Covert Intel and Operations

Dr Ian Stanier Buckingham Centre for Security & Intelligence Studies. #HUMINT. Lead PG CERT & MA

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

PODCAST: #38 Dr Ian Stanier, former head of the U.K. Counter-Terrorism Policing’s HUMINT Unit, discusses informant management, informant motivation, the Stasi and the recruitment of Kim Philby. Listen via Reducing Crime on https://t.co/NxDBkRcqr4

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

Dutch firm Optics11 in talks with navies on secretive underwater listening tech
https://t.co/ld7gg9nBLL

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

US charges 3 alleged Iranian operatives over plots targeting Jewish communities & a UK airbase. It claims the 3 men were planning a "campaign of terror" on communities & UK Fairford prompting the withdrawal of US bombers based there for ops against Iran.
https://t.co/sg5M7mhH10

[Dr. Dan Lomas @Sandbagger_01]

Paper accepted. Watch out for a forthcoming article on SIS/MI6 and "spying on friends" 😉

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

PODCAST: Dr. Aaron Edwards speaks about his recently released book "Enemies Within: The Explosive True Story of Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair, Northern Ireland’s Most Infamous Paramilitary Godfather https://t.co/xZwa48Kw2M

[Dr Helen Fry | WWII Historian @DrHelenFry]

Example of transcripts of bugged conversations, Latimer House and Wilton Park:

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

How to see through Russia's war propaganda
For more than 6 months, its been waging war against Ukraine not only with soldiers and bullets, but also in the media - with fakes, disinformation and a broad-based propaganda strategy. We show what's behind it.
https://t.co/xTG9kIDnsU

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

Israel’s Shin Bet finds no evidence of foreign election meddling: Report

https://t.co/una9qTJ2qy

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

France accuses Iran of supermarket fridge cyberattack
https://t.co/HiZseKQSRc

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

Inside the French drug gangs recruiting children to kill
https://t.co/uHZWkfnYOt

[Dr. Dan Lomas @Sandbagger_01]

UK diplomacy suffers exodus of China experts
https://t.co/zkwG18IIEu

[Sean Wiswesser @Wiswesser]

Businessmen always think: "no, not me, I could never be fooled by Chinese, or Russian or any of those old intelligence services and their KGB-style tricks....am too savvy for that."

Well, guess what-- they are more clever than YOU think! (and I won't even mention how many diplomats have and still are lured into these traps...IO's too!)

These headlines on Nvidia’s board launching an investigation into CEO Huang's allegedly being targeted by a foreign intelligence "honey" from China demonstrate the enduring reach of both Chinese and Russian "Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks"!

I wrote a book on those tactics, and Chapter 6 is all about HONEYTRAPs and Swallows. The Russians and Chinese both use KGB-doctrine on "compromising material operations." Why?
👉Because the Soviets helped train the early Communist China's service. Mao and many others in the early PRC leadership had lived in exile in the USSR during WWII and some after; the KGB continued train generations of Chinese, and other "allied" or not-so allied intelligence services as guests at their Higher KGB Academy.

The other reason they use it...as I note in my book--it works!

🚨That's one reason I'm launching something new:

📖 THE TRADECRAFT BRIEF — my new Substack newsletter/blog on intelligence, espionage, covert action, hybrid warfare, and international security. My goal is straightforward: Make the secretive world of Russian intelligence (and our adversaries more broadly) more understandable and accessible to everyone—not just intel professionals.

Hope you'll check it out, linked below, and my book. Thank you for your support!

https://t.co/MwUYSZ1ZSR

[International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest]

‼️ A British soldier kept his SIM card in on a NATO deployment near Russia, against orders. Someone hacked his phone, took his nude photos and blackmailed him.

He paid £100. When a second demand came, the corporal reported it himself, then was court-martialled for disobeying the order.

He got 10 months' military detention and was demoted to lance corporal. Troops in Tapa, Estonia, had been told again and again to pull their SIMs.

Appeal judges upheld the sentence. No proof of hostile spies was needed, they said, as an unknown attacker getting into his phone showed the risk was real.

[Dr. Dan Lomas @Sandbagger_01]

Estonia accuses Russia of state-sponsored terrorism over hybrid attacks

https://t.co/2DSQaiU3nV

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

Nvidia shares slide as US tech giant investigates CEO's affair with suspected Chinese spy
https://t.co/6KAxeZ86tm

[Spycraft101 @spycraft101]

Accused Canadian spy Jeffrey Delisle broke down and confessed during interrogation following his arrest on espionage charges in January 2012.

In the video clip Delisle can be heard to say, "I am so dead. I, everyone, my wife that I loved for so long, killed me. Killed me."

Delisle was serving in the Royal Canadian Navy when he walked into the Russian embassy in Ottawa in 2007. He offered to sell classified information to the GRU for $10,000. Delisle was in significant financial debt at the time and later claimed that on the same day he approached the Russians, he had learned his wife Jennifer had cheated on him.

After that, he began providing information on a monthly basis for the next few years. Delisle typically received $3,000 per delivery and provided a wide variety of very sensitive information to the GRU. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported this included signals intelligence information, personal data on intelligence community employees, reports from several classified databases which Delisle had access to as a normal part of his duties, and even information on foreign sources of intelligence information.

He also had access to “Five Eyes” intelligence, from a cooperative agreement between the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, and therefore was able to pass the GRU intelligence gathered by five different nations.

The arrest sent shockwaves through the Canadian government and led to major changes in their own security and counterintelligence doctrine. Delisle had displayed many of the traditional indicators of espionage including unmanageable financial debt, frequent foreign travel, and accessing information outside the scope of his duties. But he went undiscovered for nearly five years. Afterwards, the facility he’d worked in at Halifax was virtually stripped down and rebuilt to determine if he’d installed any devices on behalf of the GRU or installed any programs on the digital network there.

In 2013 Delisle pleaded guilty to three espionage charges and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was released after just six years based on good behavior while confined.

#csis #canadian #espionage #spy #confession

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

Nvidia launches investigation into CEO's affair with suspected Chinese spy. #HUMINT
https://t.co/6KAxeZ7yDO

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

ARTICLE: Really interesting read - new article by Curran and Loftus, "The reconfiguration of covert policing in the UK: a quantitative analysis of authorisations since 2000" (Published 02/11/26) https://t.co/JUQPDgKLgL

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

PODCAST (115/2023) Defectors and the US Resettlement programme https://t.co/6jyy6vFwRH

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

A very interesting piece on the US defector programme. #HUMINT #Defector

[Spycraft101 @spycraft101]

Former KGB and SVR officer Alexander Zaporozhsky was convicted on charges of espionage after he was lured back to Moscow in 2001.

Zaporozhsky began his service with the KGB in 1975, eventually rising to the rank of Colonel. In the early 1990s he began working as a spy for the United States, code named “Scythian”. He provided information that helped contribute to the arrests of Aldrich Ames in 1994, Jim Nicholson in 1996, and Robert Hanssen in 2001. He was likely the most valuable US asset within the Russian government for many years.

After retiring from the SVR abruptly in 1997 he moved to the United States with his family, confident that his betrayal of his organization had never been discovered. Once in the US he entered the CIA’s defector resettlement program. Under Section 9 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, up to 100 foreigners each year may enter the United States as permanent residents regardless of their admissibility under other immigration laws if it is deemed “in furtherance of the national intelligence mission”.

Zaporozhsky flourished for the next several years, opening his own business with ties to Eastern Europe. But he had not escaped the notice of the SVR. Word reached him of an invitation to an upcoming KGB reunion in Moscow in 2001. Naively believing he was in the clear, Zaporozhsky returned home to see his old comrades and was immediately arrested at the airport.

In 2003 he was sentenced to 18 years of hard labor and remained in prison until 2010. In the meantime, his wife Galina passed away of natural causes in the US. He was only released after the capture of the famed Russian Ten spy ring by the FBI. Those ten agents were quickly exchanged at the Vienna Airport for Zaporozhsky and three other former assets of Western intelligence agencies.

For episode 115 of the Spycraft 101 podcast I spoke with Joseph Augustyn, former chief of CIA’s defector resettlement program. We discussed how defectors are transported here and treated once they arrive, and the complications that almost inevitably arise along the way. The episode is available now.

#cia #defector #russia #coldwar #spies

https://t.co/OxZ92QR0r3

[Covert Intel and Operations @covert_intel]

Democrats’ congressional win could strengthen Ukraine’s hand against Russia. Democrats have also pledged to scrutinise Trump’s ties to Russia & conduct sweeping investigations focused on alleged corruption within the Trump family

https://t.co/xKgi0fLsJO

https://t.co/xKgi0fLsJO