Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Excerpts from ... INTELLIGENCE ISSN 1245-2122 N. 50 New Series, 16 December 1996 Publishing since 1980 Editor Olivier Schmidt (email intelligence-adi@wanadoo.fr; web http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence; tel/fax 33 1 40 51 85 19; post ADI, 16 rue des Ecoles, 75005 Paris, France) Copyright ADI 1996, reproduction in any form forbidden without explicit authorization from the ADI. A one year subscription (23 issues with full index) is US $315. * RUSSIA/CUBA - Fedor Ladygin. Colonel General Fedor Ladygin, head of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the Russian General Staff, the Russian military intelligence service, arrived in Havana on 28 November at the head of an official delegation. They were officially in Cuba to participate in the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, but their main objective was probably to discuss the continued operation of the Russian electronic eavesdropping facility at Lourdes, near Havana. Supposedly Russia pays Cuba about $200 million annually for the use of the facility, but the sum is very likely paid in much-needed oil so Cuban tanks could participate in the parade. * FRONTPAGE GERMANY/COLOMBIA: "FREE" AGENT WERNER MAUSS GETS CAUGHT Officially, a smart customs official, on 17 November at Medellin airport, noticed the nervous behavior of three Europeans and decided to check the Interpol records. A missing phalanx from the thumb of the middle-aged, short and graying man gave away his true identity: he was Werner Mauss, 56, who, for more than thirty years, has been the trusted "free" agent for irregular jobs that the German government prefers to deal with in a deniable manner. In his suitcase the Colombians found six forged passports supplied by the German coordinator for the security services, Bernd Schmidbauer, with whom Mauss had cooperated closely for the last two and a half years. Travelling with Mauss were his wife, Michaella and another woman, Brigitte Schone, who turned out to be the wife of an ex- director of the German company BASF in Colombia who had just been released by the ELN, the Marxist National Liberation Army, for a ransom of $1.2 million. Since 1994, Mauss and Schmidbauer had obtained the release of four kidnapped persons. The free agent and his chief also served as mediators between the Colombian government and the ELN rebels, although no settlement was reached. Werner Mauss is now in Colombian custody, charged with the illegal payment of ransom money, for which he could be facing a ten-year prison sentence. This "official" story is complicated by the local political situation in which a "cocaine-money-soaked government" is fighting internal opposition strongly backed by Washington, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence services (INT, N. 36/66, 39/22, 40/53 & 43/52). "Free" agent Mauss has been navigating in these stormy waters and apparently avoiding hidden obstacles, while making large profits. This probably got on a lot of powerful officials' nerves and provided an undreamed of chance for a young rightwing nationalistic politician with "presidential preventions", Alvaro Uribe Velez, to "score some points" and, according to some specialists, "curry U.S. favor". Since paying a ransom is illegal under Colombian law, and Mauss was "doing his business" in the department of Antioquia, whose governor is Mr. Uribe, the latter supposedly had Mauss arrested. One can now expect charges to be "heaped on" Mauss, probably with Washington's approval, so that Germany will have to pay a large "ransom" for Mauss and for not following American policy in the U.S.' "backyard". Mr. Mauss, the subject of numerous unconfirmed rumors, parliamentary inquiries and a voluminous but unwanted biography, has remained an enigmatic figure for most of his life. He resides in a Disney-like castle in the village of Altstrimmig, in southwest Germany, but started as a simple private investigator checking out fraudulent insurance claims. Soon, both the German police and the German intelligence services took an interest in his talent for discreet operations, and in the 1970s he became deeply involved in antiterrorist operations against the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). Since important German business figures were RAF targets, many major German firms held "privately" financed German intelligence service anti-RAF operations. Mauss was supposedly involved in these operations and some even say that he was the "cut-out" between the services and the industrialists. Mauss' trespassing of the law got him into trouble more than once, but, with the help of his powerful protectors, he always managed to steer clear of any serious consequences. Last year, he was sentenced in absentia to two years imprisonment by a Belgian court for corruption and using a false identity, but he was released on appeal. He planned to report in December to the Lubeck public prosecutors' office which is still investigating the controversial death of German Christian Democrat politician, Uwe Barschel, on 11 October 1987, to explain what he was doing on that day in the hotel next to the one in which Mr. Barschel was found (see "Germany - Barschel's Death as a Mossad Assassination"; INT, N. 6/1). It is believed Mr. Mauss was negotiating with representatives of Hezbollah in a kidnapping case of Hoechst and Siemens employees in Beirut. With the support of the German government, he managed to obtain the release of the kidnapped Germans. Building on this success, Mr. Mauss specialized in kidnap negotiations and made millions working in Colombia, where more than 1,400 persons are kidnapped every year, both by ordinary criminals and leftist guerrilleros. With an annual turnover of more than $500 million in ransom money, kidnapping has become the tenth largest industry in the country. Colombian officials are wary of the role that foreign negotiators like Mr. Mauss play, and anonymous police officials in Colombia have told the press they think he is working with the ELN, advising them on the selection of new targets and increasing ransoms for his own profit. This, of course, reinforces the "unofficial" explanation for Mauss' arrest. Foreign aid workers object to the payment of protection money by German companies to the guerrilleros on advice from Mr. Mauss, a practice believed to be financially supported by the German government. Moreover, as mentioned above, it is illegal under Colombian law to pay a ransom. Now the German government has to decide whether to pull all possible strings (and pay another "ransom") to obtain the release of its loyal agent, or to risk the embarrassment of being confronted with testimony of a quarter century of clandestine service to the Bundeskanzler's office in all corners of the earth. * INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE WORLD: IRELAND: DANGEROUS DISINFORMATION AS MEDIA PARADE O'CALLEGHAN The British newspaper, the "Sunday Times", has been accused by some Irish journalists of attempting to undermine efforts, by SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, to secure a new IRA ceasefire, by publishing "uncheckable stories based on half-truths from unattributal sources". This follows a report, by the paper's Ireland correspondent, Liam Clarke, claiming MI5 encryption experts had decoded data on computer disks seized by the RUC during a raid on an alleged IRA intelligence cell (INT, N. 49/29). The data supposedly uncovered a "network of IRA moles" based in the affluent suburbs and towns around Belfast. The report also claims that the disks contained clues to the identities of IRA members which have led to several arrests. The "Sunday Times" story, based on anonymous MI5 sources, alleges that "republican spies" work as school teachers in areas where senior police officers and members of the judiciary live, and question pupils about their parents' background, or are employed in the public and private service sector, such as insurance and health care, which allows them access to confidential files. As a result, several RUC officers have been advised to sell their homes and move elsewhere. MI5 is also claiming that the IRA bombing of Thiepvel Barracks Army headquarters, on 7 October, was based on intelligence collated by the "moles". One RUC source, quoted by Mr. Clarke, warned that the IRA is about ready to strike again; "we feel they have put so much work into it, it is only a matter of time before an assassination is carried out". COMMENT -- Journalists in Ireland, many of whom have covered the conflict north of the border, point out that Mr. Clarke's stories cannot be disproved because his anonymous police and intelligence sources cannot be questioned. They claim that since the IRA ceasefire, from August 1994 to February 1996, a pattern has emerged which adds weight to allegations that the "Sunday Times" is an uncritical conduit for the "black propaganda" specialists of Thames House, MI5's headquarters in London. The same criticism has been made of the "Mail on Sunday" and its recent libelous accusations against Martha Pope, chief of staff to George Mitchell, the chairman of the Stormont talks (see p. 19 in "People" - below). It has also been disclosed that Sean O'Calleghan, a former IRA activist who became one of MI5's most productive informers, was released from Maghaberry Prison, on 5 December, after serving only eight years of two life sentences for killing two members of the security forces. Originally from County Kerry, in the Irish Republic, O'Calleghan joined the IRA in the early 1970s and was "turned" by Garda Special Branch in 1974 for which he acted as an informer until mid-1980. Sean O'Calleghan's most important "coup" was supplying information which led to the interception of the trawler, "Marita Ann", off the west coast of Ireland in September 1984, which was carrying weapons from the U.S. for the IRA. Two senior IRA members, Sean Crawley and Martin Ferris, were arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. John McIntyre, a crew-member of the U.S. trawler USS Valhalla, which transferred the weapons to the Irish fishing vessel, was later murdered by the Special Air Service (SAS) on orders from the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). The assassins, according to "Intelligence" sources, travelled from Belfast via London and Toronto, and arrived in Boston on 30 November 1984. Within days they had carried out their assignment and disposed of the body. "Intelligence" has learned that McIntyre's execution was ordered to protect O'Calleghan's identity, when the IRA began an internal inquiry into the failed gun-running operation. John McIntyre was an American citizen murdered on U.S. soil by the British SAS, and his death has been part of a cover-up involving both the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office. When O'Calleghan was extradited north and convicted of murder, he immediately became an informer for MI5, churning out a number of bizarre tales which often had little basis in fact, but which were, nonetheless, carried by the "Sunday Times" -- including allegations that 20 victims of IRA hit squads lie buried in secret graves on the Black Mountains, on the outskirts of Belfast. Although the report, complete with a map pinpointing the location of "the IRA's secret graveyard" is almost 18 months old, nothing so far has been found, despite an anonymous MI5 source, quoted by Liam Clarke, supporting O'Calleghan's allegations. Since his release, he has given a number of TV and radio interviews on the "secret agenda" behind the Republican movement's ceasefire strategy (which he claims is to force the SDLP into an electoral pact in order to increase Sinn Fein's political influence), without being asked how he came by such high-quality information after being isolated, for his own safety, from all Republican contacts since 1988. It was announced on 11 December that O'Calleghan had been invited to the House of Commons to meet Tory MPs and rightwing backbenchers on the Northern Ireland Committee who have close links with the Ulster Unionist parties and little interest in a compromise peace settlement. This is the kind of treatment once given to KGB defectors, such as Oleg Gordievsky who became British media's favourite ex-spy. Sean O'Calleghan has already been briefed to perform a similar anti-Irish Republican role and will probably tour the U.S. next year for a series of prime-time interviews. No book plans have been announced yet, but one can expect something along those lines shortly. * PEOPLE: NORTHERN IRELAND - Martha Pope. Chief of staff to George Mitchell, the chairman of the Stormont talks, Martha Pope, 51, recently denied allegations that she had developed a relationship with Gerry Kelly, a senior Sinn Fein member. She denied ever having met Mr. Kelly. The accusations had been made by the sensationalist tabloid, "The Mail on Sunday" on 1 December in a six paragraph article on page 2. Initially, "The Mail" refused to apologize to Mr. Kelly and Ms. Pope. Then, suddenly it did an "about face", and it admitted the allegations were completely false and that it would pay "substantial damages" to Ms. Pope. The article alleged that MI5 had monitored her meeting Mr. Kelly, who is a senior member of the Sinn Fein delegation that met the Government during the IRA ceasefire. He took part in the Provisional IRA's first mainland bombing campaign in 1973 and led the mass breakout by 38 IRA inmates from the Maze Prison in 1983. Ms. Pope, a former Secretary of the U.S. Senate, is also its first woman Sergeant-at-Arms. The Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party supposedly raised the allegations at a 28 November meeting with Prime Minister John Major and Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, who didn't seem to manage to keep the allegations out of the press. * FRANCE: GIA STARTS ANOTHER BLOODY CAMPAIGN FOR XMAS On 5 December, "Intelligence" sent out a warning over the Internet that, following the 3 December bombing in Paris that killed four persons, French intelligence was expecting "more and worst" in Paris from the Algerian fundamentalist Groupe Islamique Arme (GIA) before Christmas. If today that scenario has not been realized, it may well be due to massive anti- terrorist measures taken in Paris and throughout France, including several extensive "dragnet" sweeps of Islamic groups and their sympathizers to disorganize the GIA's infrastructure in France. The warning by "Intelligence" was based on French intelligence information we had received on the day of the bombing indicating that responsibility for the attack had been claimed by the GIA, despite Interior Minister and media silence concerning the origins of the attack. Indeed, according to the information "Intelligence" obtained on 3 December, the GIA claimed responsibility for the attack in an authenticated letter, delivered in Switzerland, which had an uncharacteristic aspect. It included a discernible inked fingerprint which was interpreted by French anti-terrorist specialists to mean that the owner of the fingerprint would soon carry out a suicide attack in France itself. The mere presence of this fingerprint was enough to get French authorities to immediately "kick out the all stops" and set in motion an extensive anti-terrorist operation. COMMENT -- This GIA bombing has also witnessed a major "falling out" between the French Interior Ministry and its DST counter-espionage service, on one hand, and the Defense Ministry and its DGSE foreign intelligence service, on the other hand. The Interior Ministry had largely succeeded in imposing a silence on details of the bombing, as mentioned above, and on the GIA threat in general, when the daily "Le Monde" published, on 12 December on its front page, extracts from a classified 19 November DGSE note to the government warning about likelihood of a GIA attack on French soil in the very near future. The net effect to the news was to put the government and, in particular, the Interior Ministry "up front and center stage" for not doing more before the attack and trying to impose silence afterward. On the Algerian side of the affair, press services have duly noted that Slimane Maherzi, alias "Abu Djamil", 28, recently replaced Antar Zouabri as head of the GIA. However, several specialists consider this information to be a GIA "smokescreen" to "take the heat off" Zouabri who remains the real head of the GIA. Maherzi was supposedly appointed to purge the GIA of its "opportunists and other wayward people". But the GIA fundamentalists don't seem to be the only Algerian villains that French intelligence has to deal with. Supposedly reported by a local press release on the same day as the Paris bombing, a French military intelligence officer had his attache case stolen in Marseille in a cafe by an Algerian-looking person, while the officer's bodyguard-escort was buying cigarettes. The attache case apparently contained an extremely highly classified report on both sides of the Algerian conflict, evaluating their respective strengths and strategies, eventual outcomes of the conflict, and recommended French policy. Although the theft has been presented as petty crime, certain French intelligence officials believe a known official Algerian intelligence service is responsible for the theft and are extremely concerned about the consequences for France and French policy. * WESTERN EUROPE: STRASBOURG STRIKES BACK AT LONDON In our previous issue, we mentioned British intelligence services' problems with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and London's attempts to have the Court "fixed" (INT, N. 49/36). Now, the British government has run into yet more trouble with the ECHR, which remains the principal bane of the British security state. A defeat for the government at the end of November has forced the Home Office to release a number of individuals detained without trial for several years on the grounds that they were a threat to "national security". These include the Sikh independence activist, Karamjit Singh Chahal, and the Kurdish activist, Sezai Ucar. After the Gibraltar decision, in which the British government was found to have violated the human rights of three IRA members shot by the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1987, the government considered withdrawing the right of individuals to petition the Court individually. Having rejected this course of action -- which would itself have been a gross violation of human rights -- the government simply has to put up with the ECHR's rulings while ignoring them as much as possible. The British are, however, continuing to apply strong diplomatic pressure to change the court's membership and procedures to ensure that future rulings are more to their liking. Among a number of contentious British issues which may yet come before the ECHR is a law to amend the 1989 Security Service Act -- the governing instrument for MI5 -- to allow the agency to operate alongside the police in the fight against "serious crime". The number of MI5 personnel assigned to this area has recently been doubled to about 20. Roughly half are working with the National Criminal Intelligence Service, and the other half are taking up MI5's recently granted authorization to conduct offensive operations against organised crime. MI6 foreign intelligence is also involved in a number of "criminal" investigations. Of particular concern to civil rights specialists, and possible candidates for ECHR cases, are the inadequate safeguards governing the use by both MI5 and the police of electronic surveillance equipment. MI5 has a more or less a free hand when conducting "national security" investigations, but its desire to protect its budget and personnel by moving into criminal investigation means that it will have to get used to operating within tighter legal parameters than those to which it has become accustomed, even though "major crime" has more or less received a "national security" label. Withdrawing all legal protection from criminals labeled "national security risks" will surely end up in Strasbourg. Meanwhile, the British government is introducing another law to allow, among other things, prosecution use of police evidence gathered through bugging devices. The British Law Society, the professional body for solicitors, wondered whether confidential discussions between clients and their lawyers would be excluded. Home Office minister, Baroness Blatch, has pointedly refused to guarantee any such exemption. If such legislation is passed into law, it will definitely end up before the ECHR. * ISRAEL/GREAT BRITAIN: SHOWCASE LONDON TRIAL HAVING PROBLEMS At the time of writing, amid a virtual media black-out, the two-month-old prosecution of three Palestinians for the 1994 bombing of the Israeli embassy in London continues at the Old Bailey. For Mossad and MI5, both of which are deeply involved in the case, not all has been going according to plan. A fourth defendant, Nadia Zekra, who was charged with actually planting the 15 kg. car-bomb in Kensington Palace Gardens, has already been acquitted on the direction of the judge: identification evidence provided by two eye-witnesses, an Israeli security officer and a constable from the police Diplomatic Protection Group, was condemned by Justice Garland as "fraught with (...) serious inconsistencies". The embassy attack took place just after midday on 26 July 1994. It was followed 12 hours later by an attack on the offices of a Jewish charity in Finchley, north London. No deaths or serious injuries resulted in either case. In the following days, Prime Minister John Major accused Hezbollah, backed by the Iranians, of responsibility, supposedly as part of a strategy to undermine the then buoyant Middle East peace process. His contention was backed by media briefings from both Israeli and British intelligence, and a link was made to the bombing eight days previously of the Jewish center in Buenos Aires, in which nearly 100 people lost their lives. However, the sole evidence of an Iranian-Hezbollah connection in either case came from an Iranian defector and has not stood up in the Argentinian case where local policemen have been implicated. Nonetheless, several Israeli sources, including the London defence attache, Brigadier-General Ariel Nevo, claimed that the British had "blundered" by failing to take adequate account of three separate warnings of imminent Iranian-sponsored attacks which had been given to them in the period between the Buenos Aires and London attacks. COMMENT -- For all the public blaming of Iran and its surrogates, the four Old Bailey defendants, allegedly members of the "Palestine Resistance Jaffa Group" arrested in February 1995, there has never been the slightest suggestion that the group or the individuals on trial have ever had any link with Teheran or any Islamic-inspired organisations such as Hamas or Hezbollah. More significantly, it has emerged at the current trial that they had been under MI5 surveillance for six months prior to their arrest-- in other words, from August 1994, just a few weeks after the bombing. In reality, they had probably been under surveillance for longer, but MI5 will only admit in court to six months surveillance because of legal issues related to ministerial warrants for electronic surveillance. At the very least, the group was clearly a prime suspect in the eyes of both Israeli and British intelligence from the very outset. The Israeli purpose in publicizing the fact that the British were given warnings, which were ignored or irrelevant, is anything but clear. And the comment of the senior Special Branch officer on the case, Detective Superintendent Bill Emerton, that there was "an intelligence vacuum" surrounding the embassy attack, makes even less sense. On top of that, on 12 August 1994, a fortnight after the London attacks, the CIA "confirmed" that the London and Buenos Aires attacks were carried out "with the full knowledge of the government in Teheran". More information will no doubt emerge at the end of the trial. All that is clear at the moment is that the whole business is anything but straightforward. What is clear is that relations between Israeli and British intelligence have undergone a significant improvement in recent years. Relations had almost completely collapsed in the late 1980s following MI5 discovery of a series of Mossad operations run in Britain. A number of joint operations targeting Hamas and Hezbollah have been carried out in the last few years, including a major MI5 investigation of Hamas fundraising in Britain. This culminated in an agreement signed at the end of September between Britain and Israel formalizing existing intelligence collaboration and promoting further improvement. * Also in this issue... TABLE OF CONTENTS, N. 50, 16 December 1996 FRONTPAGE: GERMANY/COLOMBIA - "FREE" AGENT WERNER MAUSS GETS CAUGHT p.1 TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES: BUCK ROGERS AIRBORNE "RAY GUN" FIRING "OPTICAL BULLETS" p.2 DEALING WITH INTERNET VIRUS HOAXES & SECURITY BLUEPRINT p.3 TUSA PARAFOIL SURVEILLANCE DRONE p.4 WEB - Site-Blocking Technology Makes Its Debut. p.5 SATELLITES - New Technology Wins SBIRS Bid. p.6 TERRORISM - New Encyclopedia. p.7 BOMBS - DOE Reveals BEEF Tech as Russia Protests. p.8 INFORMATION - Web Resources & Offshore Financing. p.9 INFOWAR - Very Serious British ... Humor. p.10 IMAGERY - Photo Recon Against ... Refugees. p.11 MISSILES - One China Didn't Publicize. p.12 PEOPLE: U.S.A. - HARRY B. "SKIP" BRANDON p.13 GREAT BRITAIN - JOHN VASSALL p.14 BULGARIA - ZHIVKO ZHELEV p.15 RUSSIA/BULGARIA - YURII NIKOLAYEVITCH YERMOLAYEV p.16 U.S.A. - Richard Nuccio. p.17 GIBRALTAR - Richard Luce. p.18 NORTHERN IRELAND - Martha Pope. p.19 RUSSIA - Gennadi Osipovich. p.20 RUSSIA/CUBA - Fedor Ladygin. p.21 BRAZIL/GERMANY - Karl Heinz Schaab. p.22 SUDAN/U.S.A. - John Early. p.23 ISRAEL/U.S.A. - Chaim Herzog. p.24 AGENDA: COMING EVENTS THROUGH 15 FEBRUARY 1997 p.25 INTELLIGENCE AROUND THE WORLD: U.S.A. - NEW YORK COPS EXPORT & L.A. COPS IN COURT p.26 CLIPPER RESURFACES AS GOVERNMENT BACK PADDLES p.27 BOMBS AND BURSTS AT NUCLEAR PLANTS p.28 CIA and FBI Files? Not in this Life. p.29 Privatizing Military Laboratories. p.30 NIMA First Contracts "Leak" Information. p.31 CANADA - "Showing Up the Yanks" on Secrecy. p.32 GREAT BRITAIN - OPPOSITION TO MASONIC ROLL-CALL p.33 THE PRICE OF POWER p.34 CHEMICAL CAPABILITY COVER-UP p.35 IRELAND - DANGEROUS DISINFORMATION AS MEDIA PARADE O'CALLEGHAN p.36 FRANCE - GIA STARTS ANOTHER BLOODY CAMPAIGN FOR XMAS p.37 "LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT" AT THE SGDN p.38 Agreeing to Disagree on Helios-2. p.39 Foccart Defends the "Backyard" against the U.S. p.40 Transparency for Intelligence Services. p.41 Channel Tunnel "Safe" But Burning. p.42 BELGIUM - New Informants for Old Problems. p.43 GERMANY - Irish Prepare to Extradite J. Corry. p.44 WESTERN EUROPE - STRASBOURG STRIKES BACK AT LONDON p.45 ISRAEL/GREAT BRITAIN - SHOWCASE LONDON TRIAL HAVING PROBLEMS p.46 BANGLADESH - ELECTORAL VICTORY LEADS TO ... TORTURE p.47 HONG KONG - BRITAIN "WARNS" CHINA p.48