Free Republic

A Newport News physicist has been charged with violating federal arms-control laws by selling rocket technology to China that's now being used in that country's space program.Quan-Sheng Shu, 68, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Shanghai, was arrested Wednesday morning and made an initial appearance that afternoon in U.S. District Court in Norfolk. He is being held in jail pending a bond hearing Monday. Selling defense and space technology to China or other prohibited countries without a license is a violation of the federal Arms Export Control Act.Shu operates Amac International Inc. at the Applied Research Center in...

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

The New York Times reports that the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg now accept that their father was a spy for the Soviet Union based on the belated admission of a confederate, Morton Sobel, age 91, that he had lied for more than a half-century when he said they were innocent of a conspiracy to give government military secrets to the USSR. The sons' desire to vindicate their parents spurred their political radicalism in the 1960s and 70s and led them to establish the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a charity for the children of leftist activists, which CRC described...

Ever since he was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1951, Morton Sobell has maintained his innocence. A U.S. Marshal escorted Morton Sobell, left, to Federal Court in New York in March of 1951. Until now. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. And he implicated his fellow defendant, Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets vital classified military information and what the American government claimed was the...

Councils are recruiting residents to report anyone who drops litter, fails to recycle their rubbish properly, or who allows their dog to foul the streets. Advertisements looking for people to sign up for the unpaid "environmental volunteer" jobs have been posted across the country in recent months. Critics said the scheme is encouraging a Big Brother society where friends and neighbours will be encouraged to "snoop" on one another. The recruitment drive follows news that the Home Office is granting police powers to council staff and private security guards, allowing then to hand out fines for low-scale offences and ask...

More Federal Intelligence Changes Planned The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of...

SEOUL, South Korea — She was "The Korean Seductress Who Betrayed America," a Seoul socialite said to have charmed secret information out of one lover, an American colonel, and passed it to another, a top communist in North Korea. In late June 1950, as North Korean invaders closed in on this panicked city, Kim Soo-im was executed by the South Korean military, shot as a "very malicious international spy." Her deeds, thereafter, only grew in infamy. In 1950s America, gripped by anticommunist fever, one TV drama told viewers Kim's "womanly wiles" had been the communists' "deadliest weapon." Another teleplay, introduced...

WASHINGTON - Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. The full secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the...

A young Israeli man who studied in Germany has been arrested on espionage charges in Israel. Khaled K., of Palestinian descent, allegedly spied for the Hezbollah Shiite militia. His case is expected to highlight Hezbollah recruiting activities in Germany. When Khaled K. stepped off the plane from Germany to start his summer vacation, it wasn't his family that awaited him at the gate. Instead Shin Bet agents and police greeted the 29-year-old Israeli man of Palestinian descent when he arrived on July 16 at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport. He was arrested and disappeared into custody for two weeks until...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Taiwan-born American who admitted spying for China was given more than 15 years in prison, the US Justice Department said Friday. Tai Shen Kuo, 58, of New Orleans, Louisiana, was sentenced by federal court in Virginia to 188 months in prison, and required to forfeit 40,000 dollars, after he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to deliver US military information to China. Kuo was charged as a part of a small ring that included a Chinese woman, Yu Xin Kang, and former Pentagon analyst Gregg Bergersen, that obtained secret information mainly on US military sales to...

If you're in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don't be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you're being listened to. As the WSJ is reporting, on your taxi's dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver's knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing's estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don't like what they hear, they can take things even further.The GPS-equipped devices also allow for remote disabling by "cutting off...

British spying chief Alex Allan, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, has regained consciousness having been in a coma for 10 days. Mr Allan's committee collates information from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and briefs the prime minister, ministers and officials on intelligence assessments on issues such as security, defence and foreign affairs.

A Welsh stripper who set a car ablaze in Moscow "to cheer himself up" is reportedly being investigated for suspected links to British intelligence. Alistair Penney, a 38-year-old dancer from Cardiff, was detained on Wednesday as he ran from a burning Mercedes Benz in a suburb that has seen a spate of arson attacks on parked vehicles. Police have been investigating at least 32 cases of arson against cars in the Yuzhnoye Butovo district of Moscow over the past month. A video released by Russian police showed Mr Penney apparently confessing to the act. Wearing a broad grin throughout his...

Russian agents came close to carrying out the perfect assassination on British soil when they killed Alexander Litvinenko... Security sources have disclosed that the former Russian spy would have died within hours had the poisoned tea he was given been served hot. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who had become a critic of the government of Russia's then president, Vladimir Putin... Security sources say that during the meeting Litvinenko took just a few sips of the tea but left the remainder of the cup because it was cold. "If Litvinenko had drunk all the tea he would have been dead...

SUPERSPOOK Alex Allan may have been an assassination target of the Russians or al-Qaeda, security experts said last night. The 56-year-old chairman of the Government's Joint Intelligence Committee is in a coma in hospital and has had toxicology tests to see if he has been poisoned. Another theory is that Britain's top spy - whose 58-year-old Australian wife Katie Clemson died from cancer in November - may have taken a drugs overdose. Mr Allan had direct access to the PM and regularly updated him about terrorist threats facing Britain. The members of the Joint Intelligence Committee Mr Allan chairs are...

A spy camera, estimated to cost £10,000 and designed to catch fly-tippers, was cleared by council workers after it was concealed in a rubbish bag. The expensive camera was placed inside a black bag beside a notorious illegal fly-tipping site. The disguise was so good that workers for Chichester District Council, West Sussex, cleared the camera believing it was genuine rubbish. "Because the camera had been hidden in something that looked like rubbish, they cleared that away as well," said John Cherry, the deputy council...

The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, that touchstone of atomic espionage, is a case that launched a thousand doctorates and enough historical texts to make a library groan. Now, however, the 50-year-old record may grow even more complex: on Monday, the federal government, in an unusual move, consented to release most of the secret grand jury testimony taken in the case. In papers filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors said that they would not oppose the release of testimony from 35 of the 45 witnesses who appeared before the grand jury in New York in 1950 and...

The compulsory identity card could be used to carry out surveillance on people, MPs warned today. Members of the Home Affairs Select Committee said it was concerned that the way the authorities use sensitive data gathered in the multi-billion pound programme could "creep" to include spying. The all-party committee also urged ministers to make plans on how to deal with the theft of personal details from the National Identity Scheme, which will build a massive database on every person over 16 in Britain. It accepted ministers' assurances that surveillance was not part of current plans, but asked for a guarantee...

The Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) Program will develop and demonstrate an extremely small (less than 7.5 cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10 grams) air vehicle system with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor military missions. The program will explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations. The NAV Program will push the limits of aerodynamic and power conversion efficiency, endurance, and maneuverability for very small air vehicle systems. NAV platforms will be revolutionary in their ability to harness low Reynolds number physics, navigate in complex environments, and communicate over significant...

Chapter One: The Buried Bodies 0500 February 10, 1986 Bethesda, Maryland On my morning run through February’s chilly darkness, my chocolate Lab, Tyler Beauregard, sets the pace. This is our routine together, though we always vary our route now. At agent training, which I just completed, they drilled into us the notion that in our new lives, routines will get us killed. When you join the Dark World, you must become unpredictable. Erratic. We must strip away all the conventions of our old lives and fade into the background. We’ve been trained. We’ve practiced. Today, I begin my life as...

PHOENIX — An engineer from Iran was convicted Tuesday of illegally accessing a protected computer in the United States to use software he obtained at a former job at the nation's largest nuclear plant. Mohammad Reza Alavi, 50, who worked at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station for 17 years, faces up to five years in prison and could be fined up to a $250,000 for his conviction on a count of illegally accessing a computer. A sentencing hearing has not been set. ---- snip ----

I remember well the case of David Tenenbaum. An Orthodox Jewish civilian employee of the military, he lives just a 1/2 mile from me. He belongs to the same synagogue as several members of my extended family. When the Pentagon and feds trumped up charges against him and chose to raid his house on the Jewish Sabbath--and to embarrass him, purposely doing so at the moment throngs of synagogue congregants were walking home and passing by--it was a cause of disgust in our community. We knew he was not a spy for Israel, and it was made even more obvious,...

NEW YORK (AP) — A former U.S. Army mechanical engineer used his job at a military research center to fetch dozens of classified defense documents for an Israeli agent, prosecutors say. The agent — who was at the center of another, infamous 1980s espionage scandal — provided Ben-ami Kadish with wish lists of secret records, according to prosecutors. Over six years, Kadish took home information about nuclear weapons, a modified version of an F-15 fighter jet and the U.S. Patriot missile air defense system, and he let the unidentified Israeli consulate worker photograph the documents in his basement, prosecutors say....

U.S. authorities arrested an American engineer on Tuesday on suspicion of giving secrets on nuclear weapons, fighter jets and air defense missiles to Israel during the 1980s, the Justice Department said. Ben-Ami Kadish, 84, acknowledged his spying in FBI interviews and said he acted out of a belief that he was helping Israel, court papers said. He was accused of reporting to an Israeli government handler who also dealt with Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American citizen serving a life term on a 1985 charge of spying for Israel. Kadish's arrest is a sign the Pollard scandal, which remains an irritant...

A U.S. Army mechanical engineer has been arrested on charges that he slipped classified documents about nuclear weapons to an employee of the Israeli Consulate.

New anti-terrorism rules 'allow US to spy on British motorists' By Toby Helm and Christopher Hope Last Updated: 3:06am BST 21/04/2008 Routine journeys carried out by millions of British motorists can be monitored by authorities in the United States and other enforcement agencies across the world under anti-terrorism rules introduced discreetly by Jacqui Smith. The discovery that images of cars captured on road-side cameras, and "personal data" derived from them, including number plates, can be sent overseas, has angered MPs and civil liberties groups concerned by the increasing use of "Big Brother" surveillance tactics. Images of private cars, as well...

A BusinessWeek probe of rising attacks on America's most sensitive computer networks uncovers startling security gaps The e-mail message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane—a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake. Lurking beneath the description of aircraft, engines, and radar equipment was an insidious piece of computer code known as "Poison Ivy" designed to suck sensitive data out of the $4 billion consulting firm's computer network. The Pentagon hadn't sent the e-mail at all. Its origin is unknown, but the...

New technologies always come with privacy issues There is no shortage of articles discussing privacy issues introduced by new technologies. ReadID, passports, chips in currency bills, and other engineering marvels designed for purposes of tracking and monitoring, always come with a bouquet of questions and privacy concerns. On the other hand, technologies not specifically designed for monitoring can sometimes be used for this very purpose and privacy problems introduced by them are often overlooked. Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) is one of those technologies. What is TPMS? TPMS lets on-board vehicle computers measure air pressure in the tires. If you...

AN ALLEGED attempt to kill a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was being investigated by police last night. Oleg Gordievsky was admitted to a hospital in Guildford after falling ill in November last year. And yesterday he claimed he had been poisoned with the highly toxic metal thallium in a botched assassination attempt. Gordievsky, a KGB double agent who spied on Russia for British intelligence during the 1980s, claims he was targeted by a Russian assassin who visited him at his safe house in Surrey. The 69-year-old was unconscious for 34 hours after falling ill last year and...

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the "perfect sleeper agent," though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night. Eventually, Mak's job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China -- fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Pentagon official pleaded guilty Monday to passing US military secrets to an agent working for China after being showered with gifts and gambling money, the Department of Justice said. ...

A Defense Department analyst pleaded guilty Monday to charges alleging he gave classified information about U.S. and Taiwanese military communications systems to a businessman working with the Chinese government. Gregg Bergersen, a weapons analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency who held top secret security clearances, was arrested last month. Prosecutors alleged he divulged military secrets to a New Orleans furniture salesman, Tai Kuo, who turned over the information to the Chinese government.

The supermarket chain Lidl has been accused of using methods reminiscent of the Stasi secret police to spy on employees in Germany. The company, which has more than 400 stores in Britain, reportedly monitored details of intimate conversations and personal relationships. Surveillance teams would arrive early on Monday mornings to install between five and 10 miniature cameras in Lidl stores, according to the German news magazine Stern. The retail chain insisted that the cameras were not to spy on staff but for "the identification of possible misconduct" adding that "details and observations do not apply to casual conversation". But in...

... I listened last night to syndicated talk-radio host Mark Levin report the breaking news that an Iraqi-American had been indicted as a spy. In addition, he stands accused of secretly funding the October 2002 pre-invasion trip to Iraq of three antiwar House Democrats, Congressmen Jim McDermott (D-WA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and David E. Bonior (D-MI, now retired). I first posted a clip of that audio on MarkLevinFan.com and then I followed the money. Always follow the money. You just think that you have read all where it led in this case.

A six-inch robotic spy plane modeled after a bat would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time. That's the Army's concept, and it has awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering a five-year, $10-million grant to help make it happen. The grant establishes the U-M Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology, called COM-BAT for short. The grant includes an option to renew for an additional five years and $12.5 million. U-M researchers will focus on the microelectronics. They will develop sensors, communication tools...

It may look like a child's toy but this unmanned spy helicopter can swoop down and squirt criminals with a liquid marker so they can later be identified by police. The £25,000 remote-controlled Microdrone, the size of a dustbin lid, can capture high-quality video footage and infrared imagery from more than 350ft away, beaming the data back to its operators on the ground. But its most revolutionary function is to mark offenders with a solution called SmartWater which identifies them to police. Take that! The Microdrone unmanned spy helicopter not only photographs criminals but also douses them in an identifying...

Snip..... In what could be the biggest State Department scandal since State Department official and United Nations founder Alger Hiss was exposed as a Soviet spy, a top Clinton State Department official and former Time magazine journalist has been identified as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service. Snip... The sensational charge against Strobe Talbott is made in a new book based on interviews with a Russian defector. Snip... Talbott has been and continues to be a major foreign policy thinker. Back in 2000, when he was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of...

As athletes train for the summer Olympics in China, a new book claims that the country's vast spy network is gearing up for a different challenge - keeping an eye on journalists and potential troublemakers. French writer Roger Faligot, author of some 40 intelligence-related books, has penned 'The Chinese Secret Services from Mao to the Olympic Games', due out February 29. His findings claim that special teams are being formed at the country's embassies abroad "to identify sports journalists ... and to define if they have an 'antagonistic' or 'friendly' attitude in regards to China." Potential foreign spies who may...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A missile launched from a Navy cruiser soared 130 miles above the Pacific and smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday, the Pentagon said. Several defense officials said it apparently achieved the main aim of destroying an onboard tank of toxic fuel.

(BEIJING) — China said Sunday it was concerned about U.S. military plans to shoot down a damaged spy satellite that is hurtling toward Earth with 1,000 pounds of toxic fuel. The U.S. military has said it hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week — just before it enters Earth's atmosphere — with a single missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean. The official Xinhua News Agency quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao as saying the Chinese government was monitoring the situation and has urged the U.S. to avoid causing damages to security...

Federal agents today arrested four people on espionage charges, including a Defense Department employee from Alexandria, and accused them of passing classified information to China that included details about the Space Shuttle and U.S. military sales to Taiwan. The DOD employee, Gregg William Bergersen, 51, was charged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria with conspiracy to disclose national defense information

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials say a U.S. government official and up to four Chinese nationals are being charged with spying on the United States. The Associated Press has learned they are being accused of spying and giving U.S. military secrets to the Chinese government. Law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity say the charges are being unsealed later Monday by federal courts in California and Virginia. The officials asked for anonymity because the case has not yet been made public. It was not immediately clear where in the government the unnamed U.S. official worked.

How the classified military documents from Iraq, which named the coordinates of where the Army suspected weapons of mass destruction to be hidden, ended up in an Arabic translator's apartment on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn, is clear. Not likely to be known anytime soon is what, if anything, the army contractor did with the documents. The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, which is prosecuting the case, appears to have little direct evidence that Noureddine Malki passed information on to the insurgency, either during his time in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, or upon his return to America in 2005. But...

NEW DELHI: Iran is angry with India for launching an Israeli spy satellite a few weeks ago. "We hope wise and independent countries like India do not provide space and technologies to countries which are undertaking spying operations on friendly countries like Iran," the Iranian ambassador to India, Sayed Mehdi Nabizadeh, said here on Tuesday. The envoy said Iran had not issued a formal protest to India but "our officials have conveyed our concern". India has said it was a commercial venture, but Nabizadeh said "such issues should be looked at politically". The envoy added that Iran’s relations with India...

With the Cold War long over, the CIA no longer faces any real competition, right? Wrong. The world’s top espionage agencies are as busy as ever. Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Country: Russia Area of expertise: Officially—counterterrorism and protecting Russian commercial interests abroad. Unofficially—consolidating political power back home. Activities: Russia has a formidable spying tradition that dates back to the czarist-era Cheka. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the once omnipotent KGB was broken up into several smaller organizations with vastly limited powers. Since ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin took power, however, the SVR, or Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedk as it’s known...

Where The Spies Are by: Cliff Kincaid, February 01, 2008 How should the media handle sensational allegations that one of the most esteemed members of their profession, former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, was a dupe of the Russian intelligence service? How should they deal with hard evidence that one of their sacred cows, the United Nations, is penetrated by Russian spies? The answer is that most of them will ignore it. This is the fate they’re giving to Comrade J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former Washington Post reporter and...

The pre-dawn launch Monday of a new reconnaissance satellite further establishes Israel as one of the world's superpowers in space, and grants it an important further intelligence advantage over its rivals. The primary intelligence contribution of the TECSAR satellite, manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries, lies in improving capabilities of intelligence gathering and coverage over Iran. Although planned several years ago and delayed a number of times of late, the launch sends anew a message to Iran that Israel continues to maintain its superiority in the field of intelligence in space. The message coincidentally accompanies last week's high-profile launch of an...

TEL AVIV – Israel arrested a suspected Syrian militant operating on Israeli soil accused of preparing attacks against the Jewish state, WND has learned. The militant was arrested July 29, weeks before Israel's Sept. 6 air raid on a remote site in Syria that has been described by independent analysts and some U.S. politicians as a potential Syrian nuclear reactor. Security officials would not say whether the arrest was tied to the air strike. According to security sources, his activities were known to Israeli intelligence agencies for at least one year prior to his arrest

A federal judge denied a motion Monday for a new trial in the case of a Chinese-born engineer convicted of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney rejected Chi Mak's motion after a hearing that included testimony from several defense witnesses. Carney set Mak's sentencing for March 24. Mak could face up to 45 years in prison. Mak, 67, was convicted last May of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to China, including data on an electronic propulsion system that prosecutors said could make submarines virtually undetectable. A jury also found him guilty of...

China's intelligence service gained access to a secret National Security Agency listening post in Hawaii through a Chinese-language translation service, according to U.S. intelligence officials. The spy penetration was discovered several years ago as part of a major counterintelligence probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) that revealed an extensive program by China's spy service to steal codes and other electronic intelligence secrets, and to recruit military and civilian personnel with access to them. According to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, China's Ministry of State Security, the main civilian spy service, carried out the operations by...