issue seventy

• Published 26 October 2010

   

   

Editor’s Notes

‘Don’t believe all that you read in the press’. Such a comment could not have been applied more appropriately to the reporting on the death of MI6 codes’ worker Gareth Williams. On secondment from the listening arm of British Intelligence - GCHQ, Mr Williams decomposing body was found naked (stuffed in a sports bag) in his MI6-rented apartment in the Pimlico district of London. Eye Spy presents its findings.

We also publish a catalogue of unusual deaths associated with MI6 officers and those tied in with the Service. Chilling stuff. And keeping with the MI6 theme, Sunday Times Defence Correspondent, Michael Smith, has written an exclusive feature on the origins of the Service’s incredible ‘Tradecraft Factory’.

It’s another information-packed edition, which includes the truth behind the al-Qaida operation to strike Europe’s capital cities - something which Eye Spy revealed 18 months ago. We also focus on the CIA 2011 Desk, created specifically to counter a likely terrorist attack in the United States on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. 

And there’s just time to advise that Eye Spy has been in London filming for a BBC documentary on the city’s incredible association with espionage and intelligence.

A brief overview of Eye Spy 70 follows.


MYSTERY OF 36 ALDERNEY STREET

Eye Spy examines the strange death of a GCHQ codes’ analyst on secondment to MI6. Gareth Williams was almost certainly murdered in a property owned or rented by MI6 and used by contact personnel attached to the Service. The Police
investigation appears to have ground to a halt...

Quite often following the unusual death of an intelligence officer, cover stories are created and seeds of disinformation planted to mask certain aspects of the victim’s work and intelligence background. Such a scenario engulfed Gareth Williams, 31, an active operational codes’ analyst who has performed in various theatres, including Afghanistan.

In many cases the released information is mundane and slight, but sufficient enough to deflect attention away from the investigation. It also allows breathing time for senior officials to prepare their commentary and responses from an inquisitive media.


ANATOMY OF THE PERFECT MURDER?

The unexplained death of MI6 man Gareth Williams, is laced with intrigue, but debate still rages over the exact circumstances how he was killed, for what reason, and by whom? Even if it transpires he was killed because of events linked to his personal life, which sources used by this magazine doubt, MI6 and its various fronts have lost personnel and ‘contact’ agents on a regular basis throughout its one hundred years of operations.

Eye Spy takes a brief look at a number of case files, some well known, others not so, that reflect the dangers sometimes faced by associates and employees of the world’s must cunning collectors of secrets....


ABLE DANGER: OPERATION DARK HEART

Military intelligence data mining outfit Able Danger allegedly could not form a relationship with civilian agencies such as the FBI - therefore losing the threads to Mohamed Atta and Osama bin-Laden

Readers of Eye Spy will be familiar with Army Reserve Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer, a ‘black-ops’ team leader better for his role in the secret US intelligence data mining effort - ABLE DANGER - and his commentary that more could have been done to disable the 9/11 plot and capture Osama bin-Laden (see Eye Spy 36).

The Able Danger outfit (now defunct), with links to the CIA, probably got as close to anyone in piecing together the intelligence that also revealed the threat of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.  

Shaffer’s book, Operation Dark Heart has caused quite a stir in the US, with Pentagon chiefs ordering the purchase of the book’s entire first print-run cost at an estimate cost of $47,000 (‘30,000).

Eye Spy looks at the background to this astonishing decision...

TOWERING INTERCEPTION
In this exclusive feature, Eye Spy reveals the incredible spy drama that took place in one of London’s most iconic buildings - the BT Tower. This is the story of electronic interceptions involving MI6 and the KGB, and how a warning by MI5 that signals were being ‘snatched from the skies’ went unheeded, until....


STUXNET ATTACK - IRAN
A THRESHOLD LEVEL CYBER EVENT

Eye Spy’s senior US editor explains why a recent cyber attack on an Iranian nuclear plant is a pivotal moment that has implications for everyone

Since 2007, Eye Spy’s Kevin Coleman has given readers a gradual introduction into the world of cyber warfare, crime, espionage and other elements that engage in this invisible world. In between, he has warned about the various types of cyber attack [threat] programmes, and their increasing complexity. The dangers and implications for ordinary people once seemed tiny and so far away - but this is no longer is the case.

So who was really behind a most pivotal event that forced Iran to delay the opening of a key nuclear plant?


24 HOURS - LONDON 7/7 INQUESTS

Already information previously unseen and gleaned by the security services, has meant a re-write of many stories concerning the attack, including the ‘event time-line’ (ETL).

The most striking data so far is the revelation that the al-Qaida (AQ) bombers definitely intended to attack the capital on the day London was chosen to host the 2012 Olympic Games. This, supposedly because AQ cell leader, Mohammed Sidique Khan, had e-mailed his associates just 48-hours before the attack saying he had a hospital appointment with his wife who was pregnant at the time. Eye Spy has always been convinced this was the intended date of the operation anyway, but for reasons most obvious we have been unable to publish this. We also understand police are still seeking information on as many as 20 individuals...


A HIDDEN AGENDA?
THE SVR SPY RING - INTERVIEW WITH FORMER CIA OFFICER

Tennent Bagley, former head of the CIA’s anti-Soviet Counter-intelligence Desk and author of the controversial book  Spy Wars, talks exclusively to Eye Spy about the recent SVR spy ring which was exposed on the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Mr Bagley believes not everything about this case is so clear cut...

Background: In the summer of 2010, eleven, perhaps twelve SVR illegals were deported from the United States for their association with Russian Intelligence. In return for their release, Moscow agreed to free four people linked to British and American Intelligence. The incident was remarkable for many reasons, not least the speed in which events unfolded. Eye Spy sought professional guidance from a man who made a living from spy catching, former CIA man Tennent Bagley.

Two years ago, Mr Bagley sent shudders through the spy world when he provided convincing evidence that one of America’s ‘key gains’ in the Cold War, KGB defector Yuri Nosenko, was a plant hiding KGB moles who have never been uncovered. Now he explains why certain facts about the recent spy case do not make sense...

EXTRACT:

EYE SPY: Does this event reveal a wider, ongoing Russian spy effort against the United States?

TB: I don’t know exactly what this event reveals, but you can be sure the Russian effort is ongoing. The shift from ‘Soviet’ to ‘Russian’ didn’t change the spy programme. And these eleven are by no means the only Russian Illegals operating in the United States. What they call today the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) is just the going name for the foreign intelligence component of the KGB - that KGB that was born as the Cheka back in December 1917. It has had about fourteen name changes since then, but it’s the same outfit, doing the same old things. Through all those years they never stopped planting people like these recent eleven in the West.


MI5 OPERATION ‘NARE AND LIBURNA’

As Jonathan Evans - Director-General of MI5 warns of a new wave of terror attacks by dissidents in Northern Ireland, details have emerged of an
intricate MI5 operation which was truly international.

Code-named ‘Nare and Liburna’, the operation involved undercover liaisons with an MI5 agent by the name of ‘Ali’ in Bruges, Amsterdam and Istanbul. In these locations, bogus arms dealers, middle-men and couriers all met to discuss financing the deal and smuggling the weaponry across Europe and into Ireland. McCaugherty did not know Ali was working for MI5...


MIRROR MUMBAI - AQ CODEWORD FOR EUROPE ATTACKS
CIA OPERATION THWARTS TERROR ATTACKS IN EUROPE’S CAPITALS
Following a year-long multi-agency intelligence operation fronted by the CIA, US para-military forces disrupted the planning of a complex terrorist operation that could have resulted in serious casualties in several European cities and possibly North America.

Undoubtedly, the huge CIA-controlled UAV raid on a ‘culinary school’ - al-Qaida (AQ) speak for a terrorist training centre - on 27 September in North Waziristan, was but part of a massive international counter-terrorist effort targeting senior AQ planners. It is understood the site had been uncovered by NSA and GCHQ

EYE SPY INTEL:
OBL believed by bringing together several AQ terror affiliates, this would make him relevant again. However, by allowing such a large gathering into the training camp,
intelligence leaked. Telephone intercepts of persons from the UK, Europe and North Africa who had liaisons with some of the camp’s trainers were secured. Thereafter the area was monitored by NSA reconnaissance satellites and UK and American Special Forces.

A central British connection appears certain after a Pakistan ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Agency) officer, said ‘two British brothers (one of whom was killed) were at the heart of the plot.’ The man was named as Abdul Jabbar, originally from Pakistan’s Jhelum province. Eye Spy understands he has links to a number of suspected terrorists in northern England and London....


TROJAN HORSES: THE REAL SECRET SPY WARS
An early MI6 infiltration operation in Russia provided London with a deep insight into the events which swept away the White Army

World renown intelligence and defence writer Michael Smith provides an astonishingly detailed account of MI6’s infiltration operation that placed two British spies inside Moscow during Russia’s turbulent transition to Communism.

This important feature is drawn from the researches of Smith’s brilliant new book ‘SIX: A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service’, and amply reveals the extent and deliberation of key intelligence, political and business persons who combined to give London an all ‘powerful seeing eye’ on the dramatic events that resulted in the creation of what MI6 called, ‘the Communist menace’...


CIA AND THE 2011 DESK
Eye Spy reveals the special CIA unit charged with gleaning global intelligence specific to al-Qaida’s long-awaited attack on the United States.


THE CHAOCIPHER - LETTER FROM FORT MEADE

Intelligence and codes expert David Hamer examines the machinery and people behind some ‘unbreakable codes’ created years ago. These ground-breaking achievements were strangely, ignored for varying reasons.

Hamer provides good solid evidence that these past efforts hold great relevance to today’s code-breaking and code-making efforts. In this edition of Eye Spy, Hamer focuses on one such project - The CHAOCIPHER.


NEW: WORLDWATCH - EYES AND EARS

Eye Spy associate editor Paul Beaumont takes a fascinating intelligence journey around the world.


SECURITY ALERT AQ USES LIVE WEBCAM FEEDS TO GATHER INTELLIGENCE

Failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, has given counter-terrorism chiefs one big headache as he admitted using live webcam feeds in New York, to gather vital intelligence. This included noting the times when pedestrian traffic was busiest, places to park, and local security posts. This information has caused counter-terrorist officials around the world to identify such cameras and question if they pose a risk.
Eye Spy examines the background to this emerging threat. In court, moments after receiving a life-term behind bars, the terrorist jail, screamed the ‘war with Muslims has only just begun.’


LONDON SPY SITES
The BBC has been filming a new intelligence-spy documentary to be featured on INSIDE OUT.

Eye Spy helped provide a few interesting sites and stories, such as this agent-meeting point in central London!


MIND CONTROL PRINCIPLES IN THE INTELLIGENCE CYCLE

In this feature, MIKE FINN examines the evidence that suggests it is possible to change the way information is received and understood by the brain, and its implications...


EYE SPY 70 BEST OF THE REST....

ROAD TO THE KREMLIN: Failed SVR agent Anna Chapman
receives medal from Kremlin, job and photo shoot offers...
and much more as she seeks to launch a political career...

JAILED CIA TRAITOR: Former CIA tradecraft instructor,
Harold Nicholson, jailed for spying on behalf of the KGB,
outflanks the FBI from inside his prison cell

LICENCE TO KILL: MI6 has always dismissed suggestions its officers have
no power or authority to use lethal force. But is this really the case?

NEVER SAY NEVER: A former MI6 Chief and his memoirs


FEATURES ON: Igor Sutyagin, the alleged MI6 agent who was released as part of the
US-Russian spy exchange has many plans; So how did former Russian spy and defector Sergei Tretyakov die? He may have known some members of the SVR spy ring; Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter’s secret past; Is Dahi Khalfan Tamin, the UAE police chief investigating the assassination of Hamas gun-runner Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel, himself a target?

BOOK RELEASES: The latest intelligence-related books

EYE SPY EQUIPMENT: Four new covert cameras at special introductory prices

 
 

Issue 70