A day after a lawyer for the whistleblower who raised alarms about Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine said his client is willing to answer written questions submitted by House Republicans, the president tweeted: “Written answers not acceptable!”
Related: 'Quid pro quo, yes or no?' Trump allies face Ukraine question
Continue reading...Exclusive: Report allegedly being withheld by No 10 contains submissions from ex-head of MI6’s Russia desk
A report on Russian interference in British politics allegedly being sat on by Downing Street includes evidence from Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk whose investigation into Donald Trump’s links with Moscow sparked a US political scandal.
Steele made submissions in writing to parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), it is understood. A counter-intelligence specialist, Steele spent his career tracking Russian influence operations around the world and investigated Alexander Litvinenko’s 2006 murder.
Continue reading...Moscow court extends detention until 29 December for Paul Whelan, who says he’s being kept for a potential prisoner swap
A former US marine who has been held in Russia since last year on spy charges insisted he was more Mr Bean than Mr Bond as a Moscow court extended his detention for another two months.
Paul Whelan, 49, who has US, Irish, Canadian and British citizenship, denounced the case against him and said he was being held “hostage” for a possible prisoner exchange.
Continue reading...Belfast prosecutors considering action against ‘Stakeknife’ and his British army handlers
A police inquiry into one of the biggest spy scandals in the history of British intelligence has recommended that more than 20 people including senior security force personnel and ex-IRA members be considered for prosecution, the Guardian has learned.
Operation Kenova, the multimillion-pound investigation into “Stakeknife” – the army agent at the heart of the IRA during the Northern Ireland Troubles – has now sent files identifying military commanders and at least one IRA veteran with a so-called “get-out-of-jail” card to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Belfast.
Continue reading...Intelligence officer Cameron Ortis had access to classified information from Five Eyes allies, including Australia
Canada is seeking to reassure its Five Eyes intelligence allies in the wake of a massive alleged spying leak that may be linked to an Australian drug-smuggling criminal syndicate.
Cameron Ortis, the director general of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s intelligence unit, has been charged over allegations he was trying to sell secrets to a foreign agent or terrorist group. He had access to classified information from Canada’s Five Eyes global allies, including Australia.
Continue reading...Theft of classified information by a senior intelligence officer could ‘cause grave injury to Canada’s national interests’
The theft of classified information by a senior intelligence officer could be “devastating” to Canada’s national security, the country’s spy service has warned, as concern over the security breach continues to grow.
In a series of internal documents obtained by the CBC, Canada’s intelligence service outlined fears that details of the country’s spycraft could have been comprised after the theft of sensitive information by Cameron Ortis, 47, a director general with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s intelligence unit.
Continue reading...A Montenegro holiday reportedly provided cover for a defection that until this week had left little trace
In June 2017, the Kremlin aide Oleg Smolenkov and his family flew from Moscow to Tivat, a coastal resort in Montenegro favoured by Russian tourists. He never came back, and his colleagues never heard from him again. A murder inquiry was launched and soon dropped for lack of leads.
That was the last anyone heard of Smolenkov until this week, when Russian media named him as a CIA spy spirited out of Russia by the agency for his own safety. CNN first revealed the existence of a US source inside the Kremlin earlier this week.
Continue reading...Surveillance devices planted over past two years, says report citing former US officials
Israel is likely to have planted mobile phone spying devices near the White House and other sensitive locations in the US capital over the past two years, according to a report from Politico that cited three former US officials.
The miniature surveillance devices mimic telecommunications towers to gather information, including the contents of phone calls. The US government concluded Israeli operatives were most likely to have put them in place to spy on Donald Trump and his associates, the news website reported.
Continue reading...Oleg Smolenkov hadn’t been seen after he went on holiday in 2017, but Russian authorities concluded he had fled abroad
The CIA Russian spy drama currently gripping Washington has taken a new turn as Russian media reported that a suspected US mole inside the Kremlin was a member of Vladimir Putin’s administration who disappeared in 2017 and was initially thought to have been murdered.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed the man, Oleg Smolenkov, had worked for the Kremlin but played down his importance, insisting he was a low-level employee who had been fired two years ago.
Continue reading...The US extracted “one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government” in 2017, it was reported on Monday, in part because of concerns that mishandling of classified intelligence by Donald Trump and his administration could jeopardise the source’s safety.
CNN cited “multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge” of the matter and said “a person directly involved in the discussions” said the move was made because Trump and his officials could not be fully trusted.
Continue reading...Prosecutors had sought a 21-year prison term for alleged spying on at least 150 people and misuse of public funds
A Panamanian court has cleared the former president Ricardo Martinelli of political espionage during his administration and ordered him released from house arrest.
The three-judge panel declared Martinelli not guilty on Friday of charges stemming from the purported spying on the communications of at least 150 people and of the alleged misuse of public funds to purchase the equipment to carry out the intercepts during his 2009-2014 administration.
Continue reading...Dan Coats to go next month after turbulent two years of disagreements with president
Dan Coats, one of the most senior national security officials willing to contradict Donald Trump, will leave the post of US director of national intelligence next month, the president has said.
Trump said Coats would go on 15 August and that he will nominate John Ratcliffe, a Texas representative and staunch loyalist, to the post.
Continue reading...Troll farms, bots, dark ads, fake news ... from Putin’s Russia to Brexit Britain, new methods are being used to change politics and crush dissent. It’s time to fight back
Father came out of the sea and was arrested on the beach: two men in suits standing over his clothes as he returned from his swim. They ordered him to get dressed quickly, pull his trousers over his wet trunks. On the drive the trunks were still wet, shrinking, turning cold, leaving a damp patch on his trousers and the back seat. He had to keep them on during the interrogation. There he was, trying to keep up a dignified facade, but all the time the dank trunks made him squirm. It struck him they had done it on purpose, these mid-ranking KGB men: masters of the small-time humiliation, the micro-mind game.
It was 1976, in Odessa, Soviet Ukraine, and my father, Igor, a writer and poet, had been detained for “distributing copies of harmful literature to friends and acquaintances”: books censored for telling the truth about the Soviet Gulag (Solzhenitsyn) or for being written by exiles (Nabokov). He was threatened with seven year’s prison and five in exile. One after another his friends were called in to confess whether he had ever spoken “anti-Soviet fabrications of a defamatory nature, such as that creative people cannot realise their potential in the USSR”.
Continue reading...Tehran says some of the Iranians allegedly spying for US have been sentenced to death
Seventeen Iranian nationals allegedly recruited by the CIA to spy on Iran’s nuclear and military sites have been arrested, Tehran said on Monday, adding that some of them had already been sentenced to death.
The arrests took place over the past months and those taken into custody worked on “sensitive sites” in the country’s military and nuclear facilities, an Iranian intelligence official told a press conference in Tehran.
Continue reading...PM addresses Russian leader at G20 over ‘wider pattern of unacceptable behaviour’
Theresa May has upbraided Vladimir Putin for the Salisbury poisoning, calling it a “truly despicable act”, during a frosty one-to-one meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka that is likely to be their last encounter.
After exchanging a handshake, during which May appeared stern, the pair held the first half of their 80-minute meeting alone, with only translators in the room.
Continue reading...Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese IT expert jailed for espionage, says his release may have served to reduce tensions between US and Iran
A Lebanese man who had been imprisoned in Iran for years on charges of espionage said Tuesday that he was subjected to “kidnapping, arbitrary detention and a show trial”, adding that his release served to de-escalate tensions between the US and Iran.
In his first comments after arriving in his native Lebanon, Nizar Zakka denied reports that his release was part of a wider deal but suggested that it had helped avert further escalation in the region.
Continue reading...The bugged shoes and poison brollies are fun and fascinating. But why are the sections about state-sponsored torture and assassination so uncritical?
Sitting in a glass case, standing out against a backdrop of deep red, there’s an ice axe that still bears a rust mark, the consequence of a bloody fingerprint left on it decades ago. One day in 1940, this axe was hidden inside Ramón Mercader’s suit jacket, suspended by a string, as he walked into the office of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary living in exile in Mexico, having been sentenced to death as an “enemy of the people” in his home country.
Mercader slipped behind Trotsky’s desk and brought the axe down with tremendous force, penetrating two-and-three-quarter inches into his skull. Trotsky died 26 hours later. Mercader served 20 years in prison then returned to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. On his deathbed in 1978, his last words were: “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”
Continue reading...New bill needed to tackle hostile activity by Russia and others, says home secretary
Hostile state actors – spies, assassins or hackers directed by the government of another country – are to be targeted by refreshed espionage and treason laws, the home secretary has announced.
In a speech to security officials in central London, Sajid Javid revealed plans to publish a new espionage bill to tackle increased hostile state activity from countries including but not limited to Russia.
Continue reading...Former special agent jailed for selling classified US ‘defence information’ for $25,000 in 2017
An ex-CIA officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Friday for spying for China in a case called part of an “alarming trend” in the US intelligence community.
Kevin Mallory, 62, was convicted under the Espionage Act for selling classified US “defence information” to a Chinese intelligence agent for $25,000 during trips to Shanghai in March and April 2017.
Continue reading...Largest collection of international espionage artefacts ever placed on public display illuminate the work of famous spies and their pivotal actions, as well as help bring to life the tradecraft of the women and men behind some of the most secretive missions in world history
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