Stasi-Minint Connection: "Llanto por un Espía"..o плакать за шпиона?

Stasi-Minint Connection

Markus Wolf/
www.economist.com

Jorge L.García Vázquez

Berlín

(Artículo publicado por el autor en diciembre de 2006 en la Revista Misceláneas de Cuba/Suecia)

 Berlín. Hace algunos días fue sepultado en Berlín el General Markus Wolf, jefe del espionaje de Alemania Oriental hasta el año 1986.

 Su entierro fue un desfile de antiguos "compañeros de la Stasi, KGB y un escurridizo agente de la Dirección de Inteligencia cubana, que intentaba pasar diplomáticamente  de incógnito"

 Algunos fueron a despedirse y otros a ver si realmente estaba muerto pues se llevó a la tumba muchos secretos. Hubo lágrimas y frases emocionantes, rosas blancas y claveles pues un General y" Maestro de espías" no se muere todos los días. La  historia de Markus Wolf es bastante conocida.

Huyó en 1990 a Austria, donde le fue negado asilo político. Salió a su otra patria: Rusia y regresó a Alemania. Fue condenado en dos ocasiones, escribió varios libros, entre ellos, uno sobre los secretos de la sabrosa cocina rusa y finalmente  terminó sus días dando conferencias, basadas en lo que aprendió y enseño durante casi cuatro décadas:  la desinformación.

La labor de sus agentes creó el mito del "hombre sin rostro"", el "súper -jefe de agentes secretos".

Dos de sus grandes fracasos políticos: haber provocado la renuncia del canciller alemán Willy Brandt cuando  su secretario personal  fue detenido y declaró ser un espía de la Stasi y el otro haber intentado, en noviembre del 89, persuadir al pueblo alemán germano-oriental para que continuara viviendo en la RDA,  pero bajo un "socialismo reformado".

Fue un fiel asesor de los servicios secretos cubanos y nicaragüenses, los cuales fueron entrenados, por la Stasi y pudo ser finalmente identificado por el agente Werner Stiller en 1976.

Pero el participante que más llamó la atención fue el Embajador de Rusia en Alemania, Sr. Vladimir Kotenev, el cual tuvo palabras de elogio que no corresponden a las funciones diplomáticas. Pero bueno el presidente ruso también se llama Vladimir y no es nada diplomático y, ahí está " fuerte, con la mano de hierro "como le corresponde a un (ex oficial de la KGB) un Vladimir ruso, obstruyendo el difícil camino de la democracia.

El Señor Kotenev expresó que "Alemania pierde en Markus Wolf a uno de sus más significantes hijos y Rusia a uno de sus mejores amigos.......que continuará viviendo en nuestros corazones".

Concluyó la ceremonia con la melodía "La canción del pequeño trompetista" (entonada ya en Cuba por miembros de una delegación de la Stasi en abril de 1970,durante una reunión donde   participaron el entonces Ministro del Interior Sergio del Valle,  Manuel Piñeiro y  Méndez Cominche, jefe del espionaje en aquella época. 

Terminó el Sr. Embajador con un proverbio ruso: " los que mueren mientras duermen tienen un corazón limpio". El General Wolf falleció durante  la noche del 9 de Noviembre de 2006, aniversario del derrumbe del Muro de Berlín. Pero dejemos descansar al General.La Historia tendrá la última palabra.

Mirando ahora a Rusia: Creo que no hacen falta más palabras. El mensaje del embajador ruso es claro.  El discurso fue aprobado en el Kremlin. Frases como estas, en los momentos por los que está pasando este ex-imperio comunista, que suspira entre el creciente nacionalismo, corrupción y el autoritarismo  es un aviso para Europa y el mundo.

Por el momento, recomiendo a los opositores cubanos no pasar por el territorio ruso, especialmente después del nuevo acercamiento político-militar entre Moscú y La Habana.

 Mientras tanto las canciones soviéticas se vuelven a escuchar en el Buró Político y en el Comité Central(a Diaz Canel no le agradan estos ritmos. Me han dicho que le gusta el Jazz): 

"Por los Valles y Montañas marchó la División" , con ritmo Conga-Profionov,"La Canción de los Estudiantes",Rumba-Chá-Chá-Chá o aquella melodía soviética con sabor cubano "Si Mañana comienza la Guerra", un Chá-Swing, experimento musical, instrumental grabado por músicos soviéticos y cubanos, allá por los años sesenta del siglo pasado, en plena "Guerra Fría".Esta debe ser la canción favorita de Miguel Barnet y Abel Prieto, pero con el acompañamiento vocal de Raúl Castro, Maduro, Vladimir Putin y Barack Obama. Le gustan estas melodias a Hillary Clinton?O  habrá un nuevo Musical?

Spy Working In/With Canada Embassy Arrested Over Three London Girls Who Went To Syria

torontosun

ANKARA — An alleged spy detained in Turkey for helping three British girls cross into Syria is a Syrian national working for a country in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the Turkish foreign minister said on Friday.

He has been named by one Turkish newspaper as Mohammad Al Rashid.

Several Turkish media, citing government sources, have said the detained spy was on contract for Canada but working for the Israeli spy agency, the Mossad.

Tahera Mufti, spokeswoman for CSIS, did not respond to a written request for comment and the federal government refused to comment, claiming it was a matter "of national security."

Islamic State seized swathes of land last June, cementing their rule with a militant interpretation of Islamic law, and is drawing sympathizers from many countries to support their fight.

The U.S.-led coalition, that includes Canada, is using mostly air power in an attempt to push the Sunni militant group back.

"The person who helped the three British girls into Syria is a Syrian national working for another country within the coalition. The situation is so complicated," foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

The three girls, two aged 15 and one 16, flew to Istanbul from London on Feb. 17 and then onwards to Syria, where more than 200,000 have been killed in a civil war. Their families have appealed to them to return.

- with QMI Agency files
----------------
Mary Greeley

 

Rolando Sarraff, el espía canjeado a EEUU reaparece tras un mes de silencio

martinoticias

Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, el espía que quedó en libertad tras el acuerdo entre Cuba y Estados Unidos, confirmó que está en Estados Unidos y se encuentra bien, informó el martes su hermana Vilma Sarraff a The Associated Press.

Vilma Sarraff, que vive en España, dijo que su hermano contactó por primera vez con la familia tras un mes de silencio. El espía confirmó que se "encuentra libre y bien", pero no quiso desvelar detalles de la conversación telefónica ni la ciudad norteamericana en la que se encuentra.

La familia había dicho desconocer el paradero de Sarraff. La hermana hizo público este contacto horas después de que Estados Unidos confirmara la liberación de los 53 prisioneros políticos que Cuba se comprometió a excarcelar como parte del acuerdo histórico entre las autoridades cubanas y el gobierno norteamericano.

Rolando Sarraff, de 51 años, fue identificado por un ex miembro del gobierno estadounidense como el espía liberado al que el presidente estadounidense, Barack Obama, elogió como uno de los activos más valiosos de Washington. La fuente indicó que Sarraf fue la persona repatriada a Estados Unidos junto a Alan Gross el pasado 17 de diciembre.

Sarraff era un criptógrafo que trabajaba para la inteligencia cubana como "agente de comunicaciones".

Fue detenido y condenado a 25 años de cárcel en 1995. Antes de que cayera en manos de las autoridades cubanas, Sarraff ayudó a desmantelar la llamada "Red Avispa", una red de espionaje cubano en Florida que incluía agentes del grupo conocido como Los Cinco. Tres de ellos fueron puestos en libertad y enviados de vuelta a Cuba a cambio de Sarraff, Gross y los 53 disidentes.

Spy Wars: A Wilderness of Mirrors in U.S.-Cuba Swap

cubaconfidential

Rolando Sarraff Trujillo. Villa Marista 2014 [51 años]/
rolandosarraff.wordpress.com

By Glenn Garvin, Juan O. Tamayo and Patricia Mazzei

More than two weeks have passed since the White House announced that it had traded three imprisoned Cuban intelligence officers — including one convicted of conspiracy to murder — for a super spy held in a Havana prison whom President Barack Obama labeled “one of the most important intelligence agents that the United States has ever had in Cuba.”

But since the president’s announcement, there’s been only silence. Nothing more has been said of the spy or his accomplishments. Of the people released from prison as part of the deal between Washington and Havana, the three Cuban spies and U.S. Agency for International Development contractor Alan Gross have all appeared on television to talk exultantly about their release.

Yet Washington’s master spy has remained anonymous and incommunicado. The only man who seems to fit the handful of clues the White House provided about the spy’s identity — former Cuban Interior Ministry Lt. Rolando Sarraff, jailed since his arrest in 1995 — has disappeared from the Havana prison where he was being held, and his family members say they’ve neither heard from him nor been told his whereabouts.

The Obama administration won’t confirm Sarraff’s name, much less why he could be out of reach.

But a man who claims he is a former member of Sarraff’s spy ring speculates there’s a good reason for Sarraff’s disappearance: that Sarraff was a fake, feeding the CIA false or trivial information as part of a Cuban scheme to disrupt U.S. intelligence.

Jose Cohen 2000 (Al Diaz, Miami Herald)

“They were acting on behalf of Fidel Castro,” insists Bill Gaede, an Argentine engineer who says he carried information to the CIA from Sarraff and other Cuban intelligence officers. “They weren’t genuine. They were full of caca.”

What’s more, Gaede contends, the CIA and FBI suspected that Sarraff was a fake — a “dangle,” in intelligence parlance — right from the start, and never believed anything the ring of putative spies passed along. U.S. officials, he says, are calling him a valuable agent now only to make the Gross-for-Cuban-spies swap more palatable to U.S. conservatives. “It’s just public relations,” sniffs Gaede.

AT CUBA’S SERVICE

But Gaede’s claim is hotly disputed by another member of the spy ring — Jose Cohen, also a former lieutenant in the Cuban Interior Ministry, who defected from Cuba in 1994. “Bill Gaede is not a [credible] source. He was an enemy of the United States. He’s at Cuba’s service,” says Cohen, now living in southwest Miami-Dade, where he’s a highly successful Amway salesman.

“I think what Bill is looking for is publicity. ... He’s mocking the press, he’s mocking the government.”

Article continues here: Spy Wars >>

US Spy Traded in Obama Cuba Deal Still Missing

Breitbart

by Frances Martel

Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a United States spy sentenced to 25 years in prison in Cuba for espionage, would call his parents every day from deep within the Cuban penal system. Then, one day in mid-December, the calls stopped, and President Barack Obama announced that Sarraff was safely on American soil. Since his alleged release, however, his family and friends have not heard from him and are demanding to know whether he is, indeed, free.

The New York Times reports that Sarraff was one of two US agents freed in exchange for three Cuban spies known as part of the “Cuban five,” a spy network responsible for the deaths of at least four US citizens. Sarraff’s name was never publicly given by the government, though the Times has independently confirmed that he was the unnamed agent released alongside USAID worker Alan Gross. President Obama described Sarraff as “one of the most important intelligence agents the United States has ever had in Cuba,” though the specifics of his work are not known.

The Times notes that, unlike Gross, Sarraff “has yet to surface in public or to contact his parents, whom he had been calling daily from prison.” His sister, Vilma, confirmed to the paper that no one in his immediately family had heard from him since the day he is said to ahve been released. American officials told the Times, however, that “he’s not being held captive,” and the government has no indication of why he has apparently chosen not to contact his family.

The Times report follows up on a report from Reuters in the last week of December noting that the family had been attempting to find information about Sarraff and discovered no meaningful leads. Then, his parents, who live in Cuba, noted that he had visited him two days before the announcement of the deal between Washington and Havana and was simply told he was “no longer available.” His parents told Reuters they believed Sarraff was innocent, but now that he has gone missing they hope he can now “have a plan for his future.”

The Reuters report notes also that the Obama administration claimed that Havana had agreed to release 53 prisoners of conscience, but the names of these individuals were never given, and there is no indication of such a mass liberation in Cuba. On the contrary, an estimated dozen Cuban dissidents were arrested this week for expressing interest in an open mic performance project that the government canceled. Its organizer, artist Tania Bruguera, disappeared on the day the rally was to take place and surfaced today, having been detained due to her intent to perform.

Who is The American Spy Traded in the U.S.-Cuba Diplomatic Breakthrough?

newsweek

www.infobae.com

The unidentified United States spy being swapped as part of a diplomatic breakthrough between the U.S. and Cuba is almost certainly a former cryptographer in Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence who worked secretly for the CIA until he was arrested on espionage charges in the mid-1990s, according to a former U.S. intelligence officer and other sources.

Rolando “Roly” Sarraff Trujillo was “an expert on cryptography for the Cuban Ministry of Interior who was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to 25 years in jail,” said Chris Simmons, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist on Cuba.

“I know of all the Cubans on the list of people in jail and he is the only one who fits the description” of the unnamed asset in question, Simmons added.  “I am 99.9 percent sure that Roly is the guy."

The agent, U.S. officials said, was exchanged for the remaining three members of the so-called “Cuban Five,” a group of operatives arrested in Florida on espionage charges in 1998. Another element of the agreement, which ended the decades-long feud between the U.S. and Cuba, was Havana’s decision to free Alan Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development contractor imprisoned on the island since 2009 on charges of trying to subvert the state.

In a speech on Wednesday, Cuban President Raul Castro said that a spy of “Cuban origin” was being released. But neither Cuba nor the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) would identify the operative in question or comment on Sarraff Trujillo.   

DNI spokesman Brian P. Hale said in a prepared statement that the asset being released spent 20 years in a Cuban prison for his work for the U.S. Many of the details of his cooperation are classified, but Hale said he was “instrumental in the identification and disruption of several Cuban intelligence operatives in the United States and ultimately led to a series of successful federal espionage prosecutions.”

Indeed, according to Hale, the spy “provided the information that led to the identification and conviction of Defense Intelligence Agency senior analyst Ana Belen Montes; former Department of State official Walter Kendall Myers and his spouse Gwendolyn Myers; and members of the Red Avispa network, or ‘Wasp Network,’ in Florida, which included members of the so-called Cuban Five.”

On Wednesday, the Miami Herald’s Spanish-language edition also reported that its sources believe that Sarraff Trujillo was the spy. “Just as a matter of elimination,” it’s Sarraff Trujillo, Simmons said.

A lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve who also worked in counterterrorism operations in the Balkans and Iraq, Simmons runs a website called Cuba Confidential. On May 27, 2012, he wrote on his site that in 1994 Sarraff Trujillo was persuaded by a DGI colleague, José Cohen Valdés, to steal information that he could use to facilitate his defection to the U.S. Sarraff Trujillo, according to Simmons, gave him the info to pass along to Langley. “Cohen planned to bring Sarraf Trujillo and another individual with him in a mass defection,” Simmons wrote.

Apparently, the plan didn’t work out. As Simmons explains on his blog:

“Sarraff Trujillo started passing files [and] Cohen began indiscreetly spending the considerable cash the CIA paid for Sarraff Trujillo’s treasure trove of intelligence. In short order, the two men came under surveillance. Cohen reportedly noted the surveillance and had his brother-in-law signal the CIA station in Havana for an emergency extraction. Cuban counterintelligence videotaped his brother-in-law’s assistance, for which he was subsequently jailed. Cohen and the second individual successfully escaped, despite the extensive counterintelligence coverage. Sarraff Trujillo was arrested and sent to prison.”

Simmons told Newsweek that the Cuban spy did such damage to Havana’s intelligence apparatus that “the only thing that saved him from execution was the fact that both his parents were retired senior intelligence officers.”

Paul McKenna, the court-appointed lawyer for Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban Five who is being released in the deal, said he had “no idea” who the U.S. spy was.

“If I’d known they had a person like that,” McKenna told Newsweek in a telephone interview from his office in Coral Gables, Fla, “we would have pressed for an exchange a long time ago.”

Before Gross was arrested, McKenna said he constantly asked Cuban officials on trips to the island whether they had someone who they could swap for Hernandez and they said no. “They would just shrug it off,” he said. When he pressed for a possibility of a trade of Gross for his client, he said, one Cuban official told him, “Leave the political to us.”

Following the ages-old rules of espionage, it’s entirely possible that Sarraff Trujillo was under orders never to reveal his connection to U.S. intelligence. McKenna said when he visited his his client in jail, he “gave us only name, rank and serial number” for a number of years before his superiors in Cuba cleared him to admit he was a spy.

The so-called “Cuban Five” were indicted on 25 different counts related to espionage. After a plane piloted by anti-Castro exiles was shot down as it flew into Cuban airspace, the government added an additional murder indictment to charges against Hernández.

“I’m very happy for my client,” McKenna said. “He’s going home to his wife after 14 years.”

As for Simmons, he said that any deal that got Sarraff Trujillo out of prison “was worth it.”

Cuba asumira la formacion del personal diplomatico de El Salvador

el ministro de relaciones exteriores del izquierdista presidente de el salvador sanchez ceren, firmo con la embajadora cubana en el pais centroamericano, un acuerdo para la formacion del personal diplomatico salvadoreno en la akademia de espias que constituye el instituto superior de relaciones internacionales raul roa garcia. 

ampliar en nodal >>

Report: Venezuela-Cuba Facilitate Infiltration of Iranian Agents into North America

Capitol Hill Cubans

A new report by the Washington D.C.-based, Center for a Secure Free Society, and Canada's Institute for Social and Economic Analysis, raises concerns about the use of Venezuela as a "bridge" to smuggle Iranian agents into North America.

The report entitled, "Canada on Guard: Assessing the Immigration Security Threat of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba," highlights the following key points:

- Iran is collaborating with Venezuela and Cuba to exploit the seams in the Canadian immigration system.

- From 2009 to 2011, Latin America was the largest prior embarkation region for improperly documented Iranians migrating to Canada to seek refugee status.

- Venezuelan authorities provided at least 173 passports, visas and other documentation to Islamist extremists seeking to slip unnoticed into North America.

- Soft power solidarity networks in Canada serve as a “Trojan Horse” for Iran and ALBA to establish cover for spies, saboteurs and other nefarious actors.

As regards the passports, visas and other documentation to Islamist extremists, it's important to remember that Venezuela's immigration system has been under Cuban control since 2004.

At that time, Cuba's former intelligence chief, General Ramiro Valdes, and the Vice-Chancellor of its University of Information Science (UCI), Jose Lavandero Garcia, oversaw and implemented the complete overhaul of Venezuela's passport and naturalization agency (including all of its data, software and systems), formerly known as ONIDEX.

Read the full report here >>

Edward Snowden Admits He Was Trying to Reach Cuba

capitolhillcubans

From Secretary of State John Kerry's interview this morning with Savannah Guthrie of NBC's Today Show:

QUESTION: I want to talk to you about the drawdown in Afghanistan that the President announced yesterday, but let’s start with these remarks from Mr. Snowden, and actually, we have a new piece of that interview to play for you this morning. And in it, he basically lays the blame that he is in Russia right now squarely on the United States. Take a look.

QUESTION: What are you doing in Russia?

MR. SNOWDEN: All right. So this is a really fair concern. I personally am surprised that I ended up here. The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia. I had a flight booked to Cuba, onwards to Latin America, and I was stopped because the United States Government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport. So when people ask, why are you in Russia, I say, please, ask the State Department.

QUESTION: Well, Mr. Secretary, what about it? Does he have a point? He’s basically saying but for the U.S. State Department revoking his passport, he wouldn’t be in Russia at all.

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, for a supposedly smart guy, that’s a pretty dumb answer, frankly. Look, I’m not going to get into the – who he was, what he was. Let me just say this: If Mr. Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we’ll have him on a flight today. We’d be delighted for him to come back. And he should come back, and that’s what a patriot would do. A patriot would not run away and look for refuge in Russia or Cuba or some other country. A patriot would stand up in the United States and make his case to the American people. But he’s refused to do that to this date, at least.

The fact is that he can come home, but he’s a fugitive from justice, which is why he’s not being permitted to fly around the world. It’s that simple and he knows it.

QUESTION: Have you softened your stance at all with regard to his alleged conduct here? I noticed earlier this year you said that there were disclosures about the NSA made because of Snowden that you yourself were not aware of that constituted NSA overreach. Does that change the calculus at all for you?

SECRETARY KERRY: That’s entirely up to the justice system. Let him come back and make his case. The fact is that he should – if he cares so much about America and he believes in America, he should trust in the American system of justice. But to be hiding in Russia, an authoritarian country, and to have just admitted that he was really trying to get to Cuba, I mean, what does that tell you, really? I think he’s confused. I think it’s very sad.

But this is a man who has done great damage to his country, violated his oath which he took when he became an employee, and yes, in fact, stole an enormous amount of information and released it to the public, to the detriment of his country.

US Spies Talk About Killing Snowden - Business Insider

Business Insider

Paul Szoldra and Michael Kelley

REUTERS

A screenshot of Rossia 24 TV channel shows Edward Snowden on a boat trip in Moscow in September.

Edward Snowden has picked up plenty of friends in journalists, privacy advocates, and citizens since he fled his NSA contracting job with upwards of a million top-secret files detailing the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence community and military.

But the 30-year-old's betrayal of trust in the eyes of U.S. spies has led many to imply that he should be assasinated.

And some spooks aren't hiding their anger anymore, as seen by several candid quotes from a new report by Benny Johnson of Buzzfeed:

"In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself," a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. "A lot of people share this sentiment."

A former U.S. Special Forces officer told Johnson that he "would love to put a bullet in his head," adding the assertion that Snowden "is single handedly the greatest traitor in American history."

Buzzfeed notes that nobody expects the U.S. government to act on such fantasies.

Nevertheless, the hypothetical assassination of the NSA-trained hacker is quite detailed:

“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” [an Army intelligence officer] said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”

The story illustrates the massive divide between the average civilian — the latest polling shows a majority regard Snowden as a whistleblower — and the average spy, who has access to much more information and can, arguably, see firsthand the damaging effects of the leaks that have come out.

Disclosures published from Snowden's cache have set off a global privacy conversation and have spurred reform in the U.S. They have also exposed NSA tools and detailed American intelligence operations against its rivals and adversaries.

The slow drip is a nightmare for the U.S. intelligence community and its allies. Meanwhile, there are still open questions regarding when (if ever) the former CIA technician gave up access to the NSA documents and how he ended up in the hands of Russia.

An NSA official even broached the subject of clemency for Snowden if he promised to return home without leaking "the keys to the kingdom," which include 31,000 files detailing U.S. intel on other country's military capabilities as well as information about U.S. capabilities and U.S. gaps.

Clemency is now out of the question, especially given the epic size and scope of the theft as well the Kremlin's unstated interest in holding on to him. Consequently, frustrated American spies imagine what they seen as the simplest way to deal with the Snowden problem.

"His name is cursed every day over here," a U.S. intelligence contractor told BuzzFeed from overseas. "Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him." 

SEE ALSO:  Edward Snowden's Relationship With WikiLeaks Should Concern Everyone

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-spies-talk-about-killing-snowden-2014-1#ixzz2qhEyZbOe

Spies worry over “doomsday” cache stashed by ex-NSA contractor Snowden

Follow The Money

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/25/us-usa-security-doomsday-idUSBRE9AO0Y120131125?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563

British and U.S. intelligence officials say they are worried about a “doomsday” cache of highly classified, heavily encrypted material they believe former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has stored on a data cloud.

The cache contains documents generated by the NSA and other agencies and includes names of U.S. and allied intelligence personnel, seven current and former U.S. officials and other sources briefed on the matter said.

The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said. The identities of persons who might have the passwords are unknown.

Spokespeople for both NSA and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

One source described the cache of still unpublished material as Snowden’s “insurance policy” against arrest or physical harm.

U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories.

“The worst is yet to come,” said one former U.S. official who follows the investigation closely.

Snowden, who is believed to have downloaded between 50,000 and 200,000 classified NSA and British government documents, is living in Russia under temporary asylum, where he fled after traveling to Hong Kong. He has been charged in the United States under the Espionage Act.

Cryptome, a website which started publishing leaked secret documents years before the group WikiLeaks or Snowden surfaced, estimated that the total number of Snowden documents made public so far is over 500.

Given Snowden’s presence in Moscow, and the low likelihood that he will return to the United States anytime soon, U.S. and British authorities say they are focused more on dealing with the consequences of the material he has released than trying to apprehend him.

Penny Lane: CIA's secret facility made for double agents

This Sept. 2, 2010 satellite image provided by TerraServer.com and DigitalGlobe shows a portion of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the secret facility known as Penny Lane, upper middle in white.

Washington:  In the early years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the CIA turned some Guantanamo Bay prisoners into double agents and then sent them home to help the U.S. kill terrorists, current and former U.S. officials said.

The CIA promised the prisoners freedom, safety for their families and millions of dollars from the agency's secret accounts.

It was a risky gamble. Officials knew there was a chance that some prisoners might quickly spurn their deal and kill Americans.

For the CIA, that was an acceptable risk in a dangerous business. For the American public, which was never told, the program was one of the many secret trade-offs the government made on its behalf. At the same time the government used the risk of terrorism to justify imprisoning people indefinitely, it was releasing dangerous people from prison to work for the CIA.

The program was carried out in a secret facility built a few hundred yards from the administrative offices of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The eight small cottages were hidden behind a ridge covered in thick scrub and cactus.

The program and the handful of men who passed through these cottages had various official CIA code names.

But those who were aware of the cluster of cottages knew it best by its sobriquet: Penny Lane.

It was a nod to the classic Beatles song and a riff on the CIA's other secret facility at Guantanamo Bay, a prison known as Strawberry Fields.

Nearly a dozen current and former U.S officials described aspects of the program to The Associated Press. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret program publicly by name, even though it ended in about 2006.

Some of the men who passed through Penny Lane helped the CIA find and kill many top al-Qaida operatives, U.S. officials said. Others stopped providing useful information and the CIA lost touch with them.

When prisoners began streaming into Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, the CIA recognized it as an unprecedented opportunity to identify sources. That year, 632 detainees arrived at the detention center. The following year 117 more arrived.

"Of course that would be an objective," said Emile Nakhleh, a former top CIA analyst who spent time in 2002 assessing detainees but who did not discuss Penny Lane. "It's the job of intelligence to recruit sources."

By early 2003, Penny Lane was open for business.

Keep reading on NDTV >>

Hollywood mega-producer reveals double life as Israeli spy

Anna Chapman refuses to discuss Snowden proposal

Read on worldnews >>

Caracas Nest of Spies: From WikiLeaks to the Snowden Affair

cubaconfidential

By Chris Simmons

By Nikolas Kozloff, Huffington Post

As the unlikely Snowden saga continues to unfold, further disclosures are eroding the already tense relationship between Washington and Caracas. According to Brazilian newspaper O Globo, the National Security Agency or NSA conducted high level espionage on Venezuela, including the cataloguing of telephone calls and access to the internet, through a program called PRISM. Citing documents leaked by Snowden, O Globo reports that the NSA collected information on everything from Venezuelan military purchases to the South American nation's oil industry.
Though Caracas officials are certainly aware that the U.S. spies on Venezuela, Snowden's specific revelations relating to NSA may have far-reaching consequences. Already, Nicolás Maduro has said he is willing to offer diplomatic asylum to Snowden, and the Venezuelan president adds that the United States has "created an evil system, half Orwellian, that intends to control the communications of the world." Snowden, Maduro adds, is a hero who has unveiled the nefarious machinations of American political elites.

It's unclear whether Snowden can take advantage of Maduro's offer, and traveling to South America could prove logistically difficult for the young whistle-blower. Nevertheless, the Snowden affair represents a huge fiasco for the Obama administration and could lead to Latin Americans undertaking intelligence counter-measures against Washington. As revealed in WikiLeaks documents, Venezuela and Cuba have long collaborated on intelligence matters, and if anything the Snowden episode will probably strengthen such ties.

Low-Level Diplomatic Warfare in Caracas

According to WikiLeaks documents, the late Hugo Chávez was apparently so taken with Havana that he consulted directly with Cuban intelligence officers without bothering to vet the reporting through his own intelligence services. Meanwhile, the Cubans themselves trained and advised Chávez's security detail. Furthermore, the Cubans openly trained Venezuelan intelligence officers in "both political indoctrination and operational instruction" and some Venezuelan military officers underwent "ideological training" in Cuba itself.

Even if Chávez was unaware of recently disclosed NSA espionage, the authorities must have suspected the Bush administration was spying on Venezuela. In light of such pressures, it's certainly not surprising that Chávez would take countermeasures. Ridiculously, however, U.S. diplomats constantly played the victim while complaining of high level harassment. In 2006, for example, the U.S. embassy in Caracas claimed the Venezuelan National Guard had seized and opened "part of an inbound U.S. Military Group shipment" consisting of "household effects and commissary rations." According to the Americans, the authorities' handling of the incident "quickly spiraled out of control, with senior Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (BRV) officials accusing the United States of wrongdoing."

"Unique Threat Environment" at the U.S. Embassy

Perhaps, Chávez officials suspected that Embassy personnel was secretly working for the NSA or collecting intelligence, and the situation in Caracas continued to deteriorate in subsequent years. By early 2009, Venezuela was openly refusing to issue visas to new embassy personnel, including the Defense Attaché and USAID representative. American diplomats continued to play the victim, writing Washington that in the absence of a "credible commitment by the GBRV to normalize visa issuance for personnel assigned to Caracas, we should convey to them the potential consequences of continued harassment." Further cables suggest that, far from improving, the atmosphere became more and more toxic. One year later the embassy even requested a "Defensive Security Coordinator" or DSC to manage "defensive planning." The embassy, U.S. officials noted, had a "very unique threat environment."

Not surprisingly, Washington's political and diplomatic pressure on Caracas continued to drive Chávez closer to Havana, though the Americans seemed clueless as to why Venezuela would want to conduct an independent foreign policy. The Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, embassy staff noted, had fallen under Cuban influence. U.S. diplomats fretted that the politicization of the Ministry was "nearly complete" and complained about Chávez's policy of sending young Venezuelan diplomats to Cuba for training. The same individuals, Americans noted, were later promoted rapidly and "often act as ideological watchdogs" or "commissars" within BRV embassies.

U.S. diplomats also worried about Chávez's intelligence apparatus. Not mincing any words, the American embassy declared that joint Cuban-Venezuelan intelligence gathering "could impact U.S. interests directly." Chávez's intelligence service was among "the most hostile towards the United States in the hemisphere," but fundamentally lacked experience and expertise. With the help of the more seasoned Cubans, however, Chávez would have more routine access to the activities of the U.S. government.

Snowden Fallout

Fast forward to the present and far from deterring Cuban-Venezuelan ties, the NSA scandal has led to greater diplomatic solidarity between the two nations. In Havana, Raúl Castro has stopped short of offering asylum to Snowden but nevertheless supports Venezuelan moves to harbor the young whistle-blower. Castro, who says he's long been aware of secretive NSA programs, added that Cuba has been "one of the most harassed and spied-upon nations on the planet." If Snowden ever makes it out of the Moscow airport, Cuba will likely play an important part in the former NSA employee's travel plans. Indeed, Snowden's most straightforward route to Latin America would be on a direct Aeroflot flight from Russia to Havana. From there, the whistle-blower could continue on his way by catching a flight to Caracas.

How has the Obama administration managed to single-handedly turn much of Latin America against the U.S.? Prior to the Snowden affair, it looked as if Secretary of State John Kerry might have brokered a thaw in U.S.-Venezuelan relations. If anything, however, the Snowden affair will probably exacerbate the poisonous atmosphere so vividly described in WikiLeaks cables. Recently, the U.S. probably exerted pressure on Western European governments to divert Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane to Vienna on suspicion that Snowden was squirreled somewhere aboard. Morales, who had been traveling en route from Moscow to La Paz, denounced U.S. interference and many Latin American nations have rallied to his defense.

Perhaps, the Obama White House might have minimized diplomatic damage over the Snowden affair by not making such a deliberate attempt to apprehend the young NSA whistle-blower. In a rapidly unraveling fiasco, Obama has furthermore sought to bully and intimidate many countries who would dare to harbor Snowden. One can only guess that presently diplomatic staff at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas are possessed with a siege-like mentality and may fear the Maduro administration will resort to counter-measures. Perhaps, even as we speak U.S. diplomats are complaining to their superiors about joint Cuban-Venezuelan intelligence which is harassing American officials and unfairly targeting the U.S. embassy.
Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left.

Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or spy?

foxnews

A Communist Party-backed newspaper in China is urging that country's leadership to obtain more information from the former CIA employee who leaked information about the U.S. surveillance programs before fleeing to Hong Kong.

The Global Times newspaper said in an editorial Friday that Edward Snowden should not be sent back to the U.S. because his revelations about secret American surveillance programs concern China's national interest.

The newspaper said that the Chinese government should not only consider Beijing's relations with the United States but also domestic public opinion, which the paper says would be unhappy if Snowden were sent back.

The Global Times said in the editorial, which ran in the paper's Chinese- and English-language editions, that Snowden could offer intelligence that would help China update its understanding of cyberspace and improve its position in negotiations with Washington.

 "Snowden took the initiative to expose the U.S. government's attacks on Hong Kong and the mainland's Internet networks. This concerns China's national interest," the commentary said. "Maybe he has more evidence. The Chinese government should let him speak out and according to whether the information is public, use it as evidence to negotiate with the United States openly or in private."

The paper said that the Chinese government should not only consider Beijing's relations with the United States but also the opinion of its domestic public, which the paper said would be unhappy if Snowden were sent back.

"We have realized the United States' aggressiveness in cyberspace, we have realized that nine Internet companies have assisted the U.S. government in intelligence outsourcing," said the paper known for a nationalist stance. "We have realized their hypocrisy in saying one thing and doing another, and we have realized their ruthlessness in doing what they please with no regard for other people."

"China is a rising power, and it deserves corresponding respect from the United States," it said.

Snowden alleged in an interview with the South China Morning Post newspaper Thursday that the NSA has been monitoring the Chinese University of Hong Kong and public officials and citizens in the city.

Snowden told the paper he believes there have been more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally.

The 29-year-old reportedly also told the newspaper his plans for the immediate future, steps he claims the U.S. has taken since he broke his cover in Hong Kong, fears for his family as well as explosive details on U.S. surveillance targets.

On Thursday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chungying said China is a "major victim" of cyberattacks but did not lay blame.

Snowden is behind one of the biggest intelligence leaks in American history. The former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who worked at the National Security Agency, hopped a flight to Asia on May 20 and has remained on the lam ever since.

The Associated Press reported Friday that the British government issued an alert to airlines around the world, urging them not to allow Snowden to board flights to the United Kingdom.

The alert, dated Monday on a Home Office letterhead, said carriers should deny Snowden boarding because "the individual is highly likely to be refused entry to the UK."

The Associated Press saw a photograph of the document taken Friday at a Thai airport. A British diplomat confirmed that the document was genuine and was sent out to airlines around the world.

In what is likely his final appearance as FBI director before the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller said Thursday that Snowden is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.

In his three hours of testimony, Mueller defended the government's collection of millions of U.S. phone records, emails and other information as vital to the nation's national security.

"Every time that we have a leak like this — and if you follow it up and you look at the intelligence afterwards" — the terrorists "are looking at the ways around it," Mueller said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/14/china-newspaper-says-snowden-could-be-useful-to-china/#ixzz2WE2k1QfP

Russia says US diplomat was trying to recruit for CIA

 

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'Wigs & compass so Cold War' - former CIA officer on Moscow agent bust

RussiaToday

US diplomat detained in Moscow, accused of working for CIA

World News

By Anna Nemtsova and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

MOSCOW -- An American diplomat was detained in Moscow on suspicion of trying to recruit a Russian intelligence official to work for the CIA, Russian officials said Tuesday.

The man was an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, according to the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

He was carrying "special technical equipment'', a "large sum of money" and the "means for changing one's appearance," according to a FSB statement.

The man was arrested late Monday night and taken to FSB's headquarters but later taken to the U.S. Embassy.

U.S. intelligence workers have “ repeatedly attempted to recruit employees of Russian law enforcement bodies and special departments” in recent times, the statement added.

Ambassador Michael McFaul, who was participating in a question-and-answer session on Twitter when the detention was announced, said he would not comment.

America’s top intelligence official last month said Russia had been “very cooperative” with the U.S. since the Boston Marathon bomb attack, for which one of the suspects is Russian citizen Tamerlan Tsarnaev. However, retired Gen. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, also noted that “old habits die hard” and that some suspicion between between the two countries’ intelligence agencies, dating back decades, has survived.

North Korean spies exiled in South Korea still loyalty to the North

ITN