadth of the land; the infirm woman sitting in the depths of her house."
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Journalist goes on trial in Iran - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7997608.stm

Iran Journalism US

shared by Argos Media on 14 Apr 09 - Cached
  • An Iranian-American journalist accused of spying in Iran went on trial this week and a verdict is expected soon, an Iranian official has said.
  • Ms Saberi, 31, is being held in Evin prison near Tehran. The journalist, 31, worked briefly for the BBC three years ago. She has also worked for the American public radio network NPR and the TV network Fox News. She has been in custody in Tehran since late January.
  • Ms Saberi originally faced the less serious accusations of buying alcohol, then working as a journalist without a valid press card, but last week Iranian prosecutors accused her of spying for the US.
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  • The Justice Ministry said she is being tried in a closed hearing of Iran's revolutionary court, which handles national security cases.
Argos Media

Wikipedia for Spies: The CIA Discovers Web 2.0 - TIME - 0 views

www.time.com/...0,8599,1890084,00.html

CIA Intellipedia A-Space Intelink Web 2.0

shared by Argos Media on 09 Apr 09 - Cached
  • There's a quiet revolution underway at the CIA and its sister agencies. A new generation of analysts, determined to drag their Cold War–era colleagues into the world of Web 2.0 information-sharing, have created Intellipedia, a classified version of Wikipedia they say is transforming the way U.S. spy agencies handle top-secret information by fostering collaboration across Washington and around the world.
  • One of the biggest hurdles was convincing security-minded spies that the system would be safe from outsiders. To assuage them, Intellipedia was built into the existing secure and classified networks known as Intelink, which connects the 16 spy agencies in the U.S. as well as the U.S. military, the Department of State and other agencies with access to intelligence.
  • Last September, the Director of National Intelligence rolled out a social-networking site called A-Space, with linked video and photo programs. A-Space has some 8,619 accounts, all of them top secret, but insiders say it is troubled and slow to get off the ground; at one point it was suspended because particularly sensitive intelligence was misused. New efforts at tagging and instant-messaging have also been slow.
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  • Intellipedia's boosters concede that their wiki is still largely an adjunct to the work of America's intelligence analysts. No finished intelligence product for decision makers is generated from Intellipedia — National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are still written the old-fashioned way, authored and circulated for peer review and consensus. When Tom Fingar tried in 2006 to produce an NIE on Nigeria using Intellipedia, he failed because it generated a stream of information rather than a formal thesis and was taken over by the traditional system.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Americas | China denies spying allegations - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7972702.stm

China GhostNet

shared by Argos Media on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • China has denied involvement in the electronic spy network which researchers say infiltrated computers in government offices around the world. The spokesman of the Chinese embassy in London said that there was no evidence to show Beijing was involved. He suggested the findings were part of a "propaganda campaign" by the Tibetan government in exile.
  • They said ministries of foreign affairs of Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan appeared to have been targeted.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | Walesa threatens to leave Poland - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7972907.stm

Poland Lech Walesa

shared by Argos Media on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Polish anti-communist leader Lech Walesa has threatened to leave Poland after a second book accused him of being a communist spy as a young man.
  • The former president and Solidarity leader said he was tired of defending himself against claims he collaborated with the secret police in the 1970s.
  • The latest book on Mr Walesa's life, which was published earlier this month, repeated a claim that he spied on his colleagues in the Gdansk shipyards in the 1970s. It also alleges he fathered an illegitimate child. It was published by historians at Poland's Institute for National Remembrance (IPN), which investigates communist-era crimes.
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  • Mr Walesa was cleared of earlier spying allegations by a special court in 2000. Judges concluded that former SB security service agents had forged documents in his file in a bid to prevent him receiving the Nobel Peace prize in 1983.
  • Some critics and Prime Minister Donald Tusk have voiced support for Mr Walesa, saying that the books are politically motivated. "We need Lech Walesa in Poland as an important authority figure," said Mr Tusk, himself a former Solidarity activist.
Pedro Gonçalves

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ne-records-verizon-court-order

US Privacy NSA FISA

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 07 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
  • The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.
  • The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls".
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  • The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.
  • The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such "metadata" is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.
  • The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.
  • In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that "there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.""We believe," they wrote, "that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted" the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.
  • The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth" and was "using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.These recent events reflect how profoundly the NSA's mission has transformed from an agency exclusively devoted to foreign intelligence gathering, into one that focuses increasingly on domestic communications.
Pedro Gonçalves

Mossad 'posed as CIA to recruit fighters' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...20121142232610383.html

US Israel Iran CIA Mossad

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 14 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Agents with Israel's spy agency, Mossad, have posed as CIA agents in operations to recruit members of the Pakistani group Jundallah, according to a report in US-based Foreign Policy magazine. Using US dollars and passports, the agents passed themselves off as members of the US Central Intelligence Agency in the operations, according to memos from 2007 and 2008, said the report which was published on Friday. It is unclear whether the recruitment programme is ongoing.
  • "Israel has done this before. I know of a report very widely accepted in the US of Israeli Mossad agents in the United States, actually recruiting American Muslims," Mark Perry, who authored the report, told Al Jazeera.
  • Jundallah [which translates to "soldiers of God"] says it is fighting for the interests of Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province's large ethnic Baluch community, whose members, unlike most Iranians, mainly follow the Sunni branch of Islam. The Baluch straddle the border with neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan and Jundallah fighters have taken advantage of the unrest in the region to find safe haven in the border area.
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  • According to the US government, the group is responsible for targeting Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children, Foreign Policy said. In July it claimed responsibility for attacking the Grand Mosque in Sistan-Baluchistan capital of Zahedan, reportedly targeting members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, killing 28 people.
  • Tensions in the US-Iran relationship have also spiked, most recently following the car-bombing of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Foreign Policy, however, said there was no evidence of a link between the scientist's killing and Jundallah.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iranian drone 'shot down in Iraq' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7946758.stm

Iran Iraq US Ababil 3

shared by Argos Media on 17 Mar 09 - Cached
  • US forces shot down an Iranian drone 60 miles (100km) north-east of Baghdad last month, the US military says.
  • The US accused Iran of deliberately sending the spy drone into Iraqi airspace, but a top Iraqi official suggested it had been a mistake.
  • "This was not an accident on the part of the Iranians," said US military spokesman Lt Col Mark Ballesteros, who identified the drone as an Iranian-made Ababil 3.
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  • Maj Gen Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, head of military operations at the Iraqi defence ministry, told Reuters news agency he believed the plane's entry into Iraq had probably been a genuine error. "It crossed 10km into Iraq," he said. "It's most likely that its entrance was a mistake."
  • The Ababil 3 is a reconnaissance drone. Israeli forces reported downing several Hezbollah Ababils during the 2006 Lebanon War.
Argos Media

The fixer in the shadows who may emerge as Egypt's leader - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...y-emerge-as-Egypts-leader.html

Egypt Omar Suleiman EGIS Hosni Mubarak

shared by Argos Media on 19 Mar 09 - Cached
  • General Omar Suleiman, the director of Egypt's intelligence service, is virtually unknown outside his home country, yet he is one of the world's most powerful spy chiefs – and an expert in solving intractable problems.
  • Soon, Gen Suleiman may emerge from the shadows and become Egypt's new leader. President Hosni Mubarak, who has dominated the Arab world's largest country for almost 28 years, will turn 81 in May. He trusts hardly anyone and relies on a tiny circle of loyalists. Gen Suleiman is by far the most significant member of this privileged handful. A western diplomat in Cairo rated his "influence, power and access" as simply "incredible". Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian commentator who helped found the country's first independent daily newspaper, called him "the second most powerful man after Mubarak" and said he was the only serious contender for the top job.
  • Gen Suleiman is also a valued partner of the British government. Any British minister passing through Cairo will always ask to see him. His department, the Egyptian General Intelligence Service (EGIS), maintains close links with MI6 and has particular expertise in counter-terrorism. The diplomat described the organisation as "impressive" and "well-resourced", commanding a "big foreign presence through their embassies overseas".
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  • By the time he was made director of EGIS, in 1993, two Islamist groups, the Gama'a Islamiya and al-Jihad, were conducting a campaign of bombings and assassinations.
  • In 1995, the extremists came within an ace of killing Mr Mubarak when 11 assassins opened fire on his limousine in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The original plan had been to use a normal, soft-skinned vehicle. But the previous day, Gen Suleiman had insisted on flying an armoured car to Ethiopia. This undoubtedly saved Mr Mubarak's life. As the bullets ricocheted off the protected vehicle, Gen Suleiman was sitting beside his president. This searing experience forged the bond of trust between them.
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