Counterintelligence

...were sometimes seen in the past, when their intelligence agency MOIS tracked down dissidents. The last incident showed their still ongoing efforts, including sleeper cell agents and one diplomat from the Iranian embassy in Vienna. This diplomat was charged by German authorities with planning an assault against a meeting of the exile group National Council of Resistance of Iran. The Federal Prosecutor General was a little bit shy and named the suspect Assadollah A. But a simple check of the Vienna embassy staff shows more details. Using an explosive device for political reasons is a strong signal, but it is one instrument of influencing the political situation in a country. Accidentally I published a new paper today which looks into covert and clandestine operations of some states, which are extremely active in countries as Germany - often supposed by officials who are on their payroll or just think this is the right way to do politics. These operations can be aggressive and

... was a public diplomacy publication of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which provided an estimate of the military strategy and capabilities of the Soviet Union during the final years of the Cold War, ostensibly to alert the U.S. public to the significant military capabilities of the Soviet Armed Forces . The single publications were not classified and can be downloaded easily. A few days ago I found three of them in a box, hidden in an dusty bookstore in Dublin. Inside were a few old articles from newspapers of the 80s and one - Volume 1987 - was stamped presumably by the US Embassy in Dublin. More interesting is a document, made with a good old typewriter, which I found inside. It seems to be - more or less - a compilation, written 1987 by the Unites States Information Service (USIS), the former name of the today's United States Information Agency. Nothing Top Secret, but anyway its a nice historical piece. Due to the dusty place I found it I decided to publi

...wasn't so open to Iran as he seems  to be in the last years - regarding Israels Shin Bet, charging him with spying for Iran, giving Israel’s arch-foe sensitive information about locations of security centers and the country’s energy industry.  His position in 1995:               (Source: The Nonproliferation Review/Fall 1995, p. 103) Other sources say he is a classic type [to be targeted] because he is greedy and readily gets involved in dubious transactions.  But why all this anger by Shin Bet and other " institutes " about him? Can it be that there are other reasons for his arrest? Maybe his connection to a security company with a "special" background? Some powerful dark figures in the ecstasy trade? Or is it a revenge of Yossi Beilins network for Segevs pressure in 1994  - when he was a Knesset member - to reveal some details about secret cooperation between Israel and two not named countries? Even in Israel it is the same as in Germany with t

Recentlly I drank a beer in Brussels named Illegaal. The label showed a well known person: The taste did not remind me of the alleged poisoning of Arafat by the Mossad - the beer was ok - but: I read a new book, in which, among other things, Arafat's role in terrorism is presented. So I reflected on new business ideas. I suspect that the biggest problem will be the export to individual countries.

...is the title of a new brief paper I published, subtitle: "Infiltration of Western police and intelligence agencies". It can be downloaded on my website . Originally I planned a much more extensive paper with a lot more case studies, but finally I ended up with a brief overview. Due to sheer number of cases, persons and the frightening development in Western countries maybe next time more.

One of the last cases in espionage conducted by Chinese intelligence shows again a few interesting details. As far as I understand the arrested person is not finally convicted and so I will not give his or her name away. Anyway: The person I am talking about is one of the latest in a long line of former US intelligence officers, many of them working now as a private contractor, accused to be a spy for China. Regarding the documents related to this case the person worked – beside other functions – here (I did all the blackening because I don’t think that every detail should be posted online): The interesting detail is about the commercialisation of promoting „friendship“ between China and the US. There are similar business models in Germany as well and it is necessary to investigate them – due to their harmless appearance and their honorable goal they represent a great challenge for counterintelligence. They can rely on a mass of mostly local

Ich las im Qualitätsmedium T-Online vor ein paar Tagen über Mateusz Piskorski. Dieser sei in in Polen inhaftiert „wegen Spionage für russische und chinesische Geheimdienste an – er pflegt auch enge Kontakte zu deutschen Politikern“. T-Online habe auch kürzlich „ enthüllt“, dass Piskorski kurz vor seiner Verhaftung „einen Verein mit mehrerenAfD-Politikern in Berlin“ gegründet habe… Ziel des Vereins war es, sogenannte "Wahlbeobachtungsmissionen" in völkerrechtlich umstrittene, aber kremltreue Separatistengebiete zu organisieren und damit russische Außenpolitik zu legitimieren.“ Über diese Berichterstattung kann ich nur müde lächeln: Was hier als tolle Story verkauft wird, ist jedem, der sich ernsthaft und nicht nur je nach politischem Windchen damit beschäftigt, in den meisten Details längst bekannt. Natürlich bedarf es einer gewissen Intensität und Tiefe, was die Recherchen dazu angeht, aber möglicherweise haben die dafür zuständigen Leute etwas verschlafen oder das