AP, 11 Feb 10: A former Spanish intelligence officer was convicted on Thursday of trying to sell secrets to Russia and imprisoned for 12 years, in Spain’s first treason conviction since returning to democracy in 1978 after decades of military dictatorship. The Madrid Provincial Court said Roberto Florez Garcia, 44, took documents relating to spy recruitment and planned to sell their contents to the Russian Embassy in Madrid.
The verdict said Florez Garcia stole documents with identities of other agents and information on Spanish intelligence facilities. The court said it did not have conclusive proof that Florez Garcia had actually succeeded in selling or handing over sensitive information.
Florez Garcia worked at Spain’s intelligence headquarters from 1991 to 2004, when he quit. He was arrested on the Canary island of Tenerife in 2007 and went on trial in January. He denied any wrongdoing. Police found the documents, which included two letters Florez Garcia wrote to Petr Yakovlevich Melnikov, who worked at Russia’s Embassy between 2000 and 2003. The court said Florez Garcia had deleted one of the letters from his computer but investigators were able to retrieve it using digital technology. The newspaper El Pais said the CIA tipped off Spanish investigators about Florez Garcia’s activities. . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 191–Russia’s SVR/FSB/GRU Intelligence: An Introduction to Today’s Russian Intelligence and Counterintelligence Operations and Methodologies
Battlecreek Inquirer, 11 Feb 10: 25 years ago today, 1985: Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko says most of the approximately 700 Soviet citizens in New York City are full-time spies or are under orders from the KGB, according to excerpts from his memoirs published Sunday. Shevchenko, a former diplomat who defected in 1978, says in the excerpts appearing in the current issue of Time magazine that one agent was fascinated with the possibility of destroying New York’s electrical systems.
Book Review 1 (Commentary)
Book Review 2 (New York Times)
Information Week, 10 Feb 10: In early December news broke about a security researcher who developed Spyphone, an application that uses the public iPhone API to grab data from other iPhone applications. This week a security researcher demonstrated a similar application that snoops on the Blackberry. Tyler Shields, senior researcher for the application security company Veracode, gave a presentation at ShmooCon 2010 earlier this week that may cause Blackberry owners to double-check what applications they choose to download and install.
Shields demonstrated, using only RIM-provided APIs and without leveraging any Blackberry vulnerabilities or software exploits, how an application can be created to pry into just about anything a cyber-snoop would want: eavesdrop on discussions taking place around the phone, grab phone location data, tap text messages, grab contacts, etc. . . . .
Careers ended because of failure to understand the Jihadist Threat Doctrine; soldiers lives are ended also because of this failure to know this threat:
Wall Street Journal, 9 Feb 10: The military will formally discipline at least six officers, mostly from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, for failing to take action against the officer accused of carrying out last year’s deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, according to people familiar with the matter.
Senior Army officials said the decision to punish so many officers reflects the military’s belief that the November assault, which killed 13 people at the Army base in central Texas, could have been prevented if Maj. Nidal Hasan’s superiors had alerted authorities to his increasing Islamist radicalization. The officials said that as many as eight officers could ultimately be censured over Maj. Hasan, mostly with letters of reprimand that effectively end their military careers. The punishments will be detailed in an “accountability review” that Army Gen. Carter Ham, who has been investigating the shootings for several months, will deliver to top Army officials as early as Friday. . . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
Washington Post, 10 Feb 10: As deputy director of Yemen’s feared internal security agency a few years ago, Mohammed al-Surmi was in charge of monitoring al-Qaeda extremists. But he also allegedly lived a double life, feeding the terrorist network information to uncover informants within its ranks. Surmi was removed from his job, but still wields influence: He is now deputy mayor of the capital, Sana’a, where some residents call him “His Excellency.”
Surmi is a testament to the obstacles the Obama administration faces as it deepens its partnership with Yemen. U.S. and some Yemeni officials remain concerned that radical Islamists and corrupt officials who can be bought off by al-Qaeda still pervade the Political Security Organization, the country’s largest security and intelligence agency, which is vital to America’s counterterrorism initiatives here. “Al-Qaeda has a very aggressive effort to get whatever information they can from those individuals,” said a senior Obama Administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
In 2006, al-Qaeda militants broke out of a maximum-security prison in 2006. Today, senior Yemeni officials acknowledge that PSO officials with sympathies to al-Qaeda facilitated the jail break. “It could not have happened without people deeply inside the PSO,” said Abdul Karim al-Iriyani, a former prime minister and current political adviser to Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. . . . .
