Counterintelligence News for the week of:

December 31, 2006-Jauary 6, 2007

Theft Probe Leads to N.Va. Storage Site
An investigative trail littered with gold-colored AK-47s, documents labeled "CLASSIFIED" and pistols purported to have been given as gifts to Saddam Hussein led federal investigators here: a Manassas storage center…The gunnery sergeant, Gary Maziarz, is charged with larceny of computer and camera equipment, larceny of weaponry and possession of steroids, according to officials at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. He is scheduled for an Article 32 investigation, similar to arraignment, Jan. 17…..(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

Poisoned Litvinenko Planned to Blackmail Russian Businessman — Acquaintance

…Russian Julia Svetlichnaya said in a television interview she was a graduate student in London when she spoke to Litvinenko — a former Russian state security officer who died on November 23 in London after ingesting polonium 210 — about a book she was writing. “He told me ... he’s doing a project for blackmailing one of the Russian oligarchs (exiled Russian businessmen)... in U.K.,” Svetlichnaya told CBS television’s “60 Minutes”….(MosNews, 6 Jan 07)

Litvinenko inquiry closes in on suspected killers

…Scotland Yard officers are also investigating whether the former spy was first poisoned with polonium-210 several days earlier than previously reported. Investigators believe Mr Litvinenko may have been contaminated twice, with the second attack taking place at a central London hotel several days after the first "hit"… It emerged yesterday that traces of polonium-210, were found at a restaurant that is understood to have been used by at least one of the suspects - Andrei Lugovoi….(Independent, 6 Jan 07)

Theft Probe Leads to N.Va. Storage Site
An investigative trail littered with gold-colored AK-47s, documents labeled "CLASSIFIED" and pistols purported to have been given as gifts to Saddam Hussein led federal investigators here: a Manassas storage center… The gunnery sergeant, Gary Maziarz, is charged with larceny of computer and camera equipment, larceny of weaponry and possession of steroids, according to officials at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego. He is scheduled for an Article 32 investigation, similar to arraignment, Jan. 17…(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

China, Israel Get B-2 Secrets
A former Northrop Grumman B-2 engineer arrested in October 2005 for spying is now under indictment for passing secrets to as many as eight countries—including China and Israel. According to the primary allegations revealed in an indictment unsealed in November, Noshir S. Gowadia, a US citizen and resident of Hawaii, regularly transmitted data and documents filled with classified information to foreigners. He also went overseas to teach courses on stealth technology such as that used to hide aircraft exhausts from infrared seekers. Gowadia did it for money, not political reasons, according to the FBI….(Air Force Assoc., Jan 07)

Past Could Haunt Old Faces in Latest Intelligence Shuffle

…With McConnell tapped to run the DNI, with former Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden installed at the CIA, and a retired Air Force Gen., James Clapper, unofficially slotted to be Defense undersecretary for intelligence, the Bush administration has more military men running U.S. spy services than at any time since World War II, observers pointed out. Some worry that the trio will salute and take orders from the White House, rather than provide it with an independent analysis.…(Congressional Quarterly, 5 Jan 07)

Church: Bishop was communist spy

The Polish Catholic Church said on Friday the archbishop of Warsaw, appointed last month by Pope Benedict, had spied for the communist-era secret services. The Pontiff named Bishop Stanislaw Wielgus on December 6 to succeed anti-communist Cardinal Jozef Glemp in one of the most influential positions in Poland's Church hierarchy….(Reuters, 5 Jan 07)

Iranian Agents Arrested in Baghdad: BBC

A British official has said five Iranians arrested in Baghdad last month in a raid by U.S. forces were senior intelligence officers thought to be on a covert mission to influence the Iraqi government…(Reuters, 5 Jan 07)

Bush Warned About Mail-Opening Authority
President Bush signed a little-noticed statement last month asserting the authority to open U.S. mail without judicial warrants in emergencies or foreign intelligence cases, prompting warnings yesterday from Democrats and privacy advocates that the administration is attempting to circumvent legal restrictions on its powers….(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

Miers Steps Down As White House Gears Up for Battle

President Bush accepted the resignation of White House counsel Harriet Miers yesterday as he remakes his legal team to prepare for what aides expect to be a sustained struggle with a new Democratic Congress eager to investigate various aspects of his administration….(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

Bottling up Coke secrets

Prosecutors invoked a law used in terrorism and government espionage cases in asking a judge Thursday to bar jurors at the trial of a former Coca-Cola secretary charged in a trade-secrets-theft case from disclosing confidential materials they are presented….(AP, 5 Jan 07)

Italy gives Litvinenko contact withering welcome

It's been a harsh homecoming for Mario Scaramella, the Italian contact of murdered former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.With the blessing of British police investigating Litvinenko's poisoning from radioactive polonium, Scaramella flew back to Italy on Christmas Eve -- only to end up in a Rome jail ever since. According to court documents obtained by Reuters, Scaramella is accused by prosecutors of deceiving Italian police about an assassination plot back home and even impersonating a spy. One witness portrays Scaramella, 36, using his role as a parliamentary KGB consultant to try to dig up dirt on politicians…(Reuters, 5 Jan 07)

Polonium-210 found in restaurant

The radioactive element believed to have killed ex-Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko has been detected in another central London restaurant. Polonium-210 was found at the Pescatori Restaurant in Mayfair and staff are being tested…(BBC, 5 Jan 07)

U.K. radiation monitors say Polonium-210 traces found at another restaurant

…The agency said "some evidence" of radioactive contamination had been found at the Pescatori Restaurant in London's Mayfair neighborhood, but measures to remedy the problem had been completed and the restaurant had been allowed to reopen…..(AP, 5 Jan 07)

Negroponte Moves to Job Considered Crucial at State Dept.

John D. Negroponte's departure as the nation's first director of national intelligence comes as the two-year-old office and the broad, post-Sept. 11 reorganization that created it have yet to reach the goal of uniting the intelligence community under a single leader. But Negroponte's move to become Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy, and his replacement by retired Navy Adm. John M. McConnell, had little to do with any assessment of Negroponte's tenure or with the unfinished state of intelligence integration…(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

US nuclear chief forced to quit

US nuclear weapons agency chief Linton Brooks has been made to resign following a number of security breaches at Los Alamos Laboratory. US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said new leadership at the National Nuclear Security Administration was needed. "These management and security issues can have serious implications for the security of the US,"…(BBC, 5 Jan 07)

Spy Chief’s Choice to Step Back Feeds Speculation

From the start, John D. Negroponte felt miscast as the nation’s first director of national intelligence, a diplomat who never seemed comfortable in spook’s clothing….(New York Times, 5 Jan 07)

Negroponte shift is ruffling feathers

…The shuffle comes 18 months into Negroponte's tenure at the job. And though he has received mixed reviews for his reform efforts, lawmakers and senior intelligence officials said the switch was a significant setback for the office, which oversees the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA…..(LA Times, 5 Jan 07)

Mr. Negroponte’s Newest Job

The No. 2 job in the State Department is technically a step down from John Negroponte’s present post of director of national intelligence. But the reported return to the foreign policy fold of this former ambassador to Baghdad, and, before that, to the United Nations, has a certain logic to it….(New York Times, 5 Jan 07)

White House Visitor Records Closed

The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public…The memorandum of understanding is an unusual step because it deals with an unsettled area of law. Federal courts will ultimately decide whether records identifying White House visitors and who they are going to see are under the legal control of the Secret Service or are presidential records publicly releasable solely at the discretion of the White House….(AP, 5 Jan 07)

News Media Seek Audio of Libby Trial

Fifteen news organizations and five other groups are asking a federal judge to release audio recordings each day in the upcoming criminal trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff….AP, 5 Jan 07)

McConnell Nominated as National Intelligence Director

President Bush nominated an intelligence veteran, former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell, to be the country's second national intelligence director….(AP, 5 Jan 07)

Judge tosses lawsuit brought by wife of former covert CIA agent

…U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain wrote in a decision dated Thursday that a "state secrets privilege" allowing the government to withhold information from litigants if disclosure would damage national security was properly invoked in the case…..(AP, 5 Jan 07)

John Michael McConnell, a Member of the Club

…Like Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the Central Intelligence Agency director, Mr. McConnell, 63, a retired vice admiral, has served as director of the National Security Agency, the eavesdropping giant. Like Robert M. Gates, the new defense secretary and former C.I.A. director, Mr. McConnell first operated in the highest circles of government in the tumultuous time that included the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union….(New York Times, 5 Jan 06)

After Breaches, Head of U.S. Nuclear Program Is Ousted

Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman has fired the head of the nation's nuclear weapons program, Linton F. Brooks, because of security breaches last year at weapons facilities, including Los Alamos National Laboratory...The dismissal comes after embarrassing security lapses, including the Oct. 17 discovery of drug paraphernalia and computer flash drives containing highly classified information in the trailer home of a contractor…..(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

Sedative Withdrawal Made Rehnquist Delusional in '81
The late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist took a powerful sedative during his first decade on the Supreme Court and grew so dependent on it that he became delusional and tried to escape from a hospital in his pajamas when he stopped taking the drug in 1981, according to newly released FBI files….(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

F.B.I. Lent Help on 2 Occasions to Nomination of Rehnquist

….(AP, 5 Jan 07)

William Winton 'Win' Warren FBI Special Agent

William Winton "Win" Warren, 92, a retired FBI special agent who also was an artist and a student of art history, died of congestive heart failure Jan. 1…(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

Barbara Ann O'Neill CIA Employee

Barbara Ann O'Neill, 57, a retired employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, died Jan. 1…(Washington Post, 5 Jan 07)

Bernard D. Meltzer

Bernard D. Meltzer, the labor law scholar who helped draft the charter of the United Nations and served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crime trials after World War II, died Thursday. He was 92…In 1943, he was commissioned as a Navy officer and assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency ….(AP, 5 Jan 07)

Her life as a spy

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII, by Sarah Helm

...Vera Atkins was a sphinx to those who knew her, but as a superb new biography reveals, the gallant spy-mistress of World War II was driven by personal secrets and loyalties. If modern spycraft reached its zenith in the Cold War, it was born during World War II -- well, in literary mythology at least…The life of Vera Atkins, a woman who helped run Britain's Special Operations Executive during the war, is every bit as fascinating and shot through with ambiguity as a spy novel….(Salon, 4 Jan 07)

Idiots Like Us

Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice, by Ronald J. Olive

…(Ronald) Olive, a current Arizonan who was "the assistant special agent in charge of counterintelligence in the Washington office of the Naval Investigative Service," provides a candid and disheartening explanation of how Pollard was able to walk off with 360 cubic feet (or 1 million pages) of classified documents and hand them over to Israel….(Tucson Weekly, 4 Jan 07)

Bush Taps Ex-NSA Chief For Top Spy Post

President Bush turned to a diplomat nearly two years ago when Congress created a national intelligence director to coordinate the work of the 16 U.S. spy agencies. Now, he's turning to an intelligence veteran for his replacement. Mr. Bush named retired Navy vice admiral, former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell, to be his top intelligence official on Friday…..(CBS/AP, 4 Jan 07)

Bush to Nominate Khalilzad for U.N. Job

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, will be nominated by President Bush to become the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, a senior administration official said Thursday. Khalilzad, who is Afghan born, has served also as ambassador to Afghanistan. He is likely to be replaced in Baghdad by Ryan Crocker, a veteran American diplomat…(AP, 4 Jan 07)

More test positive for polonium-210

Two more people have tested positive to polonium-210 more than two months after the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with the substance. At least 12 other people have tested positive for low levels of the radioactive isotope, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) revealed today….(This Is London, 4 Jan 07)

Two more exposed to radiation that killed former spy

A further two people have tested positive for the radioactive element that killed the Russian former spy Alexander Litvinenko. The Health Protection Agency said a member of staff at the Best Western Hotel in Piccadilly and a guest who visited The Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair had shown exposure to polonium 210. There are now a total of 12 people who have tested positive for radioactivity….(Yorkshire Today, 4 Jan 07)

Negroponte to Leave Job to Be State Dept. Deputy

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has persuaded John D. Negroponte to leave his post as director of national intelligence and come to the State Department as her deputy, government officials said last night.....(Washington Post, 4 Jan 07)

The Next Top Spy

…some of McConnell's longtime associations may cause him headaches during Senate confirmation hearings, especially with the Democrats taking over Congress. One such tie is with another former Navy admiral, John Poindexter, the Iran-contra figure who started the controversial "Total Information Awareness" program at the Pentagon in 2002….(Newsweek, 4 Jan 07)

Intelligence Chief Is Shifted to Deputy State Dept. Post

Mr. Negroponte will fill a critical job that has been vacant for months, and he is expected to play a leading role in shaping policy in Iraq. But his transfer is another blow to an intelligence community that has seen little continuity at the top since the departure of George J. Tenet in 2004 as director of central intelligence......(New York Times, 4 Jan 07)

Gates Picks Intelligence Undersecretary

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has chosen a career military intelligence officer, retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., to be undersecretary of defense for intelligence, according to administration officials. Clapper, who retired in June after five years as director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), ran the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) during the 1990s, and handled Air Force intelligence during the 1991 Persian Gulf War….(Washington Post, 4 Jan 07)

Bush to name retired admiral as new national intelligence director

Retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, a veteran of more than 25 years in the intelligence field, will be named by President Bush to succeed John Negroponte as national intelligence director, a senior administration official said Thursday. Negroponte will move to the State Department to become the No. 2 to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The nominations of McConnell and Negroponte are expected to be announced by Bush on Friday….(AP, 4 Jan 07)

Harriet Miers Plans to Leave White House

Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel who endured a brief moment in the spotlight as President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee in 2005, is leaving the administration, Mr. Bush’s chief spokesman said today….(New York Times, 4 Jan 07)

'Hurst expertise key to intelligence futures workshop

The Mercyhurst College Intelligence Studies Department hosted a workshop Dec. 6-7 at Mercyhurst North East to discuss the creation of an “intelligence futures curriculum” for the National Intelligence University, the organization that integrates training and education across the intelligence community on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte….(Mercyhurst, 4 Jan 07)

FBI No Longer Seeks Leaked Documents

The family of investigative reporter Jack Anderson is expressing relief that the government is no longer seeking to recover government documents that had been leaked to the late columnist during his long career….(AP, 4 Jan 07)

Intelligence czar moving to No. 2 State Dept. post

....Negroponte's office declined to comment on why the director would cut short his service, which includes giving President Bush his daily intelligence briefing, for what is considered a lower-ranking position. But people close to Negroponte, who spent 37 years as a Foreign Service officer, said they believed he was not happy trying to better integrate sometimes-rivalrous organizations in a specialty outside his own.....(Los Angeles Times, 4 Jan 07)

Behind Negroponte's Move

As the nation faces growing concern about its Iraq policy and the need for clear intelligence to counter terrorist threats, Director of Intelligence John Negroponte will resign, U.S. officials have confirmed, to take an appointment as the No. 2 official at the State Dept and deputy to Condeleezza Rice….(Time Magazine, 4 Jan 07)

Nixon Vowed to 'Ruin Foreign Service'

Days after his re-election on Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon vented his frustrations about the diplomatic corps during a meeting with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.

Just before saying he was going "to take the responsibility for cleaning up" the department, the president told Kissinger on Nov. 13 that he was determined that his "one legacy is to ruin the Foreign Service. I mean ruin it _ the old Foreign Service _ and to build a new one….(AP, 4 Jan 07)

My Father’s Red Scare

This week the United States government will begin automatically declassifying hundreds of millions of documents from the cold war, under a law meant to streamline the cost and hassle of keeping secret files that are more than 25 years old…(New York Times, 4 Jan 07)

Spy Charges Against New Archbishop Shake Poland

Archbishop Wielgus, 67 years old and formerly the bishop of Plock, is alleged to have spied for years on his fellow priests. Historian and civil rights' ombudsman Andrzej Paczkowski, who set up a historians' commission to examine the secret service's documents, said Thursday he had "no doubt at all" that Wielgus was an informant….(DPA, 4 Jan 07)

Deep in Le Carré country, the remote Polish airport at heart of CIA flights row

…The Polish authorities are far less forthcoming than the airport staff, whose testimony is seen as some of the most significant since allegations about the CIA flights were first published in the Guardian last year. MEPs now allege that 11 "CIA-operated" planes landed in Poland from, or bound for, countries "linked with extraordinary rendition circuits and the transfer of detainees".…(Guardian, 4 Jan 07)

Records show Diego Garcia link to alleged torture flights

A CIA jet flew at least twice to Poland from Kabul in Afghanistan, where the US detained numerous terrorist suspects, new details about aircraft involved in "torture flights" show….(Guardian, 4 Jan 07)

Pentagon Says Spies Busy in U.S.

Efforts by foreign intelligence to obtain U.S. military secrets have increased dramatically, according to a 30-page report issued by the Defense Security Service Counterintelligence Office. It is the latest non-secret information available on espionage in the United States….(Kommersant, 4 Jan 07)

Report: Foreign spying on U.S. defense tech rises

…The Defense Security Service Counterintelligence Office recorded an annual jump of nearly 43 percent in the number of suspicious foreign contacts reported to U.S. authorities by defense contractors and other defense-related sources….(Reuters, 4 Jan 07)

Canada's spy agency eager to fill positions

As universities struggle to meet the growing post-9-11 demand for courses in security and intelligence, Canada's spy agency has revved up recruiting efforts to fill positions soon to be vacated by retiring baby boomers. "We're looking for about 70 per cent more intelligence officers," said Canadian Security Intelligence Service…(Canadian Press, 4 Jan 07)

Sidney D. Butterfield Jr. Government Investigator

Sidney Dealey Butterfield Jr., 84, a World War II Army veteran, former FBI special agent and government investigator, died Dec. 7…(Washington Post, 4 Jan 07)

ASIO creates new division

The Australian Intelligence Security Organization has established a special division to specifically counter foreign intelligence gathering in the country…..(UPI, 3 Jan 07)

Red Skies

China’s deepening space partnership with the European Union presents an immediate national security dilemma for the U.S., since advanced technologies shared by cooperative EU nations.…(Monsters & Critics, 3 Jan 07)

Grand Illusion: Costs of War and Empire

…Pentagon budgets are getting "blacker," to use the defense and intelligence jargon for super-clandestine operations. Over 20 percent of the Pentagon's acquisition budget for 2007 is devoted to secret programs—a return to the cold war level of classified spending. Kaplan explains the necessity of doing so, arguing that the U.S. must bring back the pre-Vietnam rules of engagement using 21st-century technology…(Global Research, 3 Jan 07)

Lithuania: Accused Spy Appeals Extradition
Sergei Monich, a Belarusian citizen accused of espionage in Poland, on Jan. 2 appealed a ruling regarding his extradition from Lithuania. The appeal requests that the Lithuanian Court of Appeals overturn a ruling passed by a Vilnius district court, which granted Poland's request for extradition Dec. 22….(Stratford, 3 Jan 07)

Revealed: Attlee's ignorance of the Cambridge spies who defected

…Top-secret papers released on New Year's Day reveal the true extent of the ignorance and incompetence at the heart of the then government and the intelligence services during one of the most serious breaches of security in British history ….(Independent, 3 Jan 07)

FBI Releases Rehnquist Nomination Files

The FBI was directed by two Republican administrations to run background checks on Senate witnesses critical of William Rehnquist _ first when he was named to the Supreme Court in 1971 and again when he was nominated as chief justice in 1986….(AP, 3 Jan 07)

Litvinenko Investigators Find Radiation in Hotel Guest, Worker

U.K. authorities investigating the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko detected radiation contamination in a guest and a hotel worker at different London establishments. Litvinenko died on Nov. 23 after exposure to the radioactive substance polonium 210. The isotope was later discovered in at least 12 London locations. Since then, at least 15 other people have tested positive for the substance, including the two reported today by the U.K. Health Protection Agency….(Bloomberg, 3 Jan 07)

Two more test positive for polonium in UK probe
…The tests bring to 12 the number of people in Britain found to have been contaminated by polonium since Litvinenko died on November 23. He accused the Kremlin of assassinating him in a murky spy case which has strained relations between London and Moscow….(Reuters, 3 Jan 07)

Assassins may have found element's most effective use

…Pound for pound, polonium-210 is at least 1 million times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide, the poison used to execute prisoners in gas chambers, according to medical toxicology books. Radiation safety experts calculate that a single gram of polonium could sicken 100 million people, killing half….(LA Times, 2 Jan 07)

Foreign spy activity surges to fill technology gap

Foreign spies are stepping up efforts to obtain secret U.S. technology through methods ranging from sexual entrapment to Internet hacking, with China and other Asian countries leading the targeting of U.S. defense contractors. "The apparent across-the-board surge in activity from East Asia and Pacific countries will continue in the short term as gaps in technological capability become apparent in their weapons-development processes," the latest annual report by the Defense Security Service counterintelligence office stated. "The globalization of defense business will increase the threat from strategic competitors who will use legitimate business activities as a venue to illegally transfer U.S. technology,"….(Washington Times, 2 Jan 07)

First-class scoundrel
The truth must have finally dawned on Frederick Duquesne as officers escorted him from court to prison. He couldn't talk his way out of this one. The former Akron resident wore a look of resignation on Jan. 2, 1942, as he walked out of the federal courtroom in New York. He had just been sentenced to 20 years at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas on espionage charges. A jury convicted Duquesne of supplying U.S. military secrets to Germany before America entered World War II. He could have faced a firing squad for spying while the United States was at war, but it was his great fortune to get arrested five months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor….(Beacon Journal, 2 Jan 07)

Uncomfortable history lessons

This past week, President Bush signed legislation setting aside $38 million to preserve reminders of a dark period in American history. The money will finance a grant program to save and restore 10 internment camps in which Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II….(Daily Herald, 2 Jan 07)

Japan to set up spy agency

Local media in Japan are reporting the country will set up a new human intelligence unit. The spy service will be the first for any branch of the nation's military…..(CCTV, 2 Jan 07)

Trainee spooks wanted

Britain spymasters are launching a recruitment drive in Greater Manchester. MI5 chiefs - portrayed in the TV drama Spooks - are especially keen on signing up women in their fight against terrorism….(Manchester News, 2 Jan 07)

Teddy Kollek played key role in forging the CIA-Mossad alliance

Former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, who died on Tuesday at 95, was one of the founders of the Israeli intelligence community, and the man responsible for the alliance and cooperation between the CIA and Israel, one of the pillars of Israel's alliance with the United States….(Haaretz, 2 Jan 07)

Boris Gudz, 104; Soviet secret police veteran helped nab British spy

Boris Gudz, 104, a veteran of the Soviet secret police who helped track down British spy Sydney Reilly in the early 1920s, died Wednesday in Moscow, said a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB….(LA Times, 2 Jan 07)

US 'license to snoop' on British air travelers

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington. By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account….(Telegraph, 2 Jan 07)

Suspected Belarussian spy appeals extradition to Poland

Monich, a Belarussian citizen suspected of spying, and two of his defense lawyers have appealed the ruling to extradite Monich to Poland with Lithuania's Court of Appeals, whose decision will be final….(Interfax, 2 Jan 07)

Keeping up with the spy threat

…How Russian intelligence welcomed the deportee known as Paul William Hampel is unknown…The spymasters would also be curious as to how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service drew conclusions that the suspect, whose true identity remains a secret, was an elite spy….(Globe & Mail, 1 Jan 07)

Journalists May Testify in CIA Leak Case

Some journalists who made careers out of questioning government officials and bearing witness to history may soon find themselves answering questions from prosecutors as key witnesses in the CIA leak case….(AP, 1 Jan 07)

The Best and Worst in Intelligence and Security, 2006

It’s an old saw that the newspaper-reading public hears only about the failures of our nation’s spies, and never about their successes, and it’s true that 2006 had its fair share of embarrassing episodes, from the exposure of the NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program to the indictment in Italy of a CIA rendition team for the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan…..(Century Foundation, 1 Jan 07)

Detached Spies — A Threat to Autocratic Rule

…November 2006 death, in London, of former Soviet KGB and FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko (43) served to remind us that “operational acts” are alive and well. And that human intelligence (HUMINT) is still the lifeblood of the spy business….(Mexidata, 1 Jan 07)

Dissidents say BBC has caved in to Moscow

Leading dissidents from the former Soviet Union have demanded an investigation into the BBC Russian Service, which they have accused of caving in to pressure to be less critical of President Vladimir Putin's regime….(Telegraph, 1 Jan 07)

Harlan G. Moen State Department, Film Official

Harlan Glenn Moen, 74, a retired State Department Soviet and Eastern Europe specialist who became an executive with the Motion Picture Export Association of America, died Dec. 31…(Washington Post, 1 Jan 07)

Ann Healy Robey Church Member

Ann Healy Robey, 88, a native Washingtonian and member Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Kensington, where she was involved in volunteer work, died Dec. 28…During World War II, she did cryptography work in Scotland, London and Italy for the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency….(Washington Post, 1 Jan 07)

Samuel Smith traveled world with family during CIA career

Starting from the corn fields of Indiana, Samuel Smith set out on a mission around the world. His job with the CIA took him and his family to far-off destinations before Clermont became his retirement haven. Smith died Dec. 24…(Sentinel, 31 Dec 06)

Tinker, tailor, soldier, guide

…As we know from the recent capture in Montreal of an alleged Russian spy and the radiation poisoning death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, the craft of spying did not end with the Cold War. And nowhere is the secret art more alive and more celebrated than in Washington (DC)….(Weekend Post, 31 Dec 06)

Litvinenko murder may be linked to mystery Russian poisonings

Prosecutors in Moscow are investigating the possibility that the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London last month is linked to two unsolved poisonings involving prominent Russian businessmen. Both men were embroiled in the multi-billion-pound battle over Yukos, the Russian oil company, before its assets were taken back into state control by the Kremlin. One is Roman Tsepov — a former bodyguard to President Vladimir Putin — who is reported to have intervened in the negotiations over Yukos. He was murdered two years ago after suffering severe radiation sickness brought on by a mystery substance he had ingested with food or drink…(Times Online, 31 Dec 06)

FBI Investigation of AIPAC Reportedly Has Been “Expanded”

In 1999 the FBI began an investigation of Steve Rosen, foreign policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Israel lobby’s Iran specialist, Keith Weissman. The two AIPAC wheeler-dealers were indicted on Aug. 4, 2005 under the seldom-used Espionage Act. Since then their trial date has been postponed several times, but now seems likely to begin in early 2007 in Alexandria, at the Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia….(WRMEA, Dec 06 Issue)