“I knew quite well, when I gave the names of our agents in the Soviet Union, that I was exposing them to the full machinery of counter-espionage and the law, and then prosecution and capital punishment.”
Former CIA Aldrich Hazen Ames
Aldrich Ames is arrested outside his home in Virginia
On February 21 1994, CIA officer Aldrich Hazen Ames was arrested by the FBI in Arlington, Virginia on espionage charges. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today Continue reading
“Als de ene blinde de andere leidt, vallen ze beiden in de gracht.”
[“When one blind man leads another, they both fall into the ditch.”]
Dutch proverb
“The ADIV is aware of the Rubicon affair and is currently investigating the possible extent of the eavesdropping practices reported.”
BELGA News
The Blind Leading the Blind — Painting by the Netherlandish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1568)
Belgian newspapers Knack and Le Soir report that the Intelligence Committee (which oversees the Belgian intelligence services) has launched an investigation into the Crypto AG affair. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
“There remains a little less than 5 billion euros on the four accounts opened at Euroclear Bank SA.”
Denis Goeman — Spokesman from Brussels’ prosecutor’s office
“Making the interest and other earnings freely available to the Libyan Investment Authority is in non-compliance with the sanctions regime. Furthermore, considering the instability in the country, the disputes over the authority of the Libyan Investment Authority and the lack of an oversight mechanism, doing so could lead to the misuse and misappropriation of funds.”
UN Report
“Nobody is preoccupied with the question of where the funds have gone and who benefitted from them. What is surprising is that nobody wanted to see what was going on and everyone is shutting their eyes at a political level … This is an extremely serious problem as it could uncover a real state scandal.”
Robert Wtterwulghe — Law professor at UC Louvain University
Brussels, Belgium — After Gaddafi’s death in 2011, the U.N. passed a resolution to freeze his wealth, with the idea that it would be held in trust for the Libyan people until the war-shattered country stabilizes. Four separate accounts opened for the Libyan Investment Authority and Libyan Foreign Investment Company in the Euroclear bank held about 16 billion euros when they became ‘frozen’ under UN sanctions in September 2011. Today, there remains about 5 billion euros on these accounts. So the question is rather simple: Where did the €11 billion vanish to? Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today Continue reading
“Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.”
Henry L. Stimson — US Secretary of State
“The program had limits. America’s main adversaries, including the Soviet Union and China, were never Crypto customers. Their well-founded suspicions of the company’s ties to the West shielded them from exposure …”
The intelligence coup of the century — Greg Miller (Washington Post – Feb. 11 2020)
February 19 2020 — China’s Foreign Ministry has accused the United States of being a “hacker empire”. The statement comes in the wake of the Crypto AG scandal. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
“The truth is—as this deplorable experience proves—that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves…Despite the unequivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment’s command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both of these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark — “Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans”
On February 19 1942, US President Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which allowed regional military commanders to designate “military areas” from which any or all persons may be excluded. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
“F.B.I. officials knew as far back as the mid-1980’s that Robert P. Hanssen, the longtime agent and convicted Russian spy, had repeatedly mishandled classified data and violated procedures but did nothing to prompt an investigation, a Justice Department report released today states. The report from the department’s inspector general provides many previously undisclosed details about how the F.B.I. missed numerous signals that could have led to Mr. Hanssen’s capture years earlier.”
New York Times (August 15 2003)
February 18 2020 — Robert Philip Hanssen is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history.” He was sentenced to 15 life terms without the possibility of parole. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
“Eine Person, die den Bericht gesehen haben will, spricht von einer «Sprache, die in Groschenromanen zu lesen ist». Zudem seien auffällig viele Ausrufezeichen verwendet worden. Beides sei ungewöhnlich in einem Geheimdienstpapier.”
[A person, who claims to have seen the report, speaks of a «language that can be read in cheap novels». In addition, a striking number of exclamation marks were used. Both are unusual in a secret service paper.]
NZZ am Sonntag (February 16 2020)
“It was the intelligence coup of the century. Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”
“MINERVA A History” — CIA report (WP February 11 2020)
“It may be the greatest intelligence scam of the century: For decades, the US has routinely intercepted and deciphered top secret encrypted messages of 120 countries. These nations had bought the world’s most sophisticated and supposedly secure commercial encryption technology from Crypto AG, a Swiss company that staked its reputation and the security concerns of its clients on its neutrality.”
CRYPTO AG: The NSA’s Trojan Whore? — Covert Action Quarterly (1998)
The 83-year-old electrical engineer, physicist and mathematician Peter Frutiger worked for Crypto AG until 1977. This Sunday, Frutiger revealed that he has received death threats from the CIA.
A decade ago, I argued that Crypto AG had rigged the equipment used by diplomats around the world allowing US Intelligence Agencies to decode in real-time their messages. Last week, Swiss Media Group SRF Rundschau, German public broadcaster ZDF and the Washington Post have confirmed many details of the story after gaining access to a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation codenamed “Thesaurus” and later “Rubicon”. What do we actually know about this “CIA document”? Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
″The impression from the video is that he might have been killed soon after he was captured.″
Dr. Michael Baden — Director of forensic sciences for the New York State Police
″It clearly looked to me like the body was in what we call mummification, or early stages of mummification, which essentially means drying. Because of the drying certain areas become sunken like the eyes are sunken. If you look at the Higgins pictures, they certainly look that way. … I’m inclined to think he was dead before he was hanged.″
Dr. Werner Spitz — Professor of forensic pathology at Wayne State University
February 17 2020 — William Richard Higgins (January 15, 1945 – ???) was a colonel in the United States Marine Corps who was captured on February 17 1988 while serving on a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. He was held hostage, tortured and eventually murdered by his captors. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
“If Clement Vandenborre is proved to have worked for Russia, it would be the biggest spy scandal since Herman Simm, an Estonian defence ministry official, was convicted of Russian espionage in Tallinn in 2009.”
Andrew Rettman — EU Observer (February 15 2019)
Général Claude Vande Voorde — Service général du renseignement et de la sécurité
February 15 2019 — Clement Vandenborre, the head of the counterintelligence department within Belgium’s General Information and Security Service (GISS / ADIV) is accused of spying for Russia. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY Continue reading
“My son Boris Jr., who met a tragic death in 1970, had an inventive mind, and his contributions when the post-war CX-type was designed were very important.”
The Story of Hagelin-Cryptos — Boris Hagelin (1981)
“Even the vice president of the BND assumed that Boris Hagelin Jr. was not the victim of an accident. It was an intelligence murder.”
Intelligence expert Erich Schmidt-Eenboom [1]
The Hagelin family in 1962. In front: Boris Hagelin, his wife Annie and their daughters. Back, from left to right: Boris Jr., Karl Wilhelm and Carl. Courtesy from Sixten Svensson [Copyright]
