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CIA files: political intrigue, Australian ‘dismay’, and radical Maori

7 februari 2017

The CIA release was part of its archiving of all 25-year-old ”non exempt” records.

A mass publication of declassified CIA documents reveal the extent of United States’ intelligence interest in New Zealand during the height of nuclear tensions between the two countries.

The database of previously-confidential documents, published by the CIA this week, contains reports which delve deep into New Zealand’s domestic and international affairs

Swelling anti-nuclear sentiment in the South Pacific during the 1980s was the predominant focus of CIA analysts at the time, and this focus shifted to the political fallout after the 1984 election.

Our prime ministers, race relations and stroppy kinship with Australia were also of considerable interest to US intelligence officials.

A 1982 intelligence report for the US director of intelligence flags the growing movement for a nuclear ban in the South Pacific – and the nuclear-nation was concerned their naval influence could be dented

“Such restrictions would impede movement of US warships in the vital lanes between the United States and Australia and New Zealand.”

Reports show the CIA were well across developments in “maverick” Vanuatu and neighbouring Fiji, who both refused American warships in 1982.

“However overdrawn, anti-nuclear sentiment in the area is genuinely felt and not easily modified,” the report advises.

At the time, the US thought Australia and New Zealand would diplomatically advocate for nuclear ships on a political level.

But there was concern that these efforts might be “diluted” by public sentiment in both countries.

New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was a likely – if at times tacit – ally for US nuclear interests in the region.

As anti-nuclear sentiment in the Pacific built, many reports about the impending July 1984 election in New Zealand were filed about the prospect of a Labour victory.

“Muldoon faces major obstacles in his bid for a fourth term,” one report says.

Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was the subject of a candid CIA biography.
NZ ON SCREEN
Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was the subject of a candid CIA biography.

Any renegotiation of ANZUS under a Labour government led by David Lange would have “serious implications” for defence co-operation, and while NZ officials promised a compromise, the CIA was far from assured.

“We are not so sanguine.”

At the time, 40 per cent of the US naval fleet was nuclear-powered.

The CIA said Lange was charismatic but unable to unify the Labour party of the mid-80s.
file
The CIA said Lange was charismatic but unable to unify the Labour party of the mid-80s.

Behind closed doors, Lange conceded that he considered nuclear propulsion – but not nuclear weapons – safe. One CIA report speculates he had failed to convince his caucus of the same.

And, it wasn’t just the Labour party which presented concern for US intelligence officials.

Consideration was given to property magnate Bob Jones’ New Zealand Party, which looked to split the conservative vote.

The CIA archive has millions of pages that can be searched by the public.
AP
The CIA archive has millions of pages that can be searched by the public.

The historic 1984 election saw Lange’s Labour party come into power, and responding to public concern, barred American ships from New Zealand ports.

A president-approved memo to top US government officials in February of the following year illustrates New Zealand’s fall from grace in the eyes of the US.

“New Zealand knows that it cannot expect to continue to receive preferential treatment and consideration in the economic area which it might have enjoys as a closer ally.”

Though, it was stressed as important that no perceivable economic sanctions be implemented.

Directions were given that an “interagency group” promote the US viewpoint in New Zealand.

“In the meantime, the people of New Zealand are still our friends, and the door remains open to the return of an old ally.”

The “port access issue”, or barring of US warships from our ports, remained the status-quo until November 2016, when the USS Sampson visited New Zealand and aided the Kaikoura earthquake recovery effort.

And with that, an old ally returned.

Muldoon v Lange

“For nearly a decade, Muldoon has dominated New Zealand politics … they have continued to vote for this ‘man they love to hate’,” a 1984 report on the New Zealand political climate says.

The US, who considered Muldoon a supporter of ANZUS (a military pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States), was long-wooed by US leadership.

When Muldoon visited the US in 1981, a briefing note encouraged American president Ronald Reagan to compliment the Prime Minister with a “candid” discussion on a international summit.

“The fact that you had taken him into your confidence on this matter would be helpful in giving him the stature he seeks.”

The same briefing advised offering “an expression of hope” that Muldoon will win the 1981 election – which he did.

In a candid 1984 biography of Muldoon – one of the New Zealand’s most divisive leaders of the modern era – the agency’s East and Southeast Asia desks discussed his abrasiveness and combative style as a National party stalwart.

This abrasiveness was not typically a New Zealand trait, the report said.

It expanded on Muldoon’s sought “stature”, saying he “fancied” himself as a “senior statesmen” in the realm of international finance.

He was a staunch ally of the US and generally satisfied with market access but a Labour victory could cause difficulties with the US-New Zealand relationship. The report writer’s biggest concern was the closing of ports if Labour won the next election (they did).

On Muldoon, he was politically dominant, atypical, and combative with a capacity, the report said.

“He is a tough taskmaster and devastates any associate who is not in full command of the facts of the matter, according to political observers.

“Unable to come up with policies of its own to cure New Zealand’s economic ills, Labor sees political benefit in identifying with a fear of nuclear contamination that is widespread and growing in New Zealand and which spans the political spectrum.”

Just as the prospect of a Labour election win in 1984 was not welcomed, Labour leader David Lange was not favoured by US government figures.

Described as a “charismatic orator”, in a later report, Lange was seen as inexperienced and unable to unify a factional Labour party cabinet except on the anti-nuclear issue.

There’s speculation Lange’s hard anti-nuclear stance was somewhat accidental.

“His penchant for speaking off the cuff in press interviews inched him into a trap from which he could not extricate himself.”

Calling the Lange government’s economic reforms a “calculated gamble” the CIA analysts were not convinced it would pay off, saying sustained growth was unlikely.

“If the economy splutters – for whatever reason – the Labor party will be held responsible in the next election.”

Maori radicalism

In a fascinating report into racial tensions in New Zealand, a 1988 memo from the Office of East Asian Analysis, described the land claim battles as iwi leaders fought for the return of ancestral land.

Relations were strained between Maori and Pakeha, the report said.

“Although the risk of racial violence is small, tensions are likely to increase as the slumping economy swells unemployment among the Maori, and as public resentment builds against Maori demands.”

European New Zealanders were “complacent” in their view of race relations, but Maori activists were challenging the country, an underclass had developed in Auckland, and free market economics were likely to widen the income gap.

“Despite Wellington’s efforts to defuse racial tensions through economic and legislative reforms, the Maori underclass will most likely expand as the Maori population grows, suggesting that racial tensions will persist.”

Maori radicalism was another component and the visit of trade union leader Syd Jackson to Libya – then an international pariah – caught the CIA’s attentions.

“We believe, nonetheless, that the Maoris’ growing political influence could have an indirect effect on Wellington’s foreign nationals…According to the US embassy in Canberra, Australian officials are concerned that racial strife could eventually undermine Wellington’s traditional Western outlook and weaken support in New Zealand for defence and foreign policy links to Australia.”

US on ANZAC

CIA analysts also made some on-the-money comments about New Zealand and Australia’s relationship.

In the 70s and 80s, the anti-nuclear movement and the contentious issue of US warships and port access were high on the agenda.

In one document, the New Zealand stance led to the distancing of trans-Tasman relations with Canberra. Australian officials were worried a failure to find a resolution could spell the end of relations between the US and the two Pacific countries.

Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke had been criticised as being overly accommodating to the US and was at some risk of being seen as “carrying messages for Washington.”

“This distancing stems from Australian dismay over the antinuclear policies of Lange’s government, particularly its ban on port calls by nuclear ships.

“[Australian PM Bob] Hawke believes Lange’s unyielding stance threatens the ANZUS relationship with the United States and also encourages antinuclear agitation from the left wing of his own Labor Party…Canberra will continue to consult with Washington but will hold back from any approaches to Wellington that could be taken as interference.

“Australian annoyance with Wellington is obvious to all but the New Zealanders…Canberra, nevertheless, finds it politically imperative to take a low-key approach to Wellington. The New Zealanders are quick to see as patronizing any attempt by their larger neighbour to discuss bilateral issues.”

In the Muldoon biography, the writer likened Australia and New Zealand to a bickering family.

“New Zealand places great importance on relations with its large neighbour, despite the almost familial irritants that crop up between them.”

What are the CREST files?

CREST stands for CIA Records Search Tool. The CIA released a searchable archive of some 12 million pages this week, the largest collection of declassified records accessible online.

Previously, documents were available to the public from four terminals at the national archives in Washington, but now 930,000 documents are available on the agency’s electronic reading room.

A freedom of information group, MuckRock, and journalists have been calling for online access for years. MuckRock sued the CIA in June 2014, and in early 2015 a MuckRock user began fundraising to manually scan and digitise the records himself.

The CIA relented, and published a digital archive this week.

It is part of a regular archive process whereby all relevant “non-exempt” 25-year-old records are reviewed, declassified and archived. A trove of material includes reports, analyses, and memos on foreign relations, war crimes, the paranormal, and projects investigating telepathy.

JOHN EDENS AND THOMAS MANCH
Last updated 18:10, January 19 2017

Find this story at 19 January 2017

Five Eyes’ countries to meet on anti-terrorism fight -Canada

8 april 2015

OTTAWA, Jan 13 (Reuters) – The five nations that make up the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network will meet in London next month to confer on strategies to fight terrorism in the wake of the Paris attacks, Canada said on Tuesday.

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said the so-called Five Eyes – the United States, Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand – had scheduled a meeting for Jan 22.

A Canadian government official later said the five would actually meet in London some time in February.

Blaney’s comments were unusual, since members of the Five Eyes network rarely talk about its activity.

“We’re going to have a meeting with our Five Eyes allies in London … and this is serious stuff. Terrorism will be there” on the agenda, he told CTV television.

U.S. intelligence officials have shared with their French counterparts information related to the travel history of those suspected of involvement in the Paris attacks, in which a total of 17 people died, a White House spokesman said on Tuesday.

Blaney gave no more details of the London meeting, save to say that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson would be present.

Separately, the Canadian government official said the London event had been scheduled before the Paris attacks.

“The Five Eyes regularly meet to discuss shared concerns and approaches,” he said.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, added that the fight against terrorism would be “a major focus” of the meeting but declined to give more details.

The five nations that comprise the group divide the world into eavesdropping target sectors and share the results. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: Reuters – Wed, 14 Jan 2015 01:37 GMT
By David Ljunggren

Find this story at 17 January 2015

Revealed: Australian spy agency offered to share data about ordinary citizens

5 december 2013

• Secret 5-Eyes document shows surveillance partners discussing what information they can pool about their citizens

• DSD indicated it could provide material without some privacy restraints imposed by other countries such as Canada

• Medical, legal or religious information ‘not automatically limited’

• Concern that intelligence agency could be ‘operating outside its legal mandate’

The secret document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share citizens’ “medical, legal or religious information”. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Australia’s surveillance agency offered to share information collected about ordinary Australian citizens with its major intelligence partners, according to a secret 2008 document leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The document shows the partners discussing whether or not to share “medical, legal or religious information”, and increases concern that the agency could be operating outside its legal mandate, according to the human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC.

The Australian intelligence agency, then known as the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), indicated it could share bulk material without some of the privacy restraints imposed by other countries, such as Canada.

“DSD can share bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata as long as there is no intent to target an Australian national,” notes from an intelligence conference say. “Unintentional collection is not viewed as a significant issue.”

The agency acknowledged that more substantial interrogation of the material would, however, require a warrant.

Metadata is the information we all generate whenever we use technology, from the date and time of a phone call to the location from which an email is sent.

“Bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata” means that this data is in its raw state, and nothing has been deleted or redacted in order to protect the privacy of ordinary citizens who might have been caught in the dragnet. Metadata can present a very complete picture of someone’s life.

The working document, marked secret, sheds new light on the extent to which intelligence agencies at that time were considering sharing information with foreign surveillance partners, and it provides further confirmation that, to some extent at least, there is warrantless surveillance of Australians’ personal metadata.

The DSD joined its four intelligence-sharing partners – the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, collectively known as 5-Eyes – to discuss what could and what could not be shared under the different jurisdictions at a meeting hosted by Britain’s GCHQ at its headquarters in Cheltenham on 22-23 April, 2008.

The notes, published today by Guardian Australia, suggest that Australia was open to pooling bulk data that almost certainly includes information about Australian citizens.

Clearly indicating the different attitudes between the intelligence partners, the Canadians insisted that bulk collection could only be shared if information about its citizens was first “minimised”, meaning deleted or removed. The various techniques used in “minimisation” help protect citizens’ privacy.

The GCHQ memo taker, reporting on this, said that “bulk, unselected metadata presents too high a risk to share with second parties at this time because of the requirement to ensure that the identities of Canadians or persons in Canada are minimised, but re-evaluation of this stance is ongoing”.

By contrast, DSD, now renamed the Australian Signals Directorate, offered a broader sweep of material to its partners.

DSD offered to share bulk, unselected, unminimised metadata – although there were specific caveats. The note taker at the meeting writes: “However, if a ‘pattern of life’ search detects an Australian then there would be a need to contact DSD and ask them to obtain a ministerial warrant to continue.”

A “pattern of life” search is more detailed one – joining the dots to build up a portrait of an individual’s daily activities.

It is technically possible to strip out the metadata of Australian nationals from bulk collection methods used by the 5-Eyes countries, such as cable taps – ensuring the information is not stored, and so could not be pulled in to searches and investigations by agents.

The Snowden documents reveal Australia’s intelligence services instead offered to leave the data in its raw state.

Australian politicians have insisted that all surveillance undertaken is in accordance with the law.

But Geoffrey Robertson, writing in the Guardian today, says if what was described in the memo took place, this would be a breach of sections eight and 12 of the Intelligence Services Act 2001. The act sets a strict requirement that ministerial authorisation is required if the data of an Australian citizen is involved, and indicates that the citizen must be a “person of interest”, such as someone involved in terrorism or organised crime.

The Cheltenham gathering, which appears to have been convened to consider the issues around the burgeoning collection of metadata and to reach common positions, resolved to avoid pre-emptive efforts to categorise various materials and “simply focus on what is shareable in bulk”.

The memo flags privacy concerns around the collection of various types of data, but the meeting, according to the record, resolved not to set “automatic limitations” – leaving judgment calls to each country’s own agencies.

“Consideration was given as to whether any types of data were prohibited, for example medical, legal, religious or restricted business information, which may be regarded as an intrusion of privacy,” the memo says.

“Given the nascent state of many of these data types then no, or limited, precedents have been set with respect to proportionality or propriety, or whether different legal considerations applies to the ‘ownership’ of this data compared with the communications data that we were more accustomed to handle.”

“It was agreed that the conference should not seek to set any automatic limitations, but any such difficult cases would have to be considered by ‘owning’ agency on a case-by-case basis.”

The document also shows the agencies considering disclosure to “non-intelligence agencies”. It says: “Asio and the Australian federal police are currently reviewing how Sigint [signals intelligence] information can be used by non-intelligence agencies.”

The record of the Cheltenham meeting does not indicate whether the activities under discussion in April 2008 progressed to final decisions or specific actions. It appears to be a working draft.

Since Snowden leaked the NSA documents to the Guardian and the Washington Post in May, controversy has raged around the world over revelations that surveillance agencies are collecting information in bulk about ordinary citizens’ day-to-day activities, without first getting a warrant.

In Australia, the Greens party and the South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon have been pursuing questions about the extent to which Australian citizens have been caught up in the dragnet, and the extent of Australian intelligence agencies’ involvement.

So far, those questions have largely met with stonewalling, both under the previous Labor government and the new Abbott administration.

Ewen MacAskill, James Ball and Katharine Murphy
The Guardian, Monday 2 December 2013 00.20 GMT

Find this story at 2 December 2013

Singapore, South Korea revealed as Five Eyes spying partners

5 december 2013

Singapore and South Korea are playing key roles helping the United States and Australia tap undersea telecommunications links across Asia, according to top secret documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. New details have also been revealed about the involvement of Australia and New Zealand in the interception of global satellite communications.

A top secret United States National Security Agency map shows that the US and its “Five Eyes” intelligence partners tap high speed fibre optic cables at 20 locations worldwide. The interception operation involves cooperation with local governments and telecommunications companies or else through “covert, clandestine” operations.

The undersea cable interception operations are part of a global web that in the words of another leaked NSA planning document enables the “Five Eyes” partners – the US, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – to trace “anyone, anywhere, anytime” in what is described as “the golden age” signals intelligence.

The NSA map, published by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad overnight, shows that the United States maintains a stranglehold on trans-Pacific communications channels with interception facilities on the West coast of the United States and at Hawaii and Guam, tapping all cable traffic across the Pacific Ocean as well as links between Australia and Japan.

The map confirms that Singapore, one of the world’s most significant telecommunications hubs, is a key “third party” working with the “Five Eyes” intelligence partners.

In August Fairfax Media reported that Australia’s electronic espionage agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, is in a partnership with Singaporean intelligence to tap the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable that runs from Japan, via Singapore, Djibouti, Suez and the Straits of Gibraltar to Northern Germany.

Australian intelligence sources told Fairfax that the highly secretive Security and Intelligence Division of Singapore’s Ministry of Defence co-operates with DSD in accessing and sharing communications carried by the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable as well as the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable that runs from Singapore to the south of France.

Access to this major international telecommunications channel, facilitated by Singapore’s government-owned operator SingTel, has been a key element in an expansion of Australian-Singaporean intelligence and defence ties over the past 15 years.

Majority owned by Temask Holdings, the investment arm of the Singapore Government, SingTel has close relations with Singapore’s intelligence agencies. The Singapore Government is represented on the company’s board by the head of Singapore’s civil service, Peter Ong, who was previously responsible for national security and intelligence co-ordination in the Singapore Prime Minister’s office.

Australian intelligence expert, Australian National University Professor Des Ball has described Singapore’s signal’s intelligence capability as “probably the most advanced” in South East Asia, having first been developed in cooperation with Australia in the mid-1970s and subsequently leveraging Singapore’s position as a regional telecommunications hub.

Indonesia and Malaysia have been key targets for Australian and Singaporean intelligence collaboration since the 1970s. Much of Indonesia’s telecommunications and Internet traffic is routed through Singapore.

The leaked NSA map also shows South Korea is another key interception point with cable landings at Pusan providing access to the external communications of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has long been a close collaborator with the US Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA, as well as the Australian intelligence agencies. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation recently engaged in legal action in an unsuccessful effort to prevent publication of details of South Korean espionage in Australia. ASIO Director-General David Irvine told the Federal Court that Australian and South Korean intelligence agencies had been cooperating for “over 30 years” and that any public disclose of NIS activities would be “detrimental” to Australia’s national security.

The NSA map and other documents leaked by Mr Snowden and published by the Brazilian O Globo newspaper also reveal new detail on the integration of Australian and New Zealand signals intelligence facilities in the interception of satellite communications traffic by the “Five Eyes” partners.

For the first time it is revealed that the DSD satellite interception facility at Kojarena near Geraldton in Western Australia is codenamed “STELLAR”. The New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau facility at Waihopai on New Zealand’s South Island is codenamed “IRONSAND”. The codename for DSD’s facility at Shoal Bay near Darwin is not identified. However all three facilities are listed by the NSA as “primary FORNSAT (foreign satellite communications) collection operations”.

Coverage of satellite communications across Asia and the Middle East is also supported by NSA facilities at the United States Air Force base at Misawa in Japan, US diplomatic premises in Thailand and India, and British Government Communications Headquarters facilities in Oman, Nairobi in Kenya and at the British military base in Cyprus.

The leaked NSA map also shows that undersea cables are accessed by the NSA and the British GCHQ through military facilities in Djibouti and Oman, thereby ensuring maximum coverage of Middle East and South Asian communications.

November 25, 2013
Philip Dorling

Find this story at 25 November 2013

New Snowden leaks reveal US, Australia’s Asian allies

5 december 2013

The map confirms that Singapore, one of the world’s most significant telecommunications hubs, is a key “third party” working with the “Five Eyes” intelligence partners.

The leaked NSA map also shows South Korea is another key interception point with cable landings at Pusan providing access to the external communications of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

November 24, 2013
Philip Dorling

Find this story at 24 November 2013

How we spied on the Indonesians and how expats are targeted overseas

5 december 2013

THEIR clandestine activities may be directly in the spotlight, but Australian spies have for decades been listening in on our neighbours.

Modern spooks have two main methods of tapping the mobile phones of people of interest in cities such as Jakarta. The first option is to install a physical bugging device in the actual handset, to forward calls to a third number – but this requires access to the handset.

For high-security targets, Australian agents use electronic scanners and very powerful computers to monitor phone numbers of interest via microwave towers (small metal towers that look like venetian blinds) located on top of buildings across Jakarta and all modern cities.

The latter was employed to tap the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and key ministers.

Getting hold of a handset is a tricky business so the preferred method for the spooks employed by the Australian Signals Directorate (formerly Defence Signals Directorate) is to monitor microwave phone towers located on top of most buildings in Jakarta and indeed any other major city.

The material, known at this point as “first echelon”, is captured by computers located in secure rooms at the Australian Embassy where information is filtered before it is forwarded by secure means to super computers located at ASD headquarters. They are located inside the maximum security building ‘M’, protected by high voltage electric fences, at Defence’s Russell Office complex in Canberra. Here it is processed and analysed as “second echelon” product.

In less busy locations, or where the target phone number is known, an off-the-shelf scanner can be programmed to intercept mobile phone calls.

In cities such as Jakarta enterprising business people now offer a mobile bugging service where for a fee of between $300 and $1000 they will arrange to “borrow” a mobile phone, insert a bugging device and then return it to a relieved owner. Whenever the phone rings or is used to access a network the call is diverted to another handset or recording device.

Government staff understand that if their phone goes missing and then turns up they should dispose of it and get a new one.

But for the average citizen, say a teacher at an English speaking school in Jakarta whose phone was bugged by an angry ex-girlfriend, phone tapping is a serious matter. And it is more common than many expatriates might think.

There is a thriving business in phone tapping for private or industrial or state espionage reasons in cities such as Jakarta, Singapore and Bangkok. Industrial espionage is widespread in cities around the world including Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

Compared to the operations of ASD and its powerful scanners, super computers and army of analysts these operations are small beer.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott was quick to point out in the wake of the phone tapping scandal that every country spied and he was right.

However Indonesia has nowhere near the capacity for espionage that Australia and our close “five eyes” allies – the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand – posses.

After the 2002 Bali bombings the DSD, Australian Federal Police and Telstra went to Indonesia and showed Indonesian intelligence agencies how to tap into the networks of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI).

Unlike Australia much of Indonesia’s electronic surveillance capacity is directed at internal problems such as the insurgencies in Aceh and West Papua.

According to one of Australia’s leading experts on electronic spying, Professor Des Ball from the Australian National University, there is really no point in conducting such intercept operations unless a country has the whole picture. That is satellite communications, cable communications and radio communications.

“Microwave mobile phone calls are very hit and miss,” he said.

Australia owns the big picture thanks to an expensive and extensive network of listening posts in Jakarta, Bangkok and Port Moresby and powerful satellite ground stations at HMAS Harman in Canberra, Shoal Bay near Darwin, Morundah near Wagga in NSW, Cabarlah near Toowoomba in Qld and Geraldton in WA.

This interception network is monitoring communications from Singapore to the Pacific Islands including Indonesia’s Palapa satellite.

Professor Ball said there had been huge growth in Australia’s eavesdropping capacity in recent years. For example the number of dishes at Shoal Bay has gone from six to 15 and Geraldton has more than doubled its capacity including six American dishes for the exclusive use of the National Security Agency (NSA) whose lax security allowed Edward Snowden to abscond with top-secret information that is now being leaked.

Unfortunately Australian taxpayers have no way of knowing how much is spent on these facilities or even how many staff are employed by the top-secret ASD. The numbers used to appear in the Defence annual report, but not anymore.

Professor Ball said successive governments had allowed the electronic spooks to have a virtual free rein.

“When briefings about the phone intercepts from SBY and his wife came in the government should have ordered the tapping to stop,” Professor Ball said.

“It is important to have the capacity but you only use it when there is a conflict. Put it in, test it and keep it up to date, but don’t use it because unless you have to because it will come out.”

Professor Ball also slammed Mr Abbott for saying that other countries (Indonesia) were doing exactly what Australia did, because they weren’t and they can’t.

“They are not doing what we are doing and Abbott should have apologised or done what Bob Hawke did with Papua New Guinea in 1983.”

Prime Minister Hawke went to Port Moresby after it was revealed that Australia spied on politicians there, but before he left he ordered the spooks switch to all monitoring equipment off for 48 hours. He was then able to say that Australia wasn’t doing it although as journalist Laurie Oakes pointed out he had to be “very careful with his tenses”.

Tapping a friendly foreign leader’s phone is fraught enough. Recording the fact on clear power point slides and handing them to another country is just plain dumb.

IAN MCPHEDRAN NATIONAL DEFENCE WRITER
NEWS LIMITED NETWORK
NOVEMBER 21, 2013 6:34PM

Find this story at 21 November 2013

News Ltd 2013 Copyright

Spying rocks Indonesia-Australia relations

5 december 2013

Indonesia has officially downgraded the relationship, after Australia refused to apologise for espionage.

A spy scandal involving an Australian attempt to tap the phone of Indonesia’s president has jeopardised crucial people smuggling and counter-terrorism co-operation between the two countries, officials have said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has temporarily suspended co-coordinated military operations with Australia, including those which target people-smuggling, after significant public outcry in Indonesia over the reports.

“I find it personally hard to comprehend why the tapping was done. We are not in a cold war era,” President Yudhoyono said.
Find out more with our exclusive interactive feature

“I know Indonesians are upset and angry over what Australia has done to Indonesia. Our reactions will determine the future of the relationship and friendship between Indonesia and Australia – which actually have been going well.”

Angry crowds mobbed Australia’s embassy in Jakarta, burning Australian and American flags on Thursday. Indonesia has officially downgraded its relationship with Australia and recalled its ambassador from Canberra.

‘Reasonable’ surveillance

The country’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, has refused to apologise for what he calls “reasonable” surveillance, but promised to respond to the president’s request for an explanation “swiftly and courteously”.

“I want to express … my deep and sincere regret about the embarrassment to the president and to Indonesia that’s been caused by recent media reporting,” Abbott told parliament.

“As always, I am absolutely committed to building the closest possible relationship with Indonesia because that is overwhelmingly in the interests of both our countries.”
I don’t believe Australia should be expected to apologise for reasonable intelligence-gathering activities

Tony Abbott, Australian Prime Minister

The situation erupted after documents leaked by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, showed Australia’s Defence Signal’s Directorate recorded personal communications of President Yudhoyono, his wife, Ani Yudhoyono, and senior officials in 2009.

The surveillance is understood to be part of a longstanding spying arrangement with the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand, known as the “five eyes” intelligence partners.

“I don’t believe Australia should be expected to apologise for reasonable intelligence-gathering activities,” Abbott told Australia’s parliament on Tuesday.

“Importantly, in Australia’s case, we use all our resources including information to help our friends and allies, not to harm them,” Abbott said.

The document leaked by Snowden was dated November 2009 and was published jointly by Guardian Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation state television network.

It details the attempted interception of various targets’ mobile phones and lists their specific phone models with slides marked “top secret” and the Australian Signals Directorate’s slogan: “Reveal their secrets, protect our own.”

This leak came after previous documents released by Snowden revealed Australian embassies had participated in
widespread US surveillance across Asia, including in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand.

Strained relations

The combined revelations have strained a bilateral relationship already under pressure over the Abbott government’s hardline asylum seeker policy to “turn back” boats coming to Australia, a controversial and highly emotive issue in the country.

Professor Greg Fealy is an Indonesian politics specialist at the Australian National University. He told Al Jazeera the situation was becoming increasingly serious.

“Every new day brings new sanctions from the Indonesian side and so far the Abbott government hasn’t responded well to it,” Fealy said.

He believes relations between the two countries have not been this strained since the East Timor crisis in 1999, when Australia’s military went into East Timor during its transition from an Indonesian territory to independence.

“It has the potential to get worse, with the Indonesians withdrawing further cooperation [with Australia] in many fields,” Fealy said.

“If there is a sufficiently wide range of retaliation then this could possibly be worse than the crisis of 15 years ago.”

Prime Minister Abbott has been encouraged to reassure President Yudhoyono that no further surveillance is taking place – similar to the conversation between US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after
revelations her phone was also tapped.

John McCarthy, a former Australian ambassador to Indonesia, said Abbott must contact Yudhoyono to make amends.

“There is nothing, frankly, to prevent the prime minister saying to the president that it’s not happening and it’s not going to happen in the future. That’s what Obama did with Angela Merkel and I don’t see a problem with that,”
McCarthy said.

“It can’t be allowed just to fester. If it festers it will get worse and it will be much harder to deal with, particularly as the politics get hotter in Indonesia.”

US blame

Australian officials would also be expressing their frustration with the United States over this situation, according to Michael Wesley, professor of national security at the Australian National University.

“There are a number of reasons Australian officials can legitimately be very irritated with the Americans. We’re in this mess because of an American security lapse,” Wesley told Al Jazeera.

“I’m actually gobsmacked at both Snowden and Bradley Manning, at their ability to get highly classified documents and download them. It would be absolutely impossible for people of their level of access to do that in Australia.”

“There should be real questions asked in the American intelligence community how this could have happened,” Professor Wesley said.

Former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake said the “five eyes” utilise each other’s services for information on other nations.

“Much of it is legit, but increasingly since 9/11 because of the sheer power of technology and access to the world’s communication systems … [agencies have] extraordinary access to even more data on just about anything and anybody,” Drake told ABC.

Indonesia’s minister for religious affairs, Suryadharma Ali, also cancelled a planned visit to Australia following the response from Yudhoyono.

Author and Indonesian political expert Professor Damien Kingsbury was due to host Ali at an event in Melbourne, and
told Al Jazeera the snub was a concerning sign of the deterioration in relations.

“It is still quite significant that a senior minister felt he couldn’t come to Australia at this time,” Kingsbury said.

“It’s pretty disastrous, the issue has effectively ended ongoing diplomatic engagement between Australia and Indonesia.”

“We’ve seen the cancellation and suspension of a number of points of engagement and that has quite distinct implications for Australian government policy in some areas. There is the possibility this matter could continue to escalate if it’s not adequately resolved,” Kingsbury said.

‘Uncomfortable’

The bilateral relationship between the two nations will be “uncomfortable” but it will pass, according to former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Kurt Campbell.

“The relationship will be strong again, but there is a ritual quality that I’m afraid you [Australia] will have to go through, and very little you can say now or do is going to ease the next couple of months,” Campbell told ABC.

He said the practice of phone-tapping was an acceptable part of international relations.

“I can tell you that some of the most sensitive spying is done by allies and friends.”

“Some of the most difficult foreign policy challenges – terrorist attacks – actually emanated in Indonesia. Australia has good cause to understand the delicate dynamics that play out behind the scenes with regard to how Indonesia’s thinking about some of those movements and some of the actors inside its country,” Campbell said.

Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten said the “vital” relationship between the two countries must be repaired.

“No-one should underestimate what is at stake in maintaining this critical relationship on the best possible terms.

“Co-operation between our countries is fundamental to our national interest – working together on people smuggling, terrorism, trade,” Shorten wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian.

Prime Minister Abbott is expected to respond to Indonesia’s request for a full written explanation into the phone tapping in the coming days.

Geraldine Nordfeldt Last updated: 22 Nov 2013 15:00

Find this story at 22 November 2013

Indonesia voices anger at Australia alleged spying

5 december 2013

(CNN) — Indonesia summoned the Australian ambassador Monday to voice its anger at allegations that Australia tried to listen into the phone calls of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Greg Moriarty. Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, “took careful note of the issues raised and will report back to the Australian Government,” the Australian embassy in Jakarta said.

Indonesia’s objections stem from reports in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Guardian Australia that said Australian intelligence tracked Yudhoyono’s mobile phone for 15 days in August 2009, monitoring the calls he made and received.
‘We live in a post-Snowden age’
Stone: ‘We’ve bugged the whole world’
Fareed’s Take: Spying on allies

The intelligence agency also tried to listen in on what was said on at least one occasion. But the call was less than a minute long and could not be successfully tapped, ABC reported.

The two media outlets cited documents provided by Edward Snowden, the U.S. national security contractor turned leaker.

“The Australian Government urgently needs to clarify on this news, to avoid further damage,” Indonesian presidential spokesman Teuku Faizasyah tweeted.

“The damage has been done and now trust must be rebuilt,” he said in another tweet.

Asked in parliament to comment on the reports, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said, “all governments gather information and all governments know that every other government gathers information.”

“The Australian Government never comments on specific intelligence matters,” he added. “This has been the long tradition of governments of both political persuasions and I don’t intend to change that today.”

By the CNN Staff
November 18, 2013 — Updated 1033 GMT (1833 HKT)

Find this story at 18 November 2013

Australia spied on Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, leaked Edward Snowden documents reveal

5 december 2013

Video: Watch: Michael Brissenden on how leaked documents prove Australia spied on SBY (ABC News)
Photo: The documents show the DSD tracked activity on Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s mobile phone. (Reuters: Supri)
Related Story: Live: Follow the unfolding reaction to this story
Map: Australia

Australian intelligence tried to listen in to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s mobile phone, material leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Documents obtained by the ABC and Guardian Australia, from material leaked by the former contractor at the US National Security Agency, show Australian intelligence attempted to listen in to Mr Yudhoyono’s telephone conversations on at least one occasion and tracked activity on his mobile phone for 15 days in August 2009.
Spy games explained

Australia’s role in the NSA spy program, including what it means for Indonesian relations.

The top-secret documents are from Australia’s electronic intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Directorate (now called the Australian Signals Directorate), and show for the first time how far Australian spying on Indonesia has reached.

The DSD motto stamped on the bottom of each page reads: “Reveal their secrets – protect our own.”

The documents show that Australian intelligence actively sought a long-term strategy to continue to monitor the president’s mobile phone activity.

The surveillance targets also included senior figures in his inner circle and even the president’s wife Kristiani Herawati (also known as Ani Yudhoyono).

Also on the list of targets is the vice president Boediono, the former vice president Yussuf Kalla, the foreign affairs spokesman, the security minister, and the information minister.

Mr Yudhoyono’s spokesman Teuku Faizasyah has responded to the revelations, saying: “The Australian Government needs to clarify this news, to avoid further damage … [but] the damage has been done.”

Asked about the spying in Question Time today, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “First of all, all governments gather information and all governments know that every other government gathers information… the Australian government never comments on specific intelligence matters. This has been the long tradition of governments of both political persuasions and I don’t intend to change that today.”
Documents list ‘who’s who’ of Indonesian government

One page in the documentation lists the names and the 3G handsets the surveillance targets were using at the time.

A number of the people on the list are lining up as potential candidates for the presidential election to replace Mr Yudhoyono next year.

The documents are titled “3G impact and update” and appear to chart the attempts by Australian intelligence to keep pace with the rollout of 3G technology in Indonesia and across South-East Asia.

A number of intercept options are listed and a recommendation is made to choose one of them and to apply it to a target – in this case the Indonesian leadership.

The document shows how DSD monitored the call activity on Mr Yudhoyono’s Nokia handset for 15 days in August 2009.

One page is titled “Indonesian President voice events” and provides what is called a CDR view. CDR are call data records; it can monitor who is called and who is calling but not necessarily what was said.

Another page shows that on at least one occasion Australian intelligence did attempt to listen in to one of Mr Yudhoyono’s conversations.

But according to the notes on the bottom of the page, the call was less than one minute long and therefore did not last long enough to be successfully tapped.
Factbox: Indonesia and Australia
Indonesia is one of Australia’s most important bilateral relationships.
Indonesia was Australia’s 12th largest trade partner in 2012.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has pledged to increase two-way trade and investment flows.
President Yudhoyono has visited Australia four times during his presidency, more than any predecessor.
Asylum seekers remain a sticking point in relations; Australia seeks active cooperation.
In 2012-13, Australia’s aid assistance to Indonesia was worth an estimated $541.6 million.

Source: http://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/indonesia/indonesia_brief.html

Given the diplomatic furore that has already surrounded the claims that the Australian embassy in Jakarta was involved in general spying on Indonesia, these revelations of specific and targetted surveillance activity at the highest level are sure to increase the tension with our nearest and most important neighbour significantly.

On an official visit to Canberra last week, the Indonesian vice president publicly expressed Indonesia’s concern.

“Yes, the public in Indonesia is concerned about this,” Boediono said.

“I think we must look to come to some arrangement that guarantees intelligence information from each side is not used against the other.”

Last week Prime Minister Tony Abbott was keen to play down the significance of the spying allegations, saying that he was very pleased “we have such a close, cooperative and constructive relationship with the Indonesian government”.

That may be a little harder to say today.

By national defence correspondent Michael Brissenden
Updated Mon 18 Nov 2013, 8:11pm AEDT

Find this story at 18 November 2013

Australia’s spy agencies targeted Indonesian president’s mobile phone

5 december 2013

Secret documents revealed by Edward Snowden show Australia tried to monitor the mobile calls of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, accompanied by his first lady, Kristiani Herawati, speaks to his Democratic party supporters during a rally in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, in March 2009. Photograph: Supri/Reuters

Australia’s spy agencies have attempted to listen in on the personal phone calls of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and have targeted the mobile phones of his wife, senior ministers and confidants, a top-secret document from whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

The document, dated November 2009, names the president and nine of his inner circle as targets of the surveillance, including the vice-president, Boediono, who last week visited Australia. Other named targets include ministers from the time who are now possible candidates in next year’s Indonesian presidential election, and the first lady, Kristiani Herawati, better known as Ani Yudhoyono.

When a separate document from Snowden, a former contractor to the US’s National Security Agency (NSA), showed Australia had spied on Indonesia and other countries from its embassies, the Indonesian foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, reacted angrily and threatened to review co-operation on issues crucial to Australia such as people smuggling and terrorism.

The revelation strained a bilateral relationship already under pressure over the Abbott government’s policy to “turn back” boats of asylum seekers coming to Australia. The new leak, published jointly by Guardian Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reveals the specific top-level targets and is likely to seriously escalate those tensions.

The leaked material is a slide presentation, marked top secret, from the Australian Department of Defence and the Defence Signals Directorate, or DSD, (now called the Australian Signals Directorate), dealing with the interception of mobile phones as 3G technology was introduced in Asia. It includes a slide titled Indonesian President Voice Intercept, dated August 2009 and another slide, titled IA Leadership Targets + Handsets, listing the president and the first lady as having Nokia E90-1s, Boediono as having a BlackBerry Bold 9000, as well as the type and make of the mobile phones held by the other targets.

Also named as targets for the surveillance are Dino Patti Djalal, at the time the president’s foreign affairs spokesman, who recently resigned as Indonesia’s ambassador to the US and is seeking the candidacy in next year’s presidential election for the president’s embattled Democratic party, and Hatta Rajasa, now minister for economic affairs and possible presidential candidate for the National Mandate party. Hatta was at the time minister for transport and his daughter is married to the president’s youngest son.

A slide entitled Indonesian President Voice Intercept (August ’09), shows a call from an unknown number in Thailand to Yudhoyono. But the call did not last long enough for the DSD to fulfil its aims. “Nil further info at this time (didn’t make the dev threshold – only a sub-1minute call),” a note at the bottom says.

Another slide, titled Indonesian President Voice Events, has a graphic of calls on Yudhoyono’s Nokia handset over 15 days in August 2009. It plots CDRs – call data records – which record the numbers called and calling a phone, the duration of calls, and whether it was a voice call or SMS. The agency, in what is standard procedure for surveillance, appears to have expanded its operations to include the calls of those who had been in touch with the president. Another slide, entitled Way Forward, states an imperative: “Must have content.”

Also on the list of “IA Leadership Targets” are:

• Jusuf Kalla, the former vice-president who ran as the Golkar party presidential candidate in 2009.

• Sri Mulyani Indrawati, then a powerful and reforming finance minister and since 2010 one of the managing directors of the World Bank Group.

• Andi Mallarangeng, a former commentator and television host who was at the time the president’s spokesman, and who was later minister for youth and sports before resigning amid corruption allegations.

• Sofyan Djalil, described on the slide as a “confidant”, who until October 2009 was minister for state-owned enterprises.

• Widodo Adi Sucipto, a former head of the Indonesian military who was until October 2009 security minister.

Asked about the previous revelations about the embassies, Tony Abbott emphasised that they occurred during the administration of the former Labor government, that Australia’s activities were not so much “spying” as “research” and that its intention would always be to use any information “for good”. The prime minister has repeatedly insisted Australia’s relationship with Indonesia is “good and getting better”.

Boediono said during his visit to Australia – before being revealed as an intended target of Australia’s surveillance – that the Indonesian public was “concerned” about the spying allegations.

“I think we must look forward to come to some arrangement which guarantees that intelligence information from each side is not used against the other,” he said. “There must be a system.”

At the bottom of each slide in the 2009 presentation is the DSD slogan: “Reveal their secrets – protect our own.” The DSD is credited with supplying the information.

Yudhoyono now joins his German, Brazilian and Mexican counterparts as leaders who have been monitored by a member of Five Eyes, the collective name for the surveillance agencies of the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, who share information.

Germany, Brazil and Mexico have all protested to the US over the infringement of privacy by a country they regarded as friendly. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, reacted with outrage to the revelation that her personal mobile phone had been tapped by the US, calling President Barack Obama to demand an explanation. The US eventually assured the chancellor that her phone was “not currently being tapped and will not be in the future”.

The Australian slide presentation, dated November 2009, deals with the interception of 3G mobile phones, saying the introduction of 3G in south-east Asia was nearly complete and providing dates for 3G rollout in Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Talking about future plans, the Australian surveillance service says it “must have content” and be able to read encrypted messages, which would require acquiring the keys that would unlock them. Other documents from Snowden show the intelligence agencies have made huge inroads in recent years in finding ways into encrypted messages.

One of the slides, entitled DSD Way Forward, acknowledges that the spy agency’s resources are limited compared with its US and British counterparts. It says there is a “need to capitalise on UKUSA and industry capability”, apparently a reference to the help provided – willingly or under pressure – from telecom and internet companies. The slides canvass “options” for continued surveillance and the final slide advises: “Choose an option and apply it to a target (like Indonesian leadership).”

The tension between Australia and Indonesia began in October when documents revealed by the German newspaper Der Spiegel and published by Fairfax newspapers revealed that Australian diplomatic posts across Asia were being used to intercept phone calls and data. The Guardian then revealed that the DSD worked alongside America’s NSA to mount a massive surveillance operation in Indonesia during a UN climate change conference in Bali in 2007.

But these earlier stories did not directly involve the president or his entourage. Abbott made his first international trip as prime minister to Indonesia and has repeatedly emphasised the crucial importance of the bilateral relationship.

Speaking after his meeting with Boediono last week, Abbott said: “All countries, all governments gather information. That’s hardly a surprise. It’s hardly a shock.

“We use the information that we gather for good, including to build a stronger relationship with Indonesia and one of the things that I have offered to do today in my discussions with the Indonesian vice-president is to elevate our level of information-sharing because I want the people of Indonesia to know that everything, everything that we do is to help Indonesia as well as to help Australia. Indonesia is a country for which I have a great deal of respect and personal affection based on my own time in Indonesia.”

Asked about the spying revelations in a separate interview, Abbott said: “To use the term spying, it’s kind of loaded language … researching maybe. Talking to people. Understanding what’s going on.”

On Monday a spokesman for Abbott said: “Consistent with the long-standing practice of Australian governments, and in the interest of national security, we do not comment on intelligence matters.”

It remains unclear exactly who will contest next year’s Indonesian presidential election, in which Yudhoyono, having already served two terms, is not eligible to stand. Based on recent polling, the popular governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, and former general Prabowo Subianto would be frontrunners.

Ewen MacAskill in New York and Lenore Taylor in Canberra
theguardian.com, Monday 18 November 2013 00.58 GMT

Find this story at 18 November 2013

Find the documents at

Australian spy agency helped BHP negotiate trade deals

13 november 2013

An apology is the least Indonesia can expect from Australia following revelations of electronic spying, according to Greens Senator Scott Ludlam.

BHP was among the companies helped by Australian spy agencies as they negotiated trade deals with Japan, a former Australian Secret Intelligence Service officer says.

A former diplomat has also confirmed Australian intelligence agencies have long targeted Japanese companies. Writing in The Japan Times, Professor Gregory Clark said Australian companies were beneficiaries of intelligence operations.

“In Australia, favoured firms getting spy material on Japanese contract policies and other business negotiations used to joke how [it had] ‘fallen off the back of a truck’,” Professor Clark wrote.

“BHP knew we were giving them secret intelligence. They lapped it up.”

Business information is a main target for [intelligence] agencies, he said. “The targeting is also highly corrupting since the information can be passed on selectively to co-operative firms – often firms that provide employment and cover for spy operatives.”
Professor Clark’s observations are supported by a former Australian Secret Intelligence Service officer who said that commercial information became a priority after the global economic turmoil of the 1970s.

“Suddenly [the Australian government] wanted to know what the demand would be for Australian iron ore and other commodities, and just what price the Japanese were prepared to pay for steel,” the former intelligence officer said.

“We gave market information [to] major companies like BHP which were helpful to us, and officers at overseas stations would trade snippets with some of their commercial contacts … BHP knew we were giving them secret intelligence. They lapped it up.”

The former spy says informal exchanges with business executives were continuing when he retired in the 1990s. More recently, US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and published by Fairfax Media in 2011 revealed former BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers privately offered “to trade confidences” with US officials about China.

”Kloppers has a keen interest in learning everything he can about the Chinese and is not shy about asking us for our impressions,” US Consul-General Michael Thurston reported to Washington in 2009. BHP declined to comment at the time.

The US and Britain have repeatedly denied charges of economic espionage following the disclosures of US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. Australia says it is longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.

Australian National University international relations expert Dr Michael McKinley said: ”While most countries might have suspicions … the revelation of economic espionage has the potential to be highly embarrassing.”

Professor Clark also highlights the potential for secret intelligence to harm diplomatic relations.

After leaving the Australian foreign service in the mid 1960s because of his opposition to Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War, Professor Clark pursued a distinguished academic career in Japan.

However as an Australian Government consultant he was also involved in policy making on Australian-Japanese relations in 1974-76.

In his memoirs, Professor Clark recalls how “a piece of phoney information from an incompetent ASIS spy in Tokyo desperate to impress superiors” was used by conservative Canberra bureaucrats to stall trade negotiations with Japan during the Whitlam Labor Government.

“[E]ven when it is clear that the information is unreliable and the spies are out of control, it is hard for anyone to complain or disagree,” he says.

November 7, 2013
Philip Dorling

Find this story at 7 November 2013

KGB ‘recruited’ two politicians as agents

11 november 2013

KGB station chief Ivan Stenin (right) and his successor, Geronty Lazovik, in Canberra in 1971.

A KGB officer ran two Australian federal parliamentarians as Soviet agents in the 1970s, according to a confidential account of ASIO counter-espionage operations during the Cold War.

ASIO also tried to persuade a Russian military intelligence officer to defect by offering him treatment in the US for his stomach cancer.

In an unusually candid document obtained by Fairfax Media, a former senior ASIO officer lists known Soviet intelligence officers in Australia and reveals numerous details of ASIO’s counter-espionage efforts. Much of the information remains classified.

The account by the former counter-espionage specialist confirms that Soviet intelligence was very active in Australia throughout the Cold War and that ASIO’s counter-espionage efforts had only limited success.
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The document reveals ASIO’s bid in the 1970s to induce a senior military intelligence officer, Yuriy Ivanovich Stepanenko, to defect.

ASIO offered the Russian, who had stomach cancer, ”the best facilities in the world” at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore ”if he wanted to jump”.

According to the former ASIO officer, the Russian was “tempted but didn’t live much longer”.

The document also details how ASIO’s bugging operations revealed in the late 1960s and early 1970s that KGB officer Vladimir Aleksandrovich Aleksyev was “running two Australian politicians as agents, using tradecraft of a fairly high order”.

Aleksyev was followed by Vladimir Yevgenyevich Tulayev, “a hard-eyed, well-dressed thug” who, according to declassified ASIO documents, was also “aggressively involved in intelligence operations in Australia”.

Geronty Lazovik, another “definite agent runner”, was much more urbane and developed a wide range of contacts across Federal Parliament by targeting Labor politicians, staffers and lobbyists. However, ASIO director-general Peter Barbour delayed recommending that Tulayev and Lazovik be expelled before the 1972 federal election for fear of triggering political controversy.

Declassified documents show that after the election the new Labor prime minister, Gough Whitlam, was concerned about ASIO’s investigations causing diplomatic embarrassment. Neither KGB officer was expelled and the government suspended ASIO’s phone taps on the Soviet embassy.

Lazovik was reportedly later awarded a medal for his work in Australia. The award was for “allegedly recruiting a top agent in ASIO, Defence or [the Department of Foreign Affairs]”, according to the former ASIO officer.

The document also sheds light on the 1983 Combe-Ivanov affair in which the Hawke Labor government blackballed former Labor national secretary and political lobbyist David Combe because of his involvement with KGB officer Valery Ivanov, who was expelled from Australia.

The former ASIO officer says that Ivanov recruited a cipher clerk in the Indonesian embassy and that ASIO approached the Indonesians to agree to “a joint operation running the cipher clerk back against Ivanov”. However, the proposed double-agent operation had to aborted because of Ivanov’s expulsion.

“The farewell party for Ivanov was bugged and revealing. He had been roundly castigated by [fellow KGB officer] Koshlyakov for going too far, too soon, and wasn’t very happy at that,” the former ASIO officer says.

October 14, 2013
Philip Dorling

Find this story at 14 October 2013

Embassy Row: Charges of U.S. spying erupt in Asia

11 november 2013

The U.S. spying scandal is spreading to Asia, where the foreign ministers of Malaysia and Indonesia have chastised American diplomats and publicly denounced the National Security Agency.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman also complained to Australian diplomats after reports that Australian intelligence agencies were cooperating with the NSA.

The Sydney Morning Herald last week reported that the U.S. embassies in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are engaged in electronic surveillance of the governments in those South Asian nations.

Mr. Aman on Friday summoned Lee McClenny, the deputy ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia, and Miles Kupa, the Australian ambassador in Kuala Lumpur. Mr. McClenny represented U.S. Ambassador Joseph Y. Yun, who was out of town.

The foreign minister delivered protest notes to each diplomat “in response to the alleged spying activities carried out by the two embassies” in the Malaysian capital.

In Indonesia, Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa last week complained to Kristen F. Bauer, who has been acting U.S. ambassador since Ambassador ScotMarciel left Jakarta in July.

“Indonesia cannot accept and protests strongly over the report about wiretapping facilities at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta,” the foreign minister told reporters.

PLAYING BALL

President Obama stepped up to the plate to reward a loyal political supporter who once played outfield for his favorite baseball team, the Chicago White Sox.

Mr. Obama last week nominated Mark D. Gilbert to serve as ambassador to New Zealand.

Mr. Gilbert, who spent only 11 days in the major leagues during the 1985 season, is believed to be the only former professional baseball player to be nominated for such a high rank in the U.S. diplomatic service.

“Baseball is America’s pastime, so what better way to represent the United States overseas than with someone who began his career as a major league baseball player?” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told The Associated Press.

Mr. Gilbert, a 57-year-old bank executive and former Obama fundraiser, played in only seven games for the White Sox before he was sent back to a minor league team in Buffalo, N.Y. He also served two terms as deputy finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

By James Morrison
The Washington Times
Sunday, November 3, 2013

Find this story at 3 November 2013

Listening post revealed on Cocos Islands

11 november 2013

Australia’s electronic spy agency is intercepting Indonesian naval and military communications through a secret radio listening post on the remote Cocos Islands.

According to former defence officials, the Defence Signals Directorate runs the signals interception and monitoring base on Australia’s Indian Ocean territory, 1100 kilometres south-west of Java.

Along with the better-known Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the previously unreported Cocos Island facility forms a key part of Australia’s signals intelligence efforts targeting Indonesia.

Known locally as ”the house without windows”, it includes radio monitoring and direction-finding equipment and a satellite ground station. But the station is of little help in combating people smuggling, according to the former intelligence officers.

The station has never been publicly acknowledged by the government, nor previously reported in the media, despite operating for more than two decades.

The Defence Department would not comment, and said only that it hosts ”a communications station” that formed part of the wider defence communications network.

But former defence officers have confirmed that the station is a Defence Signals Directorate facility devoted to maritime and military surveillance, especially Indonesian naval, air force and military communications.

Google Earth imagery of the property, discreetly placed amid coconut palm groves on the south-east part of West Island, shows four cleared areas each with radio mast sets, including a 44-metre-wide ”circularly disposed antenna array” for high-frequency and very high-frequency radio direction finding.

Australian National University intelligence expert Des Ball said the facility was operated remotely from the Defence Signals Directorate headquarters at Russel Hill, in Canberra. Intercepted signals are encrypted and relayed to Canberra.

He said preparations for the Cocos station began in the late 1980s, and involved a highly secretive signals intelligence group, the Royal Australian Air Force’s No. 3 Telecommunications Unit.

In the face of what it described as ”extremely challenging logistics”, an Adelaide-based company, Australian Satellite Communication, then installed a communications satellite earth station at the facility.

The Cocos Island signals intelligence station forms part of broad Australian espionage efforts directed at the Indonesian government.

As reported by Fairfax Media on Thursday, these programs include a covert Defence Signals Directorate surveillance facility at the Australian embassy in Jakarta. One former defence intelligence officer said Australia’s monitoring of Indonesian communications was ”very effective” and allowed assessments of the seriousness of Indonesian efforts to combat people smuggling.

But the former intelligence officer said the Cocos and Shoal Bay facilities were of ”limited utility” in finding vessels carrying asylum seekers that avoided using radios or satellite phones until they contacted the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

Richard Tanter, of the Nautilus Institute of Security and Sustainability, said the Cocos Islands station was likely to be intercepting increasing volumes of naval and military communications.

”With the increasing Australian and US interest in the Indian Ocean region, it is likely to become more important,” he said.

Date: November 01 2013

Philip Dorling

Find this story at 1 November 2013

Spy expert says Australia operating as ‘listening post’ for US agencies including the NSA

11 november 2013

Spy expert says Australia operating as ‘listening post’ for US agencies including the NSA

A veteran spy watcher claims Australia is playing a role in America’s intelligence networks by monitoring vast swathes of the Asia Pacific region and feeding information to the US.

Intelligence expert Professor Des Ball says the Australian Signals Directorate – formerly known as the Defence Signals Directorate – is sharing information with the National Security Agency (NSA).

The NSA is the agency at the heart of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, and has recently been accused of tapping into millions of phone calls of ordinary citizens in France, Germany and Spain.

Mr Ball says Australia has been monitoring the Asia Pacific region for the US using local listening posts.

“You can’t get into the information circuits and play information warfare successfully unless you’re into the communications of the higher commands in [the] various countries in our neighbourhood,” he told Lateline.

Mr Ball says Australia has four key facilities that are part of the XKeyscore program, the NSA’s controversial computer system that searches and analyses vast amounts of internet data.

They include the jointly-run Pine Gap base near Alice Springs, a satellite station outside Geraldton in Western Australia, a facility at Shoal Bay, near Darwin, and a new centre in Canberra.

Mr Ball says security is the focus for Australia’s intelligence agencies.

“At the top of [the list of priorities] you’re going to find communications relating to terrorist activities, particularly if there’s alerts about particular incidents,” Mr Ball said.

A secret map released by Snowden revealed the US had also set up surveillance facilities in embassies and consulates, including in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Yangon, Manila, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing.

“Australia itself has used foreign embassies for listening purposes [in] an operation codenamed Reprieve … in which we’ve used embassies in our region to monitor local, essentially microwave-relayed telephone conversations,” Mr Ball said.

“The fact that the United States has special collection elements that are doing this today is no different from what many other countries are doing today. It’s not unusual.”

Some critics have raised concerns about the extent of the NSA’s spying program, suggesting that communications of ordinary Australians may have been pried on.

Xenophon calls on Government to protect Australians from US surveillance

Mr Ball says Australia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Canada have a long-standing “five eyes” agreement to not spy on each other, and he believes it has not been breached.

“The fact that it hasn’t [been breached] for over five decades I think signifies to the integrity of at least that part of the arrangement,” he said.

But independent Senator Nick Xenophon says the Government should do more to ensure Australians are not subject to the surveillence from US agencies.

“At the very least, the Australian Government should be calling in the US ambassador and asking whether the level of scrutiny, the level of access to citizens’ phone records in Germany, France and Spain, has been happening here,” he said.

“I think we deserve an answer on that.”

Former NSA executive lifts lid on spy practices

In 2010, former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake was charged with leaking government secrets to a journalist.

He was tried under the US espionage act but his case was ultimately reduced to a minor misdemeanour charge. He escaped a jail sentence after a finding that the information he disclosed was not classified.

He agrees with Mr Ball that the US has not breached its spying agreement with Australia.

But he told Lateline those five nations do “utilise each other’s services” to gather information on other “fair game” nations.

“And what they want is to do so and have access to it any time, anywhere, any place.”

US moves to ease concerns about NSA

US president Barack Obama has come under fierce criticism over allegations that the NSA tapped the mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel and conducted widespread electronic snooping in France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere.

Amid a growing uproar, White House officials have said they will review intelligence collection programs with an eye to narrowing their scope.

“We need to make sure that we’re collecting intelligence in a way that advances our security needs and that we don’t just do it because we can,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Mr Drake says it is alarming that a nation would spy on those it considers allies.

“Spying on others is considered the world’s second oldest profession and so the idea that nation states would engage in spying on others is no surprise, not at all,” he said.

“I think what’s particularly pernicious here is the fact we’re actually listening on the personal communications of the highest levels of governments in countries that are supposed to be our allies and are actually partnered with us in ensuring that we deal and defend against threats to international order and stability.”

Spying ‘done behind the veil of secrecy’

He says most countries go along with US requests for data.

“It’s heavy stuff and when it’s done behind the veil of secrecy, outside the public view then hey, it’s whatever you can get away with because you can,” he said.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should and I actually think it’s encouraging the countries are standing up against the US in this regard because it is overreach.

“It really is going far beyond the mandate to ensure international order and stability, even in partnership with other countries.

“The real fundamental threat here though is ultimately the sovereignty of individuals, who we are as people. We’re supposed to have rights.

“What’s happened after 9/11 is now security has kind of taken primacy over rights and liberties because of the real or perceived threat.”

Snowden ‘aware his revelations have been explosive’

Snowden is currently holed up in Russia after leaking information about America’s vast surveillance operations.

Mr Drake recently met Snowden in Moscow, and says the former NSA contractor is aware his disclosures have been “quite explosive”.

“His focus is on reform. His focus is on rolling back the surveillance data. His focus is repealing many of the enabling act legislation that put all this into place, or at least enabled the government in secrecy to expand the surveillance date far beyond its original mandate,” Mr Drake said.

“He’s obviously grateful that he’s got temporary asylum in Russia. I don’t think it was certainly not a place he was planning on going to or remaining in for any length of time.

“He’s looking forward, at some point in the future, to returning to the US but that’s certainly not possible right now.

“The US has already levied serious charges against him including the same charges that they levied against me under the espionage act.”

By Jason Om and staff –
October 30, 2013, 11:54 am

Find this story at 30 October 2013

Stateroom

11 november 2013

STATEROOM sites are covert SIGINT collection sites located in diplomatic facilities abroad. SIGINT agencies hosting such sites include SCS (at U.S> diplomatic facilities), Government Communications headquarters or GCHQ (at British diplomatic facilities), Communication Security Establishments or CSE (at Canadian diplomatic facilities), and Defense Signals Directorate (at Australian diplomatic facilities). These sites are small in size and in the number of personnel staffing them. They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned.”

Find this story at 27 October 2013

Outrage at alleged U.S. spying efforts gathers steam in Asian capitals

11 november 2013

China’s government is “severely concerned about the reports and demands a clarification and explanation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. Government officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand – all U.S. allies – made similarly angry statements.

“Indonesia strongly protests the existence of a tapping facility in the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said. “If it’s confirmed, such action is not only a breach of security, but also a serious violation of diplomatic norms and ethics, and certainly not in tune with the spirit of friendly relations between nations.”

The Asian leaders were reacting to a report this week in the German magazine Der Spiegel and a Sydney Morning Herald article Thursday that named cities in which embassies are used for electronic surveillance by the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – a group of intelligence partners known as the “5-eyes.”

The reports were based on a secret National Security Agency document that was leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden and first published by Der Spiegel. The Sydney newspaper, part of the Fairfax Media group, also included information provided by an unidentified former Australian intelligence officer.

Code-named STATEROOM, the program used disguised surveillance equipment in about 80 embassies and consulates worldwide, the Herald reported, adding that the equipment is concealed in roof maintenance sheds or as features of the building itself.

Nineteen of the diplomatic facilities are in Europe. The Asian embassies involved include those in Jakarta; Bangkok; Hanoi; Beijing; Dili, East Timor; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott declined to discuss the Herald report in detail, but he told reporters, “Every Australian governmental agency, every Australian official at home and abroad operates in accordance with the law, and that’s the assurance that I can give people at home and abroad.”

In an interview with the Associated Press, Australian intelligence expert Desmond Ball said he had seen covert antennas in five of the embassies named in the Australian media report. But Ball, a professor with the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defense Studies Center, declined to specify which embassies.

Notably absent from the list of countries reportedly under surveillance in the program are the staunchest U.S. allies in Asia, Japan and South Korea. This week, Japanese media reported that the NSA had asked the Japanese government in 2011 for permission to tap fiber-optic cables in Japan, which carries much traffic throughout East Asia, as a way to collect surveillance on China. But the Japanese government refused, citing legal hurdles and lack of manpower.

On Wednesday, in response to reports of U.S. surveillance of European leaders, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called cybersecurity “a matter of sovereignty” and said China was taking steps to increase its security, as well as joining Russia in backing a U.N. proposal to address such surveillance.

China’s state-run media have also roundly criticized the United States, with headlines declaring that the revelations would weaken U.S. global influence. Commentators accusedthe United States, which for years has complained of Chinese cyberattacks, of hypocrisy and demanded U.S. apologies.

According to U.S. security experts, Chinese cyberspies, including hackers affiliated with the Chinese military, have stolen industrial secrets for years and have penetrated powerful Washington institutions, including law firms, think tanks, news organizations, human rights groups, contractors, congressional offices, embassies and federal agencies.

Malaysian Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said his government takes the reports seriously and is trying to confirm whether such intelligence gathering had taken place. “It is a sensitive issue since it involves several countries,” Zahid said.

The opposition party criticized Malaysia’s government for being too “submissive” in its reaction to the United States.

Lt. Gen. Paradorn Pattanatabut, secretary-general of Thailand’s National Security Council, said his government would tell Washington that such surveillance is against Thai law and that Thai security agencies have been put on alert.

If asked, Paradorn said, Thailand would not cooperate with such U.S. spying programs. But he also emphasized that “we believe that Thailand and the U.S. still enjoy good and cordial relations.”

Chico Harlan in Seoul contributed to this report.

Michael Birnbaum 12:00 PM ET

Find this story at 31 October 2013

Australia accused of using embassies to spy on neighbours

11 november 2013

Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden contain details of surveillance collection programme across Asia

Australia’s embassies are part of a US-led global spying network and are being used to intercept calls and data across Asia, it has been claimed.

There are surveillance collection facilities at embassies in Jakarta, Bangkok, Hanoi, Beijing and Dili, and high commissions in Kuala Lumpur and Port Moresby, Fairfax Media reports, with diplomats unaware of them.

Some of the details are in a secret US National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden and published by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.

The document reveals the existence of a signals intelligence collection program – codenamed STATEROOM – conducted from sites at US embassies and consulates and from the diplomatic missions of intelligence partners including Australia, Britain and Canada.

The document says the Australian Defence Signals Directorate operates STATEROOM facilities “at Australian diplomatic facilities”.

“They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned,” the document says.

A former Australian Defence Intelligence officer told Fairfax the directorate conducted surveillance operations from Australian embassies across Asia and the Pacific.

The Department of Foreign Affairs would not comment on “intelligence matters”, Fairfax said.

The US has been embarrassed by media leaks from Snowden that the NSA listened in on the communications of dozens of foreign leaders, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Australian Associated Press
theguardian.com, Wednesday 30 October 2013 22.30 GMT

Find this story at 30 October 2013

Exposed: Australia’s Asia spy network

11 november 2013

Leading intelligence and security academic Prof. Des Ball discusses the history of embassy spying and says Australia is a target in our own capital.

Australian embassies are being secretly used to intercept phone calls and data across Asia as part of a US-led global spying network, according to whistleblower Edward Snowden and a former Australian intelligence officer.

The top secret Defence Signals Directorate operates the clandestine surveillance facilities at embassies without the knowledge of most Australian diplomats.

International outcry: A Stop Watching US Rally in Washington D.C. Photo: Getty Images

The revelations come as the US has been left red-faced by news it has been eavesdropping on foreign leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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US President Barack Obama is said to be on the verge of ordering a halt to spying on the heads of allied governments following the international outcry.

Fairfax Media has been told that signals intelligence collection takes place from embassies in Jakarta, Bangkok, Hanoi, Beijing and Dili, and High Commissions in Kuala Lumpur and Port Moresby, as well as other diplomatic posts.

Edward Snowden: Leaked a secret US National Security Agency document. Photo: Reuters

A secret US National Security Agency document leaked by Mr Snowden and published by Germany’s Der Speigel reveals the existence of a highly sensitive signals intelligence collection program conducted from sites at US embassies and consulates and from the diplomatic missions of other “Five eyes” intelligence partners including Australia, Britain and Canada.

Codenamed STATEROOM, the program involves the interception of radio, telecommunications and internet traffic.

The document explicitly states that the Australian Defence Signals Directorate operates STATEROOM facilities “at Australian diplomatic facilities”.

The document notes that the surveillance facilities “are small in size and in number of personnel staffing them”.

“They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned,” the document says.

The National Security Agency document also observed the facilities were carefully concealed: “For example antennas are sometimes hidden in false architectural features or roof maintenance sheds.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to comment on the potential diplomatic implications of the disclosure. A departmental spokesperson said: “It is the long-standing practice of Australian governments not to comment on intelligence matters.”

The leaked NSA document does not identify the location of specific Defence Signals Directorate facilities overseas.

However, a former Australian Defence Intelligence officer has told Fairfax Media the directorate conducts surveillance operations from Australian embassies across Asia and the Pacific.

The former intelligence officer said the interception facility at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta played an important role in collecting intelligence on terrorist threats and people-smuggling, “but the main focus is political, diplomatic and economic intelligence”.

“The huge growth of mobile phone networks has been a great boon and Jakarta’s political elite are a loquacious bunch; even when they think their own intelligence services are listening they just keep talking,” the source said.

He said the Australian Consulate in Denpasar, Bali, has also been used for signals intelligence collection.

In June the East Timorese government complained publicly about Australian spying, including communications interception and bugging government offices during negotiations on the future of the Timor Gap oil and gas reserves.

Intelligence leaks to the media in the 1980s disclosed installation of ”extraordinarily sophisticated” intercept equipment in Australia’s High Commission in Port Moresby and in the Australian embassies in Jakarta and Bangkok.

Further leaks of top secret Defence Intelligence reports on Indonesia and East Timor in 1999 also indicated that Australia intelligence has extensive access to sensitive Indonesian military and civilian communications.

Intelligence expert Des Ball said the Defence Signals Directorate had long co-operated with the US in monitoring the Asia-Pacific region, including using listening posts in embassies and consulates.

“Knowing what our neighbours are really thinking is important for all sorts of diplomatic and trade negotiations,” Professor Ball told Fairfax Media.

October 31, 2013
Read later
Philip Dorling

Find this story at 31 October 2013

Australia Said to Play Part in N.S.A. Effort

11 november 2013

BEIJING — Australia, a close ally of the United States, has used its embassies in Asia to collect intelligence as part of the National Security Agency’s global surveillance efforts, according to a document leaked by the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden and published this week in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry reacted angrily on Thursday to the assertions in the document, which also said that the American Embassy in Beijing and consulates in Shanghai and Chengdu operated special intelligence gathering facilities, and it demanded an explanation from the United States.

“We demand that foreign entities and personnel in China strictly abide by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and other international treaties, and they must not, in any form, engage in activities that are incompatible with their position and status and that are harmful to China’s national security and interest,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the ministry, said at a daily briefing for reporters.

Australia is one of the so-called Five Eyes countries that share highly classified intelligence and agree not to spy on one another; the other four are the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.

The report by Der Spiegel and a report in The Sydney Morning Herald said that the intelligence collection program was conducted from Australian Embassies in China, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and East Timor, and the country’s high commissions — the equivalent of embassies among Commonwealth countries — in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

The N.S.A. program was called Stateroom, and was operated by the Australian Defense Signals Directorate, Der Spiegel quoted the N.S.A. document as saying.

A former Australian official with knowledge of Australia’s relationship with the United States said that Australia took part in the intelligence gathering to further its own national interests as well as to contribute to its alliance with Washington. The Australian intelligence operations had been going on in various forms for 20 to 30 years, the former official said.

Australia has long felt a need to gather information in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, which lies just to the north of Australia, the former official said. The country’s volatile politics and security problems were of the highest priority to Australia for many years, and more recently the rise in the smuggling of people to Australia from there had increased the need, the former official said.

“This was done not as a favor to the United States,” said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “It was more cooperative than at the U.S.’s request.”

Describing the surveillance operations at the Australian facilities, the N.S.A. document quoted by Der Spiegel said they were “small in size and in number of personnel staffing them.” The document added, “They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned.”

An email to the Australian agency assigned to answer questions about the program, the Attorney General’s Department in Canberra, was not immediately answered.

The reports were an embarrassment to the new conservative government in Australia, especially regarding the Australian Embassy in Beijing. The buoyant Australian economy depends on China’s appetite for Australian iron ore, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott said this month that he wanted to complete a free-trade agreement with China within a year.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ms. Hua, alluded to the relationship in her comments on Thursday. China and Australia had a consensus to increase cooperation, she said, and “we hope and expect that Australia can work hard with China in this regard.”

The New York Times
October 31, 2013
By JANE PERLEZ

Find this story at 31 October 2013

Revealed: How Australia spies on its neighbours

11 november 2013

Australia’s electronic spy agency is using the nation’s embassies to intercept phone calls and internet data in neighbouring countries, according to new information disclosed by intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden and a former Australian intelligence officer.

The secret Defence Signals Directorate operates clandestine surveillance facilities at embassies without the knowledge of most Australian diplomats.

Fairfax Media has been told that signals intelligence collection occurs from Australian embassies in Jakarta, Bangkok, Hanoi, Beijing and Dili, the high commissions in Kuala Lumpur and Port Moresby and other diplomatic posts.

A secret US National Security Agency document leaked by Mr Snowden and published by Germany’s Der Speigel magazine reveals a highly sensitive signals intelligence collection program conducted from US embassies and consulates and from the diplomatic missions of other “Five Eyes” intelligence partners, including Australia, Britain and Canada.

Codenamed STATEROOM, the collection program involves interception of radio, telecommunications and internet traffic.

The document says the DSD operates STATEROOM facilities at Australian diplomatic posts. It says the surveillance facilities are “small in size and in number of personnel staffing them”.

“They are covert, and their true mission is not known by the majority of the diplomatic staff at the facility where they are assigned,” it says.

The document says the DSD facilities are carefully concealed. “For example, antennas are sometimes hidden in false architectural features or roof maintenance sheds.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to comment on the potential diplomatic implications of the disclosure. A spokesperson said: “It is the long-standing practice of Australian governments not to comment on intelligence matters.”

The leaked NSA document does not identify the location of the DSD facilities overseas. However, a former Australian defence intelligence officer told Fairfax Media that the directorate conducted surveillance from Australian embassies across Asia and the Pacific.

In June, the East Timorese government complained publicly about Australian spying, including communications interception and the bugging of government offices during negotiations on the Timor Gap oil and gas reserves.

The former intelligence officer said the interception facility at the Australian embassy in Jakarta played an important role in collecting intelligence on terrorist threats and people smuggling, “but the main focus is political, diplomatic and economic intelligence”.

“The huge growth of mobile phone networks has been a great boon and Jakarta’s political elite are a loquacious bunch. Even when they think their own intelligence services are listening they just keep talking,” he said.

He said the Australian consulate in Denpasar, Bali, had also been used for intelligence collection.

Intelligence expert Des Ball said the DSD had long co-operated with the US in monitoring the Asia-Pacific region, including using listening posts in Australian embassies and consulates.

“Knowing what our neighbours are really thinking is important for all sorts of diplomatic and trade negotiations,” Professor Ball told Fairfax Media.

“It’s also necessary to map the whole of the telecommunications infrastructure in any area where we might one day have to conduct military operations so that we can make most use of our cyber warfare capabilities, however remote those contingencies might be, because you can’t get that knowledge and build those capabilities once a conflict starts.”

Meanwhile, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has demanded an explanation of news that the US embassy in Jakarta has been used to tap the phones of Indonesian officials.

“Indonesia cannot accept and strongly protests the news about the existence of tapping facilities at the US embassy in Jakarta,” Mr Natalegawa said.

”We have spoken to the US embassy representative in Jakarta demanding an official explanation from the US government about the news. If it’s confirmed, then it’s not only a breach of security, but a serious breach of diplomatic norms and ethics, and of course it’s not in line with the spirit of having a good relationship between the two countries.”

The Age
Date: October 31 2013
Philip Dorling

Find this story at 31 October 2013

Malaysia protests at ‘US and Australia spying’ in Asia

8 november 2013

Malaysia has protested at the alleged spying, saying “such activities are not done among close friends”
Continue reading the main story

The Malaysian government has summoned the heads of the US and Australian diplomatic missions in Kuala Lumpur over a row about an alleged American-led spying network in Asia.

The Malaysian foreign ministry said the reports of spying could “severely damage” relations.

It said a protest note was handed over.

China and Indonesia have already protested at the claims that Australian embassies were being used to monitor phones and collect data for the US.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said “such activities are not done amongst close friends”.

Mr Anifah said his Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop, replied that it was not her government’s policy to comment on intelligence matters, but she accepted Malaysia’s concerns.

The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) has reported that Australian diplomatic posts in Asia were being used to intercept phone calls and data.

The reports were based on a US National Security Agency document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has declined to comment on the reports.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “Every Australian governmental agency, every Australian official… operates in accordance with the law.”

Find this story at 2 November 2013

Ex-Mossad-Agent; Israel zahlt Schweigegeld an Familie von Häftling X

23 september 2013

Ben Zygier war ein Mossad-Agent, der Geheimnisse an Israels Feinde weitergab. Während der Isolationshaft erhängte sich der Spion. Die genauen Umstände seiner Haft will Jerusalem unter keinen Umständen preisgeben – und bezahlt Zygiers Familie für ihr Schweigen.

Tel Aviv – Einer der spektakulärsten Justizfälle der israelischen Geschichte hat ein finanzielles Nachspiel. Israels Regierung will die Familie des sogenannten Häftling X mit vier Millionen Schekel entschädigen – umgerechnet etwa 842.000 Euro.

Das Geld fließt an die Familie des früheren Mossad-Agenten Ben Zygier. Der australisch-israelische Doppelstaatsbürger hatte jahrelang für den Geheimdienst gearbeitet, war dann aber Anfang 2010 verhaftet worden. Nach Erkenntnissen des SPIEGEL hatte Zygier Informationen an die libanesische Hisbollah-Miliz weitergegeben, die zur Verhaftung zweier Mossad-Agenten im Libanon führten.

Zygier wurde in der Hochsicherheitsanstalt Ajalon im israelischen Ramle in Einzelhaft unter Videoüberwachung gehalten. Das Gefängnispersonal kannte weder seinen Namen noch den Grund für seine Haft. Trotz der Überwachung konnte er sich im Dezember 2010 in seiner Zelle erhängen. Eine Untersuchungsrichterin hatte daher im April festgestellt, dass Zygier nicht ausreichend überwacht worden sei. Der Fall wurde erst Jahre später durch australische Medienberichte publik.

“Ihr werdet schweigen, wir werden bezahlen”

Israels Regierung betont, dass die nun getroffene Einigung mit den Hinterbliebenen kein Eingeständnis eines “vorgeblichen Fehlverhaltens” sei. Vielmehr solle vermieden werden, die Angelegenheit vor Gericht zu bringen, weil dann Einzelheiten an die Öffentlichkeit kämen und die nationale Sicherheit ernsten Schaden nehmen können.

Zygiers Familie hat sich zu Stillschweigen verpflichtet. “Ihr werdet schweigen, wir werden bezahlen”, titelte die israelische Tageszeitung “Jedioth Achronoth” am Mittwoch. Die Hinterbliebenen von Häftling X hatten direkt mit dem Büro des Premierministers Benjamin Netanjahu und dem Justizministerium verhandelt.

Jahrelang war die Familie über die Umstände des Todes falsch informiert worden. Den Hinterbliebenen wurde erzählt, dass Zygier als Mossad-Agent hinter feindlichen Linien ums Leben gekommen war.

11. September 2013, 13:06 Uhr

Find this story at 11 September 2013

Prisoner X: Israel to pay $1m to Ben Zygier’s family

23 september 2013

Family of Australian-born Mossad agent who died in jail in 2010 while facing treason charges, is offered settlement

Ben Zygier, known as Prisoner X, picture in a still from an ABC TV report. Photograph: AAP/ABC TV

Israel is to pay more than $1m to the family of Ben Zygier, an Australian-born Mossad agent who hanged himself in an Israeli prison, in order to avoid damaging disclosures in a court case.

The agreement will see Zygier’s family receive four million shekels, or around $1.19m, in staged payments in return for the state of Israel being absolved of responsibility for the death.

Zygier, who held Australian and Israeli citizenships, hanged himself in the Ayalon Prison in 2010. He was known as Prisoner X due to his secret incarceration, where he was facing a 10-year sentence for treason.

A judicial inquiry found that guards did not properly check his cell and that at least one CCTV camera wasn’t working. Central district court president, Daphna Blatman, said: “Failure by various elements in the Israel prison service caused his death.”

The Israeli government has said that there was not enough evidence to bring charges over Zygier’s death.

Zygier’s parents – who are leading figures in Melbourne’s Jewish
community – threatened to bring a legal case against the state of
Israel, claiming negligence and seeking compensation.

According to a statement from the Israeli justice ministry,
negotiations between the state of Israel and the Zygiers led to the
settlement, “under which the state agreed to pay the family of the
deceased the sum of four million shekels”. The agreement was made
“without admitting claims raised against”, it said.

Israel made the payment in order to avoid court action, which might have
involved the disclosure of information “which could cause real damage
to national security”, the statement added.

Earlier this year, the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program reported that the Israeli government attempted to cover up the story of Zygier’s death, urging editors of Israeli newspapers not to report the incident.

The program claimed that Zygier was imprisoned for sabotaging a Mossad mission to recover the bodies of soldiers killed in action in Lebanon. Israel has refused to comment on the reasons for his incarceration.

Oliver Milman in Sydney and Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Wednesday 11 September 2013 09.07 BST

Find this story at 11 September 2013

‘Prisoner X’ family to get Israeli payout

23 september 2013

Justice ministry says $1.1 million to be paid to family of alleged Mossad spy who hanged himself in prison.

Zygier known as “Prisoner X” was found hanged in his isolation cell in Ayalon prison near in December 2010. [EPA]

Israel is to pay more than $1 million to the family of an alleged Mossad spy who hanged himself in prison in 2010, the justice ministry has said.

“After negotiations, the two parties have reached an agreement whereby the state will pay $1.1 million to the deceased’s family,” the ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.

The family of Ben Zygier, an Australian-Israeli known as “Prisoner X,” had accused Israel of negligence in dealing with his case, according to the statement.

Zygier was found hanged in his isolation cell in Ayalon prison near Tel Aviv in December 2010 — a case Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up.

A court document released on April 25 this year said Israel’s prison service had caused Zygier’s death by failing to prevent him from committing suicide.

The document revealed details about his background and imprisonment, indicating he was suicidal and had an emotionally-charged exchange with his wife the day he was found hanged.

It also said that his cell was not properly watched by prison guards.

The justice ministry statement stressed that the deal with Zygier’s family was not an “admission of alleged wrongdoing.”

It was instead “to avoid the affair going to court, which would lead to the publication of numerous details of the case which could cause serious harm to national security.”

The reasons for Zygier’s detention were unclear, but the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said in a report in May that the 34-year-old, who was allegedly working for Israel’s foreign spy service Mossad, had unwittingly sabotaged a top secret spy operation in Lebanon.

Last Modified: 11 Sep 2013 08:52

Find this story at 11 September 2013

www.aljazeera.com

Israel pays £714,000 to the family of ‘Prisoner X’

23 september 2013

The move is designed to keep their allegation of negligence from becoming a public lawsuit that could expose state secrets

Israel has agreed to pay four million shekels (£714,000) in compensation to the family of an Australian-Israeli Mossad agent who apparently committed suicide while being held in secret detention in 2010.

The settlement with relatives of Ben Zygier, who was known as “Prisoner X” during his detention for unspecified crimes, is designed to keep their allegation of negligence from becoming a public lawsuit that could expose state secrets, the justice ministry said in a statement.

“It is possible that in the course [of a trial] details would be liable to be made public which could cause tangible damage to the security of the state,” the statement said. The justice ministry stressed that the payment was not tantamount to admitting that state was negligent in its care of Mr Zygier.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation broke the story of Mr Zygier’s secret incarceration in February. Before then, the Israeli media had been subject to a blackout on the “Prisoner X” case. A judicial inquiry later found that Mr Zygier’s death was a suicide enabled by “neglect of duty’’ on the part of those holding him.

Uri Misgav, an investigative reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, said he doubted that security was the real reason for the state keeping the matter out of court. “There is at least suspicion of a cover up of failures in all aspects of this matter including recruitment, handling of him as an agent and his handling as a prisoner by the state,” he added.

The case has been an embarrassment to Israel, raising the question of whether the judiciary, which approved the secret incarceration, had acted as a rubber stamp of the security branches.

Ben Lynfield
Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Find this story at 11 September 2013

US drone strikes guided from outback

16 augustus 2013

Central Australia’s Pine Gap spy base played a key role in the United States’ controversial drone strikes involving the ”targeted killing” of al-Qaeda and Taliban chiefs, Fairfax Media can reveal.

Former personnel at the Australian-American base have described the facility’s success in locating and tracking al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders – and other insurgent activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan – as ”outstanding”.

A Fairfax Media investigation has now confirmed a primary function of the top-secret signals intelligence base near Alice Springs is to track the precise ”geolocation” of radio signals, including those of hand-held radios and mobile phones, in the eastern hemisphere, from the Middle East across Asia to China, North Korea and the Russian far east.

This information has been used to identify the location of terrorist suspects, which is then fed into the United States drone strike program and other military operations.

The drone program, which has involved more than 370 attacks in Pakistan since 2004, is reported to have killed between 2500 and 3500 al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, including many top commanders.

But hundreds of civilians have been also killed, causing anti-American protests in Pakistan, diplomatic tensions between Washington and Islamabad and accusations the ”drone war” has amounted to a program of ”targeted killing” outside a battlefield. This year, the Obama administration acknowledged four American citizens had been killed by strikes in Pakistan and Yemen since 2009.

”The [Taliban] know we’re listening but they still have to use radios and phones to conduct their operations; they can’t avoid that,” one former Pine Gap operator said. ”We track them, we combine the signals intelligence with imagery and, once we’ve passed the geolocation [intelligence] on, our job is done. When drones do their job we don’t need to track that target any more.”

The base’s direct support of US military operations is much greater than admitted by Defence Minister Stephen Smith and previous Australian governments, new disclosures by former Pine Gap personnel and little-noticed public statements by US government officials have shown.

Australian Defence intelligence sources have confirmed that finding targets is critically dependent on intelligence gathered and processed through the Pine Gap facility, which has seen ”a massive, quantitative and qualitative transformation” over the past decade, and especially the past three years.

”The US will never fight another war in the eastern hemisphere without the direct involvement of Pine Gap,” one official said.

Last week, secret documents leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden indicated Pine Gap also contributes to a broad US National Security Agency collection program codenamed ”X-Keyscore”.

Pine Gap controls a set of geostationary satellites positioned above the Indian Ocean and Indonesia. These orbit the earth at fixed points and are able to locate the origin of radio signals to within 10 metres. Pine Gap processes the data and can provide targeting information to US and allied military units within minutes.

Former US National Security Agency personnel who served at Pine Gap in the past two years have described their duties in unguarded career summaries and employment records as including ”signals intelligence collection, geolocation … and reporting of high-priority target signals” including ”real time tracking”.

US Army personnel working at Pine Gap use systems codenamed ”Whami, SSEXTANT, and other geolocation tools” to provide targeting information, warnings about the location of radio-triggered improvised explosive devices, and for combat and non-combat search and rescue missions.

Pine Gap’s operations often involve sifting through vast quantities of ”noise” to find elusive and infrequent signals. One former US Army signals intelligence analyst describes the ”collection and geolocation of an extremely hard to find target” as a task that included ”manually sifting through hundreds of hours of collection”.

Last month Mr Smith assured Parliament that Pine Gap operates with the ”full knowledge and concurrence” of the government.

He provided no details other than to say the facility ”delivers information on intelligence priorities such as terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and military and weapons developments” and ”contributes to the verification of arms control and disarmament agreements”.

The government is required by a number of agreements to consult with the US government before the public release of any new information about Pine Gap.

The federal government maintains a long-standing policy of not commenting on operational intelligence matters.

Philip Dorling
Published: July 21, 2013 – 3:00AM

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Revealed: another secret incarceration of Israeli secret services agent

14 augustus 2013

After revelations about Ben Zygier, ‘Prisoner X No. 2’ blamed for ‘horrible security breach’

For the second time in less than six months, the secret incarceration of a member of the Israeli secret services has been revealed.

The new case, which follows that of former Mossad agent Ben Zygier, who hanged himself in the high security Ayalon Prison in 2010, is also understood to involve someone who worked for of the Jewish state’s spy agencies. Both Zygier, and the other individual, were known only as ‘Prisoner X’ during their imprisonment. The second prisoner has not been identified.

There are still few details about the new case, which was revealed earlier today by the liberal Haaretz newspaper. However, Zygier’s lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, told Israeli radio that the allegations facing the second prisoner were much more severe.

“This affair points to far more severe failures than the ones committed by the defense [sic] establishment in Zygier’s case,” he said. “Regarding Zygier’s case, the authorities that recruited him didn’t understand who they were dealing with and weren’t aware of his conduct. Okay – that’s a failure. Prisoner X number two is an entirely different story – a horrible security breach. When I heard the story, as an Israeli citizen I was shocked, and the subject was completely silenced by lawyers who enjoy close ties with the establishment. Whoever opens this affair will be doing the country a great service.”

It is believed that Zygier – disappointed by his superior’s lack of willingness to hand him more interesting work – decided to try and impress his bosses and turn a leading member of the Lebanese group Hezbollah. He was then skilfully played to the extent that he ended blowing the cover of two double agents that had provided information to Israel.

Israeli officials have not commented on the case and like in Zygier’s case, are unlikely to offer any insight, although it is believed that unlike in Zygier’s case, the second Prisoner X had been convicted of whatever crimes he was accused of. It is not clear what has become of the second Prisoner X, but it is thought that he may still be being held at Ayalon prison.

Mr Feldman said that assumptions could be drawn from a detainee being classified as ‘prisoner X’.

“They are Israeli, they work in institutions linked to security whose activities are shrouded in secrecy,” he said. “And their detention demonstrates the failure of these organisations which are not capable of preventing offences such as those for which these agents have been arrested,” he said.

The disclosure that at least two of its spies are alleged to have committed grave crimes against their own state is a huge embarrassment to Israel and the fact that a second Prisoner X is guaranteed to raise questions about whether there yet more people being held in similar circumstances.

Alistair Dawber
Tuesday, 9 July 2013

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Israel’s ‘Prisoner X2’ case raises concerns

14 augustus 2013

In Israel, the news that a second prisoner is serving a jail sentence in top-secret conditions has triggered human rights concerns and raised questions about the transparency of the justice system.

A prominent Israeli criminal lawyer says the detainee, referred to as Prisoner X2, is a member of the nation’s covert security forces and has been held behind bars for years.

In February this year, an Australian TV report about another anonymous prisoner shook the Israeli security establishment and threatened to destabilize Israel’s relations with Australia. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed that a man referred to as Prisoner X, who died in jail in December 2010, was a Jewish immigrant to Israel from Melbourne.

Ben Zygier had joined, then betrayed, the Mossad Israeli spy agency. He was arrested in February 2010 and held in a top-security cell in Israel’s Ayalon Prison. Even his guards did not know his name, and Israel’s courts imposed a media blackout on even mentioning the case. According to media reports, Zygier’s crime was revealing the identities of Mossad operatives in Lebanon. Zygier later hanged himself with a sheet in the shower of his cell. Guards who were supposed to be monitoring his cell said the camera malfunctioned and they were short staffed on the night Zygier died.

Israel’s Justice Ministry released a statement July 9 about Zygier. It included a mention of a second prisoner held in similar conditions, who has become known as Prisoner X2. Israeli criminal attorney Avigdor Feldman, who met with both detainees, told Israeli radio that, like Zygier, Prisoner X2 was also an Israeli citizen and a part of Israel’s covert security operations. However, he noted that the charges against Prisoner X2 were “more grave, more astounding and more fascinating” than those leveled against Zygier. Feldman did not detail the charges and declined to answer DW’s questions.
The Zygier case shook the Israeli establishment

Secret cells

The secret wings and blocks of Israel’s prisons are reserved for those considered to be its most dangerous criminals. Zygier’s cell was previously assigned to Yigal Amir, who assassinated late Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.

Following the report of a second Prisoner X, legislator Miri Regev called a meeting to discuss the circumstances of his or her incarceration. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel appealed to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to end the prisoner’s isolation and lift a media blackout on the case.

“We cannot accept a situation in which a man is arrested, tried, and imprisoned in complete secrecy, and prevented from any possibility of contact with other persons on a daily basis,” ACRI attorney Lila Margalit said in a statement. “The ‘Prisoner X’ affairs prove again that without public scrutiny, it is impossible to safeguard the rights of suspected, accused or convicted persons.”

A senior Israeli government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the veiled arrests were necessary to safeguard important matters of national security. He noted that both secret prisoners were given access to defense lawyers and their families.

“The security services in Israel have a crucial job in protecting the citizens of Israel against the threats that are out there, but those security services work within the framework of the law,” he said.

Murky past
Israel has a history of secretive episodes

The recent Prisoner X cases recall other episodes in Israel. In 1995, an Israeli court order lifted a gag order on seven convicted spies held secretly. The most famous was Professor Avraham Marcus Klingberg, who was a senior researcher at the Israel Institute for Biological Research. He disappeared in 1983 and resurfaced a decade later in the Ashkelon prison, where he was held after being secretly sentenced to 20 years for spying for the Soviet Union. Klingberg was jailed under the false name of Avraham Greenberg. He was released in 1998 and placed under house arrest until he left the country after finishing his sentence in 2003.

Another prisoner on the list of seven was Col. Shimon Levinson, a security officer in the Prime Minister’s office. In 1991 he was found to have been spying for the Soviet Union and sentenced to 12 years in jail.

Yossi Melman, a journalist and commentator on security affairs, told DW that Israel holds far fewer secret prisoners today than in the past. Still, he doubted the method of using utter secrecy to cloak the latest cases.

“These are Israeli citizens. You don’t think Israelis have to know who is in their jails?” he said. “You don’t have to publish everything on him, but the minimum has to come out. [The government should] say someone was arrested, that he is suspected of something, that he is in prison, and has a certain sentence, and that his family is aware.”

Date 18.07.2013
Author Daniella Cheslow, Jerusalem
Editor Rob Mudge

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China calls Australian spy HQ plans hacking claims ‘groundless’

20 juni 2013

Foreign ministry spokesman shrugs off ‘groundless accusations’ by Australian media that Chinese hackers stole Asio blueprints

China has shrugged off allegations by Australian media that Chinese hackers have stolen the blueprints for the new Australian spy headquarters.

“China pays high attention to cybersecurity issues, and is firmly apposed to all forms of hacker attacks,” foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a regular press briefing on Tuesday afternoon. “Groundless accusations will not help solve this issue.”

The response came amid separate allegations that Chinese hackers had compromised some of the US’s most advanced weapons systems designs.

According to a classified report prepared for the Pentagon, the breaches compromised more than two dozen weapon designs for highly advanced missiles, fighter jets, helicopters and combat ships, the Washington Post reported.

Designs believed to have been compromised include those for the advanced Patriot missile system, the Black Hawk helicopter, and the $1.4tn F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons system ever built.

While the Defence Science Board, a senior advisory group that prepared the report, did not explicitly accuse the Chinese of stealing the designs, “senior military and industry officials with knowledge of the breaches said the vast majority were part of a widening Chinese campaign of espionage against US defence contractors and government agencies,” the Washington Post reported.

“In many cases, [the defence contractors] don’t know they’ve been hacked until the FBI comes knocking on their door,” an unidentified senior military official told the newspaper. “This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China. They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development. It’s nuts.”

In Canberra, the Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, said claims that Chinese hackers stole top-secret blueprints of the Australian spy agency Asio’s new headquarters would not threaten bilateral ties.

Carr refused to confirm ABC reports that the cyber-attack netted documents containing details of the building’s floor plan, communications cabling layouts, server locations and security systems.

Concern has been rising over state-sponsored hacking emanating from China, with further allegations that its cyberspies have recently obtained sensitive Australian military secrets and foreign affairs documents.

Carr said the government was “very alive” to emerging cybersecurity threats but refused to confirm the ABC’s specific claims on Tuesday.

“I won’t comment on matters of intelligence and security for the obvious reason: we don’t want to share with the world and potential aggressors what we know about what they might be doing, and how they might be doing it,” he said.

The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, referred in parliament on Tuesday to “these inaccurate reports” without elaborating on which elements of the reports were wrong.

George Brandis, a senator with the opposition Liberal party, said on Wednesday that he had received a confidential briefing from Asio officials and the report was accurate. The Australian newspaper reported that the plans were stolen three years ago and no longer posed a threat to the operations of Australia’s main spy agency.

The Asio building’s construction had been plagued by delays and ballooning cost, with builders blaming late changes made to the internal design in response to cyber-attacks.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei was last year barred from bidding for construction contracts on the national broadband network amid fears of cyber-espionage.

Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 May 2013 03.10 BST

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Report: Australia spy plans hacked by Chinese

20 juni 2013

ABC Television says secret data stolen in major cyber attack on foreign affairs office housing overseas spy agency.

Carr says Australia’s relationship with China will not be damaged by the hacking allegations [Getty Images]

Chinese hackers have reportedly stolen plans for a new $600m Australian spy headquarters as part of a growing wave of cyber attacks against business and military targets of the US ally.

The hackers also stole confidential information from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which houses the overseas spy agency the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australia’s ABC Television said late on Monday.

The ABC report, which did not name sources, said that Chinese hackers had targeted Australia-based companies more aggressively than previously thought, including steel-manufacturer Bluescope Steel, and military and civilian communications manufacturer Codan.

The influential Greens party said on Tuesday that the reported hacking was a “security blunder of epic proportions” and called for an inquiry.

“I think there can be a proper investigation, an independent investigation, into this sorry saga of the ASIO building,” Christine Milne, head of the Greens party, said.

However, the Australian government has refused to comment directly on the allegations.

Relationship ‘not damaged’

Bob Carr, Australia’s foreign minister, said that the report would not damage the country’s ties with its biggest trade partner China.
David Vaile, of the University of New South Wales, talks about the implications of the latest hacking attack.

“I won’t comment on whether the Chinese have done what is being alleged or not,” he said.

The report follows several other hacking attacks on government facilities in the past two years.

The attack through the computers of a construction contractor exposed building layouts and the location of communication and computer networks, the ABC said.

The ASIO building, being built near the location of Australia’s top-secret Defence Signals Directorate, is supposed to have some of the most sophisticated hacking defences in the country, which is part of a global electronic intelligence gathering network including the US and the UK.

But its construction had been plagued by delays and cost blowouts, with some builders blaming late changes made to the internal design in response to cyber attacks.

Security priority

Australian officials, like those in the US and other Western nations, have made cyber attacks a security priority following a growing number of attacks of the resource rich country, mostly blamed on China.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei was barred last year from bidding for construction contracts on a new Australian high-speed broadband network amid fears of cyber espionage.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said in March that it had been targeted by cyber attacks, but no data had been lost or systems compromised amid reports that the hackers had tried to access intelligence on Group of 20 wealthy nations negotiations.

In the US, the Pentagon’s latest annual report on Chinese military developments accused China for the first time of trying to break into US defence networks, calling it “a serious concern”.

China has dismissed as groundless both the Pentagon report and a February report by the US computer security company Mandiant, which said a secretive Chinese military unit was probably behind a series of hacking attacks targeting the US that had stolen data from 100 companies.

Last Modified: 28 May 2013 06:10

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HACKED!

20 juni 2013

While debate rages over Australia’s border security, there’s growing evidence that the greatest threat to Australia’s national security potentially comes from foreign computer hackers. Few in government or business will admit the full extent of the break-ins, with one expert calling it a “dirty little secret”.

Next on Four Corners reporter Andrew Fowler reveals that hackers, working from locations overseas, have targeted key Federal Government departments and major corporations in Australia. Their intention is to steal national security secrets and vital business information.

In one case, an Australian company that supplies secret communications equipment used by military across the globe had its computer network hacked. It appears the hackers accessed the system holding vital design information involving a military radio system. The break-in meant secure communications used by Australia’s allies could be compromised.

Speaking with security specialists and insiders, Four Corners also details a number of specific high level break-ins involving Government departments. In each case it explains how the security system might have been breached.

A deafening silence surrounds this issue. Companies won’t speak about the break-ins because they fear it will alarm clients and shareholders. Governments refuse to speak up because inevitably they will be asked, who is doing this? The answer is uncomfortable.

A number of people, including former government advisors in cyber security, claim the digital trail leads to China. Although it’s unclear if the hackers are working for the Chinese Government, those same experts believe that any company doing significant business in China must assume it will be the target of corporate espionage.

HACKED!, reported by Andrew Fowler and presented by Kerry O’Brien, goes to air on Monday 27th May at 8.30pm on ABC1. The program is repeated on Tuesday 28th May at 11.35pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 on Saturday at 8.00pm, ABC iview or at abc.net.au/4corners.

By Andrew Fowler and Peter Cronau
Updated May 29, 2013 16:22:00

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Korean spy’s deportation reveals web of intrigue

10 mei 2013

ASIO headquarters in Canberra … reports say the agency alleges Yeon Kim, a senior agricultural trade specialist, was involved in “foreign interference” by the Korean spies. Photo: Katherine Griffiths

Relations between Australia and South Korea have been strained after the east Asian economic powerhouse was caught soliciting sensitive information from public servants, and the deportation of a South Korean spy for espionage in 2009 was disclosed.

New details of South Korean espionage in Australia were revealed in an unfair dismissal case before the Fair Work Commission brought by a former intelligence officer with the Australian Federal Police, Bo-Rim “Bryan” Kim.

The commission this week rejected an unfair dismissal appeal by Mr Kim, who previously worked part-time at the South Korean consulate-general in Sydney. He then worked as an information technology staffer for the AFP in Sydney before transferring to criminal intelligence for Sydney Airport.

A Fair Work judgment released this week said Federal Police management terminated his employment in August 2012 after the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation recommended revoking his security clearance.

Commissioner Geoff Bull said ASIO alleged Mr Kim had committed an “act of foreign interference” by passing sensitive information to the intelligence services of a foreign government.

“Mr Kim attempted to diminish the complaints made against him on the basis that he had not attempted to gain any benefit from his conduct and some of the allegations made against him were not accurate.

“In any event, Mr Kim was remorseful and recognised his mistakes,” he said in the judgment.

Mr Bull said Mr Kim told ASIO a consular employee who had sought information from him in January 2009 on terrorism responses at Sydney Airport was understood to be an intelligence officer or “secret squirrel”.

“This consulate employee was deported from Australia in March 2009 for espionage,” his judgment said. “Mr Kim had also been invited to and attended a dinner at this consulate employee’s apartment, which Mr Kim did not consider an important enough contact to report.”

In a separate case, an immigrant and senior trade specialist at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, Yeon Kim, lost his job after an adverse ASIO security assessment against him in 2011.

A Federal Court judgment this year said Dr Kim was alleged to have provided information to an intelligence officer working for what was then described as “country X”.

The information concerned negotiations between Australia and country X on an “important bilateral trade agreement” and its disclosure was alleged to have been an act of foreign interference under the ASIO Act.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal last year rejected an appeal by Dr Kim over his adverse assessment, but there has been subsequent litigation in the Federal Court on a planned appeal.

In March, Federal Court judge Lindsay Foster refused to extend non-publication orders on details of the case that were sought by the head of ASIO, David Irvine, ruling the information did not go to issues of national security or defence.

Dr Kim, the main author of an ABARES study on the South Korean beef market, is alleged to have met a South Korean diplomat in mid-2010 who was a known officer of that country’s National Intelligence Service.

…

Mark Skulley and John Kerin

PUBLISHED: 02 May 2013 09:11:00 | UPDATED: 03 May 2013 08:12:40

Find this story at 2 May 2013

Spies caught in Canberra

10 mei 2013

South Korean spies have been caught cultivating public servants in Canberra to obtain trade secrets, with one Australian official sacked for disclosing sensitive information.

Previously suppressed information released by the Federal Court reveals that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) had sought “to obtain sensitive information” on trade negotiations between Canberra and Seoul.

A senior Australian agricultural trade specialist, Dr Yeon Kim, has lost his security clearance and employment with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation alleged Dr Kim was involved in the “foreign interference” by the South Korean intelligence operatives.

The revelation of economic espionage is embarrassing to Seoul and Canberra as Australia has strongly backed South Korea in its stand-off with North Korea. Last month Australian troops took part in joint military exercises with South Korea and the United States for the first time.

Although engaged in what ASIO described as “inappropriate activities” harmful to Australia’s interests, no South Korean spies have been expelled from Australia. Instead, in an effort to maintain good relations with the NIS, ASIO took legal action to prevent disclosure of the incident and protect the identities of the South Korean agents so they might continue their clandestine careers.

In mid-2010 ASIO learnt Dr Kim had been meeting a South Korean diplomat declared to the Australian government as an NIS liaison officer. Dr Kim, the principal author of an ABARES study of the Korean beef market, had taken part in free trade agreement negotiations between Australia and South Korea in December 2009.

ASIO officers interviewed Dr Kim in October 2010. On September 15, 2011, ASIO director-general David Irvine issued an adverse security assessment of Dr Kim “after finding that he had had contact with successive NIS officers who he had not reported as required by Australian government policy”.

ASIO alleged Dr Kim had been involved in clandestine contact with and provided sensitive information to an NIS officer, South Korean embassy minister-counsellor Hoo-Young Park.

ASIO determined that Dr Kim had been “successfully cultivated” by the NIS; that he had been “deceptive” in his responses to questioning; and there was a “specific threat” to Australian government information. ASIO recommended his secret-level security clearance be revoked, effectively ending his career as a public servant.

Dr Kim has said his contact with South Korean diplomats was purely social and any discussion of trade issues was confined to publicly available information.

…

Philip Dorling
Published: May 2, 2013 – 7:57AM

Find this story at 2 May 2013

South Korean spies sought Australian trade secrets

10 mei 2013

Australia’s foreign minister says issue has caused no diplomatic tension with Seoul

Agents from South Korea’s national intelligence service have tried to get secret information about Australian trade, triggering the dismissal of an Australian public servant over his links to the agency.

The spy case dates back to 2010 and relates to efforts by South Korea to find out about Australian agricultural trade when the two nations were in early negotiations on a free-trade agreement.

Australia’s foreign minister, Bob Carr, refused to comment on details of the case on Thursday, citing “matters of security or intelligence”, but said the issue had caused no diplomatic tension with Seoul, a strong ally and key trading partner.

“I believe the relationship with the Republic of Korea is so strong, so robust, that this will have no effect on it,” Carr said.

South Korea is Australia’s fourth biggest trade partner, with bilateral trade worth more than A$32bn (£21bn). The two countries launched free-trade talks in 2009, but have yet to clinch a deal.

…

Reuters in Canberra
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 May 2013 08.14 BST

Find this story at 2 May 2013

The Many Scandals Of The Prisoner X Affair

25 februari 2013

There is a joke among spies that the worst curse you can bestow on a colleague is, “I hope to read about you in the newspapers one day.” In the tragic case of Ben Zygier, the curse wasn’t a joke, and he had to die for it to become a reality. Needless to say, the gallows humor that is a hallmark of my former profession has lost much of its luster.

This file photo taken on February 14, 2013 shows Australian newspapers leading their front pages in Australia with the story of Ben Zygier. (William West / AFP / Getty Images)

In a piece in these pages entitled “What Prisoner X Scandal? (/articles/2013/02/20/what-prisoner-x-scandal.html) “, Professor Gil Troy argues that Zygier was the author of his own demise—both figuratively and literally—and that his treatment at the hands of the state was decidedly unscandalous and in accordance with all the norms associated with a liberal democracy.

I would strongly disagree with Troy, and go so far as to say that what is unfolding in this case is more than just one scandal but a culmination of many. I also take strong issue with Troy’s observations about Zygier’s state of mind and motives for committing suicide.

I know what it was like to walk in Zygier’s shoes (and he in mine, since I preceded him by a decade). I served in the Mossad for 13 years and the first 7 of those as a member of the same covert operations unit that Zygier belonged to. For a short while, we would have even been in the field at the same time (albeit in different units) at that stage of my career. Like Zygier, I grew up in the Anglosphere, with all the inherent cultural differences separating me from native-born Israelis. In my case however, I wasn’t even born Jewish and my family had settled in Canada long before Confederation (Troy—an expert on the War of 1812—may be interested to know that I am a direct descendant of Laura Secord). All the psychobabble of divided loyalties and identity crisis were never a part of the equation for me, nor any of my colleagues. We got on with the business of being at the sharp-end of Mossad operations because we knew what we were doing was important and engendered universal values that apply to any Western democracy. I do not see any evidence that Zygier was any less dedicated to this ideal.

I find the circumstances of Zygier’s incarceration in solitary confinement—ostensibly as a means to “protect him and others” for reasons of national security—scandalous. Zygier was tucked away by the state after a bout of closed-door legal proceedings. The two main criteria a prosecutor must consider when assessing a case is whether the prosecution is in the public interest and whether it has a good chance of being successful. It is clear that this case was not in the public interest and bears all the worst elements of legal expediency excused by national security interests. Zygier did not present any danger to the public and could have been summarily dismissed, placed under house arrest, and the matter dealt with internally. This was an exceptional case requiring an exceptional solution and I see little in the way of critical thinking on behalf of those who decided to remand him in solitary for an indeterminate time.

The management of Zygier’s cover by his Mossad commanders is no less scandalous. Zygier was placed in an untenable situation that was prone to his being compromised when the decision was made to dispatch him to Australia on several occasions to alter his name and passport. These decisions were all made on the heels of a very public scandal that put Australian Jewry and their travel documents under the spotlight in 2004. The other scandal is the churlish and clearly vindictive behaviour of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), who decided to leak Zygier’s name and details to a journalist presumably with a view to embarrassing its ally into “good behavior.” There are flaps and deconfliction issues all the time between allied intelligence services, and they are worked out behind closed doors. The Mossad has on more than one occasion been the aggrieved party in these cases and solved the issue with the offending service out of the public domain. These scandals both large and small have caused serious damage to the Mossad’s operational capability, the Jewish community in Australia, and more importantly, Zygier’s family.

I also take issue with Troy’s assertion that Zygier lacked the mental toughness for the job. Living and working in hostile locales for long periods under cover is, with all due respect, very different from the globe-trotting escapades of an academic with dual citizenship. Building cover is a long and painstaking process that involves more than remembering not to use a Hebrew word here and there. Hollywood notwithstanding, cover is an operative’s first, last, and only line of defense against a visit to the “fingernail factory” and an unpleasant death. To suggest that Zygier did not possess the mental scaffolding necessary to cope with the stresses of his job is wholly without merit.

…

by Michael Ross (/contributors/michael-ross.html) | February 21, 2013 5:00 PM EST

ASIO ‘burned’ Zygier

25 februari 2013

Analysis: Australian intelligence agency’s conduct played key role in Mossad operative’s decision to commit suicide

Ben Zygier was a victim. From details that have already been published by British and Australian media we learn that he was a victim of his own personality and also of the over-enthusiasm and lack of caution on the part of his handlers in Israel. Most infuriating is the fact that people who worked for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) purposely got the Mossad operative in hot water and indirectly contributed to his decision to commit suicide.

According to the details that have surfaced so far, Zygier and two of his colleagues, who were also born in Australia and held Australian citizenship, were recruited to Mossad at the beginning of the last decade. After a few years of service in Europe, the three were sent back to Australia to obtain new, authentic passports. Australian law allows a person to change his name and have a passport issued under the new name every calendar year. The three took advantage of this law, ASIO claims, to obtain a number of passports under various names that concealed their Jewish identities and presented them as Australians with an Anglo-Saxon background.

Opinion

Many questions remain unanswered / Ron Ben-Yishai

‘Prisoner X’ affair shows Mossad, PM’s Office do not understand how media works in information revolution era
Full story

Zygier, for instance, had four passports issued during the four years he had spent in Australia. The Australians claim Mossad needed these passports to allow fighters and spies to enter enemy states such as Iran and Syria and carry out missions under false identities. Apparently Zygier and his friends were not sent on missions in these “target states” themselves, but their passports were used by other people who operated under assumed names. Zygier was not in Dubai, as the Kuwait newspaper claimed.

These events occurred at the time of the al-Aqsa Intifada, when Mossad increased its activity regarding the monitoring and thwarting of the Iranian nuclear program, and at the same time prevented the smuggling of weapons and terror attacks initiated by Iran – such as the transfer of arms and aid to Syria, Hezbollah and the Palestinian organizations. This activity increased significantly after then-prime minister Sharon appointed Meir Dagan as Mossad chief in 2002 and instructed him to focus on Iran.

During this time a number of embarrassing work accidents occurred that angered some of Israel’s allies. One such incident occurred in 2004 in New Zealand, one of Australia’s closest allies. Another incident was the assassination of Mabhouh, Hamas’ smuggler, during which it was revealed that Mossad operatives made extensive use of authentic passports belonging to Jews, including Australian Jews – at least this is what the Dubai police chief claimed. During this time, the ASIO also claimed that an Israeli diplomat from the embassy in Canberra took advantage of romantic relations to gather information on the activities of the Australian government. The diplomat, Amir Laty, was deported from Australia in 2005. Against this background, Australian government offices were apparently instructed to raise their level of alertness regarding Israeli activity to gather information, and in 2009 the government office in charge of issuing passports warned of the frequent name changes by Zygier and his colleagues.

The warning was relayed to ASIO, which apparently began to follow the three and later summon them for questioning. According to Australian newspaper The Age and another newspaper based in Brisbane, Zygier became the main suspect following things he said during the interrogation or due to details revealed by one of his colleagues. However, this occurred before the diplomatic crisis between Israel and Australia that broke out following the Mabhouh assassination. Seemingly, there was no reason for Australia to act against Zygier because he did not commit any acts of espionage on its soil or collect any information on the country.

The ASIO is tasked only with foiling subversive and terrorist activity against Australia. Apparently, the intelligence agency had no evidence indicating that the passports issued for Zygier were used illegally. It is also possible that the Australian government chose to turn a blind eye for the benefit of the close ties between Mossad and ASIS, Australia’s intelligence agency that operates overseas.

But at least some ASIO officials apparently had their own agenda, and they were not willing to give up on the Israeli prey so easily – perhaps due to frustration, damaged professional pride or simply because they were anti-Israel. Or maybe they realized that Zygier was the weak link in the story and thought that more pressure would break him and cause him to reveal all of his activities on behalf of Mossad. It appears that the two other Australian Jews who were interrogated did not disclose enough information, prompting the ASIO to use the media as a tool to apply more pressure.

The plan was to have the media attack Zygier in order to convince him that his activities had been exposed and there is no point in getting in trouble with the Australian authorities by continuing to conceal them. The ASIO investigation was launched in the summer of 2009. Mabhouh was assassinated in February 2010. At the end of that month The Age published an article on how three young Israelis holding Australian citizenship were given passports with false names which they used to enter Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

The reporters who wrote the article were Jason Koutsoukis and Jonathan Pearlman, who had visited Israel for work and were familiar with the Israeli scene. Koutsoukis did not try to hide the fact that their source was an Australian intelligence officer. To justify the surveillance of the Jews with the dual citizenship, reporters were told that as a student, Zygier was in contact with students from Saudi Arabia and Iran. The reporters were essentially being told that Zygier was spying for Israel on Australian soil and should therefore be followed.

Zygier was in Israel when the Australian intelligence officer leaked the information to Koutsoukis. According to all accounts, he returned to Israel willingly and even reported to his superiors in Mossad that he was interrogated in Australia. It is safe to assume that he also informed Mossad that his colleagues had been questioned as well. But even before the Mabhouh assassination, Koutsoukis called Zygier and asked about the passports and his activity in the service of Mossad. Koutsoukis claims an “anonymous source” in Israel gave him Zygier’s phone number. It is entirely possible that this source was not Israeli.

In any case, in his conversation with the reporter Zygier denied working for Mossad, but Koutsoukis got the impression that Zygier would eventually tell him the entire story. The reporter continued to call, and Zygier may have softened and told him of his work for the Israeli intelligence agency.

At a certain point it was decided that there was enough evidence to justify an arrest and an investigation. The rest is known. Zygier was held in isolation under an assumed name because the names on the various passports, including his real name, were known. Zygier was not a senior Mossad operative. It is not surprising that Zygier, a passionate Zionist, could not bear the guilt and committed suicide. He did not betray the country; he simply could not live up to his own expectations and those of his family and his surroundings. The burden became too heavy for his tormented soul.

…

Published: 02.17.13, 12:10 / Israel Opinion

Find this story at 17 February 2013

Did British intelligence also know about Mossad suspect Ben Zygier?

25 februari 2013

Did Ben Zygier, the Australian-Israeli identified by Australian media last week as the mysterious “Prisoner X” who died in Israeli prison in 2010, also have British citizenship?

Australian reporter Jason Koutsoukis broke the story in February 27, 2010 that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) had been investigating three Australian-Israelis suspected of links to Mossad. He confronted two of the (unnamed) men about the allegations, quoting one in his 2010 report:

“I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to,” he said. ”I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.”

The same man is also believed to hold British citizenship, and is believed to have come to the attention of British intelligence after he had changed his name.

Now see what Koutsoukis told The Guardian last week, after the Australian Broadcasting Company aired an investigation suggesting that Prisoner X who had died in Israel’s Ayalon prison in December 2010 was Ben Zygier :

At the time Zygier said: “I have never been to any of those countries that you say I have been to, I am not involved in any kind of spying. That is ridiculous.”

So we now know the man who told Koutsoukis in 2010 “I have never been to those countries” was Zygier. And that Koutsoukis indicated that he had been told at the time– presumably by Australian intelligence–that Zygier had also previously come on the radar of British intelligence for taking out a passport in a new name.

If Koutsoukis’ original information was correct, that Zygier also had British citizenship and another British alias, it would be interesting to know what the British government and intelligence services might know about the case and how Israel came to suspect that Zygier was compromised.

Update: Why did Israel move to arrest Zygier in February 2010? One possible theory is also suggested by information in Koutsoukis’s February 27, 2010 report.

In the piece, that came out days after Zygier was secretly detained, Koutsoukis writes:

In January the Herald visited the offices of the European company that connects the three men.

The company’s office manager confirmed to the Herald that one of the men being monitored by ASIO – the same man believed to hold a British passport – was employed by the company but was “unavailable”.

The company’s chief executive later emphatically denied that this man was ever employed by his company, and totally rejected that his company was being used to gather intelligence on behalf of Israel.

ASIO said it had no comment to make on the case.

So in January 2010, the head of an alleged Mossad front company allegedly involved in selling communications equipment to the Middle East discovers that a foreign reporter seems to know about it and the name of one of the men associated with it. We now know the name Koutsoukis gave the alleged front company was Zygier’s. (Koutsoukis’ home was broken into a day after he confronted Zygier in early 2010, he told Israel’s Channel 10 last week.)

How did Koutsoukis get the name of the firm? Likely from his ASIO source, who originally called him in October 2009. How did ASIO get it? Hypothetically, it seems possible that Zygier might have given the name of the firm to ASIO under questioning about suspected passport fraud. (Zygier had reportedly been in Australia in the fall of 2009 attending an MBA program at Monash University.)

(It’s not clear to this reporter if that is the kind of disclosure that Mossad would consider a serious breach, or not, given Australia and Israel are allies. Some Israeli sources have insisted that Zygier must have committed some more serious transgression, with intent, involving an entity hostile to Israel, to have been treated so severely. Other Israeli journalists and former officials, however, seem to believe Zygier was compromised by officials with the Australian security service. Australia’s ASIO “burned” Zygier to Koutsoukis, YNet analyst Ron Ben-Yishai wrote Sunday, amid a series of actions by Mossad in Australia that deeply angered Canberra. Former Israeli intelligence official Michael Ross agrees.)

However Koutsoukis learned of it, Mossad would, after Koutsoukis’ visit to the company in January 2010, soon have been aware that there had been a serious compromise of the firm and all associated with it.

…

(For more on the Prisoner X case, see Ron Ben-Yishai, ABC (Part I) and (Part II), The Age, Daoud Kuttab, Yossi Melman, and the Guardian.)

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Laura Rozen

Find this story at 17 February 2013

Interview: Israel’s ‘Prisoner X’ linked to 2010 al-Mabhouh killing

25 februari 2013

This morning I spoke to SBS Radio Australia’s Greg Dyett about the mysterious case of Ben Zygier, an Australian-born naturalized citizen of Israel, who is said to have killed himself in 2010 while being held at a maximum-security prison near Tel Aviv. As intelNews reported on Wednesday, Zygier, who is believed to have been recruited by Israel’s covert-action agency Mossad, had been imprisoned incommunicado for several months and was known only as ‘Prisoner X’, even to his prison guards. Is there any connection between Zygier’s incarceration and the January 2010 assassination of Palestinian arms merchant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai? And what could Zygier have done to prompt Israel to incarcerate him? You can listen to me discuss this mysterious case in an eight-minute interview here, or read the transcript, below.

Q: You say that, after conferring with your contacts in Israel, Europe and the United States, you believe that Ben Zygier had some sort of involvement in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010.

A: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a weapons procurer for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. At this point, there is little doubt that the Mossad was behind this operation. Several members of the team that killed al-Mabhouh were using third-country passports —Irish, British, Australian, and others— to travel to and from Dubai. In the aftermath of the assassination, there were questions about how the Mossad operatives managed to get those passports; and, if you’ll remember, that led to the expulsion of several Israeli diplomats from around the world, including Australia. At least four of those who conducted the assassination were using Australian passports. It appears that, although Zygier himself was not necessarily involved with the assassination on the operational level, he must have possessed significant knowledge about how these passports are actually obtained by the Mossad. And the general sense seems to be that his imprisonment in Israel is connected with his knowledge of how exactly this system works in Israel.

Q: What could he have done that would have prompted Israel to incarcerate him?

A: In order to answer that question one has to be aware of what is perhaps the main practical intelligence concern for Israel. The primary operational terrain for Israeli intelligence activities is of course the Middle East and North Africa. However, the problem Israeli intelligence agencies face —the Mossad in particular, which is Israel’s primary covert-action agency— is that Israeli officers cannot travel to most of the Arab world [or Iran], because Israeli passports are not accepted there. Because of this, Israeli intelligence agencies, including the Mossad, are constantly in a sort of desperate need for high-quality travel documents, which are considered indispensible in their work. Without them, they cannot fulfill their intelligence mission. So, procuring passports, especially from Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, is seen as highly important. Such passports are highly coveted because these countries are seen as politically neutral and their passports do not carry the baggage that you get when you carry, say, an American or an Israeli passport, especially around the Middle East. Therefore, a person like Zygier, if he had knowledge of how the system works and how exactly Israeli intelligence procures these passports, would have been absolutely critical for the operational cohesion of an agency like the Mossad.

Some people tend to think that, because Zygier was incarcerated in Ayalon, the same prison and the same cell that was built specifically for the person who killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, his crime must have been comparable in magnitude to killing an Israeli political leader. Now, I personally don’t think so. I think what he must have done is somehow compromised himself by collaborating with a foreign intelligence agency in the weeks or months following the al-Mabhouh assassination. Now, was that agency the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation? Was it perhaps the authorities in Dubai, who were investigating the al-Mabhouh assassination? Did he perhaps decide for some personal ethical reason to turn into some sort of whistleblower, reminiscent of Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 spilled the beans about Israel’s nuclear weapons program? That is, of course, an unanswered question. But I think the answer has to do with one of those three possibilities.

Q: If we go back to December 2009, an Australian journalist had the first of several telephone calls with Zygier, in which he put to Zygier that he had information that he was one of three Israeli-Australians involved in the production of false identity documents, like passports. What seemed interesting to me was the fact that Zygier was prepared to engage with that journalist to the point of taking several telephone calls from him between December 2009 and January the next year, shortly before the [al-Mabhouh] assassination on January 19 and just a month before Zygier was jailed in February.

A: Yes, this is very interesting, indeed. I think that if Zygier —and it seems almost certain at this point— was recruited by Israeli intelligence, when he received that call his world must have collapsed, because for someone like him, operational discretion would have been of the utmost importance. However, he did engage with the journalist and did continue to be in communication with him. This might perhaps point to Zygier not being a full-time operations officer for the Mossad, but rather a recruit —an asset— somebody recruited for a particular operation with an expiration date, who then falls into a sleeper-agent-type mode until he is recalled. It could also point to the possibility that Zygier was involved with the Mossad but seemed to have some kind of ethical concerns about the use of Australian passports to conduct assassinations around the world.

Incidentally, you might argue that his discovery by the press was not necessarily his own fault, but rather the fault of his Israeli handlers. His name was leaked to the press in Australia, probably by Australian intelligence, which was alerted by the fact that Zygier traveled back to Australia at least four times to legally change his name and to request new Australian passports, which he then must have used to travel around the world. That raised flags for Australian counterintelligence, which must have realized at some point that the Mossad had asked Zygier to anglicize his name so that he could travel to the Middle East without appearing to be in any way connected to Israel [or Judaism]. That is sloppy intelligence work, any way you look at it.

Q: Now, attention has been pointed to the fact that Zygier was being held in a supposedly suicide-proof prison cell. Would Israel have any motivation in wanting to kill this gentleman?

A: I really don’t think so. Let us take the gravest possibility, namely that Zygier had actually compromised himself —had collaborated with an intelligence agency of a country considered by Israel to be an adversary. In that possibility, the Mossad would have nothing to gain from his death. In a case like that, once the compromised officer or agent is incarcerated, he is seen as a card, which you can use to exchange with your agents or officers who might have been captured abroad. So he would be very useful in that respect. In addition, once he was considered essentially a defector-in-place —someone who collaborated consciously with a foreign intelligence agency— the Mossad would have had a lot more to gain by interrogating him for many, many years. Through this process, it could gain valuable information about the mode of operation of that adversary intelligence agency, which would be far more productive than actually killing him. So there is nothing to be gained by simply killing a compromised officer of the kind of Zygier.

[The last question, below, and the corresponding answer, were not aired as part of the SBS segment]

Q: Do you think we will ever find out the truth behind this story?

A: Yes. I am very optimistic that we will eventually find out a lot more information than we currently have available about this case. It is interesting how, in the hours after the initial revelation of Zygier’s identity by ABC Australia, a lot of Israeli news media received telephone calls by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, requesting emergency meetings to discuss the case. In those meetings, the media were urged to exercise restraint and were warned of “very dramatic repercussions” to Israel’s security if more about this case was released. …

February 15, 2013 by intelNews

Find this story at 15 February 2013

Zygier ‘ran Mossad front company selling electronics to Iran’

25 februari 2013

Alleged Australian-Israeli agent, who reportedly killed himself in jail here in 2010, said to have been held in solitary on suspicion of treason

Jason Koutsoukis, a reporter for Australian’s Fairfax newspapers, began an investigation into Ben Zygier — aka “Prisoner X,” who is said to have committed suicide in Ayalon Prison in 2010 — in 2009, when an anonymous source fed him information regarding a Mossad front company that was operating in Europe and selling goods to Iran, the Guardian reported Wednesday evening.

According to the Guardian report, the source gave Koutsoukis the names of three Australians with joint Israeli citizenship who were working for the Mossad. The alleged agents were said to be selling electronics to Iran through a company based in Europe.

In 2009, Koutsoukis said, he contacted Zygier at his home in Jerusalem and confronted him with allegations of the story.

“The company did exist,” Koutsoukis was quoted as saying. ”I also managed to establish that Zygier and another of the individuals had worked for it. I wasn’t able to confirm the third name.”

According to Koutsoukis’s account, Zygier changed his name four times in Australia. Although Australian law permits changing one’s name legally once a year, Australian authorities grew suspicious and were beginning to close in on Zygier, Koutsoukis said.

Koutsoukis reported in 2010 that two Australian intelligence sources told him that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization was investigating three Australians who had emigrated to Israel in the last decade and who had changed their names and requested new passports.

“The three Australians share an involvement with a European communications company that has a subsidiary in the Middle East. A person travelling under one of these names sought Australian consular assistance in Tehran in 2004,” he reported at the time in the Sydney Morning Herald.

After a Mossad hit squad reportedly killed senior Hamas weapons importer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010, Koutsoukis decided to confront Zygier and telephoned him, the Guardian report said.

“When I spoke to him he was incredulous at first and said f*ck off – but what was interesting was that he did not hang up,” Koutsoukis said. “He did soundly genuinely shocked. But he listened to what I had to say.

“I still wonder why he didn’t hang up. He denied everything, however. He said he hadn’t visited the countries it had been claimed he had. I tried calling again but in the end he told me to buzz off.”

Koutsoukis said he also had a series of bizarre exchanges with the CEO of the alleged front company. He reported that the company’s office manager confirmed that one of the three Australians was being monitored by the ASIO.

“He seemed a bit weird. He denied all knowledge of what I was talking about, but then wanted to talk to me again and make an arrangement to meet up,” he later told the Guardian.

Koutsoukis claimed that a senior government official later confirmed the story, even though he had the opportunity to refute it.

Zygier was reportedly imprisoned later in 2010, a fact the Australian spy agency was aware of, according to The Australian. Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Thursday acknowledged to the Australian Senate that Canberra was given assurances by Israel that Zygier’s rights would be respected.

“The Australian government was informed in February 2010 through intelligence channels that the Israeli authorities had detained a dual Australian-Israeli citizen – and they provided the name of the citizen – in relation to serious offences under Israeli national security legislation.” he said.

…

By Greg Tepper and Ilan Ben Zion February 14, 2013, 1:29 am 6

Find this story at 14 February 2013

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