Month: February 2021

SPY NEWS

Philadelphia Is a Secret Spy Mecca

02/23/2021 admin

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos via GettyA little-known secret of Philadelphia is its two centuries at the center of American espionage. A year before the Founding Fathers met in Independence Hall to draft the Declaration of Independence, several signatories—including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin—created a spy network to counter the overwhelming superiority of the British army in the colonies. The seeds that were planted in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War grew into tangled roots of intrigue through the course of American history. SPY SITES OF PHILADELPHIA (Georgetown University Press) presents 130 accounts of Philadelphia spy operations and spymasters—here is a small taste.BIRTHPLACE OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS➤ Independence Hall: 520 Chestnut Street Independence Hall, where America’s first spy organizations were created. The Founding Fathers devoted much time and energy to clandestine operations. Henry R. Schlesinger Construction of Independence Hall, originally built as the Pennsylvania State House, began in 1732 and was completed in 1749. During the Second Continental Congress in 1775, the building where the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were signed also became the birthplace of America’s first congressional foreign intelligence committees.One of George Washington’s first major expenditures after becoming commander of the Continental Army was from a secret account authorized by the Congress, on July 15, 1775. Washington paid an unidentified individual $333.33 to travel to establish an intelligence network in Boston. Then in June 1776 Congress created the Committee on Spies charged with responsibility for detecting and prosecuting spies. Among the committee members were John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Wilson. Another Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, chaired by John Jay, was established in New York. As a result, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme count can also be called the Founding Father of US counterintelligence.FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE FRENCH SPY➤ Carpenters’ Hall: 320 Chestnut Street Carpenters’ Hall was the site of clandestine meetings between patriot leaders and an undercover French emissary. Henry R. Schlesinger Carpenters’ Hall, site of the First Continental Congress, hosted one of the earliest and most important clandestine meetings in the nation’s history. In December 1775, a French envoy, posing as an Antwerp merchant, arrived in Philadelphia. Sent as a secret emissary by France’s foreign minister, the mission of 26-year-old Julien Achard de Bonvouloir was to meet with the American leadership and survey the viability of the colonial rebellion.Both parties were suspicious of the proposed meeting. The patriots feared British spies were behind the visit, while France wanted to keep a cautious public distance from the colonial rebellion. Eventually, members of the Committee for Secret Correspondence, knowing they would need international support, agreed to meet the mysterious foreign visitor.Bonvouloir conferred with Franklin, John Jay, and Thomas Jefferson on the second floor of Carpenters’ Hall. Bonvouloir identified himself as a private individual with powerful connections in France rather than as an official government envoy. The patriots asked if the French government would be open to selling desperately needed arms and ammunition. Bonvouloir offered no formal promises but hinted that weapons could possibly be made available from private firms. These secret meetings were the first tentative steps toward France’s crucial assistance for the colonies’ battle for freedom.FRUITS, VEGETABLES, AND ESPIONAGE➤ The New Market: South Second Street between Lombard and Pine Streets The New Market, was a clearinghouse of Patriot intelligence in and out of Philadelphia. Henry R. Schlesinger Established in 1745, the New Market was a bustling center of Philadelphia commerce. The name distinguished the businesses from the “old” market across the street that did not have stalls housed in a long shed that protected New Market merchants from bad weather.During the 1777-1778 British occupation of Philadelphia this 18th-century “shopping mall” became a hotbed of espionage. Patriot farmers evaded roadblocks or bribed patrols to bring their goods to town, then used their commercial activity as a cover for spying. Jacob Levering—one of the so-called Green Boys, a loosely organized group of guerrilla fighters and spies—disguised himself as a Quaker farmer and paddled a canoe loaded with produce down the Schuylkill River. Once inside the city, Levering collected intelligence and slipped out again. Washington’s spymaster, Maj. John Clark Jr., provided farmer-spies with stolen passes, allowing them to cross “legally” into British territory.In another daring operation, Mary Redmond, known as the “Little Black-Eyed Rebel,” developed a network to keep patriots in touch with their families. Working with a farm boy who visited the city to sell produce in the market, she received and passed to local women letters from their husbands and sons in the Continental Army.KNIT ONE, PURL TWO, SPY THREE➤ Rinker’s Rock: Fairmount Park, 4231 North Concourse Drive The rock ledge where Ma Rinker would sit knitting and dropping messages to a band of patriot guerrilla fighters. Henry R. Schlesinger Molly “Mom” Rinker was a Pennsylvania tavern keeper and patriot. According to legend, she perched herself on a flat rock along the Wissahickon Creek not far from the Walnut Lane Bridge and knitted. A passerby would see a middle-aged woman quietly working away with yarn and needles. However from time to time, the wily Rinker would drop a ball of yarn with a written message wrapped in its center; the messages contained intelligence that she collected from Tory conversations she overheard in her family’s tavern and inn. The Green Boys, a Patriot guerrilla band, retrieved and couriered the yarn balls to Washington’s Valley Forge headquarters.DETECTIVE WORK IS WOMAN’S WORK➤ Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency office: 45 South Third Street Kate Warne, an employee of the Pinkerton Agency, may be America’s first female detective. Keith Melton & Robert Wallace Allan Pinkerton, Chicago’s first police detective, was a staunch abolitionist and supporter of the Union cause. In 1860 Pinkerton assigned five agents to investigate threats against the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad by secessionist sympathizers. Among the Pinkerton agents was Kate Warne. In early 1861, using the aliases of Mrs. Cherry and Mrs. M. B. Barley, Warne infiltrated the Baltimore secessionist movement under the cover story of a visiting Southern lady. With a thick Southern accent complementing a readiness to flirt and a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she was welcomed into secessionist social gatherings. The combined work of Warne and other Pinkerton agents uncovered a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln during his trip to Washington for his inauguration.As Lincoln’s train rolled from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington on the night of February 22, 1861, Warne did not sleep a wink. She remained in Baltimore as a precaution while watching the president’s train depart for the capital. According to legend, Pinkerton came up with the slogan for his agency “We Never Sleep” as a result of Warne’s sleepless night guarding Lincoln. The famed Pinkerton’s Detective Agency maintained an office on South Third Street. H. Keith Melton & Robert Wallace When the Civil War ended, Pinkerton opened a Philadelphia office at 45 South Third Street. Warne, his superintendent of detectives, was promoted to head the Female Detective Bureau. However, at the young age of 38, she caught pneumonia and died in 1868. In his memoirs Pinkerton named Warne one of the five greatest detectives he ever employed.UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INTELLIGENCE➤ Belmont Mansion: 2000 Belmont Mansion Drive The beautiful Belmont Mansion in Fairmount Park Runaway slaves moving north through the Underground Railroad were valuable sources of Civil War intelligence for the Union. Called contraband informants because of their status in Southern states as property, the runaways provided Union generals, such as Joseph Hooker andGeorge McClellan, with first-person information about the South. Confederate general Robert E. Lee recognized the value of their intelligence when he wrote, “The chief source of information to the enemy is through our Negroes. They are easily deceived by proper caution.”An important safe house or station for the escaping slaves along the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia was the Belmont Mansion, now home to the Underground Railroad Museum.Only relatively recently have the contributions of African Americans to Civil War intelligence efforts come to public attention. Among those is that of Mary Touvestre, a freed slave who worked in Norfolk, Virginia, as a housekeeper for an engineer. After overhearing conversations regarding the retrofit of the USS Merrimack into an ironclad capable of breaking the Union blockade, she stole the technical plans and delivered them to military officials in Washington. In another example, John Scobell, a freed slave from Mississippi, posed as a servant working with Allan Pinkerton’s operatives Timothy Webster and Hattie Lawton. Scobell elicited intelligence information through his access and acceptance to black communities that would have been impossible for his white counterparts to obtain.A TREASURE TROVE OF CRYPTOGRAPHIC HISTORY➤ University of Pennsylvania, Van Pelt Library: 3420 Walnut StreetOne of the largest collections of rare and antiquarian books on cryptography resides in the University of Pennsylvania Library. The books, pamphlets, and other writings were a donation from Charles J. Mendelsohn, a cryptographer and graduate of University of Pennsylvania where he earned a PhD in classics in 1904.While teaching at the College of the City of New York during World War I, he joined the Censorship Division of the US Post Office and was recruited into Military Intelligence, Section 8, the US Army’s code-breaking division. At war’s end Herbert Yardley founded the Cipher Bureau where Mendelsohn collaborated on a number of business codebooks with Yardley.Through the 1930s, Mendelsohn continued his love of cryptography, published papers on classic codes, and collected rare texts on the subject. He was called back to government service as World War II loomed but died on September 27, 1939, just a few days prior to reporting for active duty.CHEMIST, INVENTOR, AND SPY➤ Ben Franklin Hotel (now the Franklin Residences): 834 Chestnut StreetIn the decade prior to World War II, the USSR coveted advanced technology available in the US. Soviet spies targeted the University of Pennsylvania’s world class biological research faculty and in particular Earl W. Flosdorf, who pioneered a method to freeze-dry blood plasma. The process represented a significant advance in battlefield medicine.Flosdorf, a collector of expensive antique cars, was recruited, met his handlers at the Ben Franklin Hotel, and was paid secretly by the Soviets from 1936 through 1938. Assigned the code name OUTPOST, he may have received as much as $25,000 for providing the Soviets with a device that could freeze-dry materials for biological weapons.THE REAL INDIANA JONES?➤ University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology: 3260 South Street Rodney S. Young, archaeologist and spy, was the curator of the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Henry R. Schlesinger Indiana Jones, a swashbuckling academic and archaeologist who battled Nazis, thrilled moviegoers with daring deeds and narrow escapes. But was there a real-life Indiana Jones? The adventures of Rodney S. Young and his fellow archaeologists come close. Young joined the spy world with an Ivy League education with a specialty in Near Eastern archaeology and spent years at excavations in Greece. At the start of World War II, he volunteered as an ambulance driver. Wounded during an air raid, he returned home to work for the Office of Strategic Services and oversaw operations from 1944 to 1945 as head of the OSS Greek Desk.Young is credited with participating in scores of missions throughout the region that involved intelligence gathering, sabotage, exfiltration, and support of guerrilla fighters. He worked with several other American archaeologists, including John Franklin Daniel III from the University of Pennsylvania.After the war, Young worked at the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, but rarely spoke of his wartime exploits.Young was not the only Indiana Jones candidate from Philadelphia. To his students at the University of Pennsylvania, Carleton Stevens Coon was a mild-mannered anthropologist with a background that stretched back to Harvard and fieldwork throughout North Africa. Recruited by the OSS, Coon collected tactical intelligence on enemy communications and transportation. He recruited resistance fighters to wage guerrilla warfare in North Africa and designed plastic explosives molded in the shape of mule dung that were scattered along desert roads to disable German vehicles.What made archaeologists particularly attractive candidates as spies was their knowledge of local languages, customs, and terrain. In contrast to American tourists, whose interests were primarily in visiting foreign capitals, archaeologists possessed detailed, hard-earned knowledge of remote outlying areas that often proved vital to war planning. Spy Sites of Philadelphia Georgetown University Press H. Keith Melton is an internationally recognized intelligence historian and authority on espionage technology. Robert Wallace is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Technical Service, founder of the Artemus Consulting Group, and contributor to the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence. Melton and Wallace have co authored numerous books, including Spy Sites of Philadelphia, Spy Sites of Washington, DC, and Spy Sites of New York City. They are also executive producers of the Netflix series Spycraft.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. […]

SPY NEWS

New research reveals a more complete, complex life story of Civil War spy Mary Louveste

02/21/2021 admin

For more than a century, people have known very little about the famous Norfolk spy, Mary Louveste. In 1861 or 1862, Louveste took information from the Confederate Navy about its ironclad ship the USS Virginia. Louveste gave the information to the Union. People have written books and news articles using that basic information and filled the gaps with fiction. A few local historians and educators, however, have been searching for more information. […]

SPY NEWS

Four ex-officials charged in spy case – Taipei Times

02/20/2021 admin

The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted four retired Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB) officials, who are accused of providing China with a list of bureau personnel and other classified materials while attempting to recruit colleagues into a spy network in Taiwan. Prosecutors charged Chang Chao-jan (張超然), Chou Tien-tzu (周天慈) and Wang Ta-wang (王大旺), former colonels at the bureau, and Yueh Chih-chung (岳志忠) — a former major general and chief of the MIB’s Fifth Bureau, where he was in charge of sending agents to China on covert assignments — with breaches of the National Security Act (國家安全法) and the National Intelligence Services […]

SPY NEWS

Former Saudi spy chief denies he stole billions before fleeing to Toronto

02/06/2021 admin

A former Saudi spymaster, now living in exile in Toronto, says a lawsuit alleging he embezzled billions of dollars is part of an ongoing campaign of intimidation by Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has issued an order freezing Saad Aljabri’s assets, luxury properties, and bank accounts in Europe, Malta, the British Virgin Islands, the United States and Canada — including his $13-million mansion in Toronto. But in court documents filed Tuesday, Aljabri contends the case is a “politically motivated attack.” “This proceeding is the latest stage of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman’s ongoing efforts to achieve absolute power in Saudi Arabia, masquerading as a commercial dispute in Canada.” Companies tied to the current Saudi regime filed the lawsuit in Toronto on Jan. 22. It alleges Aljabri funnelled security and counterterrorism funds from Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry to himself, his family and associates. “Although the investigation is ongoing, it is clear that from at least 2008 to 2017, Aljabri masterminded and oversaw a conspiracy incorporating at least 21 conspirators across at least 13 jurisdictions to misappropriate at least [$4.3 billion] from the plaintiffs,” the lawsuit states. Power shift in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has undergone a major powershift since 2017. That year, King Salman removed his nephew, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN) and replaced him with his son Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS). MBN was placed under house arrest, accused of plotting a coup. Western analysts say 35-year-old MBS has pushed the Kingdom towards a more aggressive foreign policy, pursuing his enemies at home and abroad with ruthlessness to cement his claim to the throne. Aljabri, 62, was MBN’s chief advisor. As Minister of State and head of security and counterterrorism, he was a key member of the regime. He was stripped of his duties in 2015. Following the power change in 2017, he fled the country and now lives in a mansion on The Bridle Path, one of Canada’s most upscale residential neighbourhoods. Two of Aljabri’s children, Omar and Sarah, 17 and 18 at the time, were detained before they could flee Saudi Arabia in June 2017 on the same day that MBN was removed. They were subsequently charged and convicted of money laundering and are now imprisoned. Aljabri has said there was no evidence to warrant their detention or charges. Aljabri claims he is being targeted as part of a purge of loyalists from a competing branch of the royal family. As a former top intelligence official, he says he has damaging information about the inner workings of the House of Saud. In August, Aljabri sued the Crown Prince in the U.S., alleging MBS sent a hit squad to Canada in 2018 to try to assassinate him and his family, and of holding two of his children hostage in Saudi Arabia. None of the allegations has been proven in court. Hit squad allegedly dispatched to Canada Aljabri declined interview requests. His lawyer said he is reluctant to argue the legal case in the media but said in a statement the family is in a “deadly-serious” fight for their lives. “Within days of the MBS regime engineering the gruesome, cold blooded murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, a team of assassins connected to the MBS regime attempted to enter Canada through Ottawa,” lawyer Paul Le Vay wrote in an email. “They were detected by sharp-eyed airport security officials,” Le Vay wrote. “Had this hit squad gained entry, it is entirely likely that a Khashoggi-style assassination would have taken place on our soil. Every Canadian should be appalled that an autocratic regime sought to use our country as a killing ground to meet its own political ends.” Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian dissident and Washington Post columnist. He was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018. In court records, Aljabri claims the RCMP continues to investigate the alleged assassination attempt on him in Canada. Aljabri said the RCMP has advised him his life remains under threat, recommending 24-hour physical security. A CBC reporter on Thursday spoke with a private security guard outside Aljabri’s mansion from a vehicle idling on the street. The RCMP declined to comment. Alan Treddenick is a former senior Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officer who was stationed at the Canadian embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Treddenick worked directly with Aljabri on counterterrorism. WATCH | Threats on exiled Saudi official ‘pretty real’ says former CSIS officer: “The threats against the Aljabri family and Saad himself are very real,” Treddenick said, adding that Aljabri had to flee for his life. “In my opinion, he holds the keys to Pandora’s box for the current Crown Prince,” Treddenick said in an interview with CBC News. “Any secrets they have, business dealings, security issues — it is information I’m sure the current Crown Prince wouldn’t want in public.” ‘Overwhelming evidence of fraud:’ Judge On Jan. 22, Canadian lawyers for a conglomerate of 10 state-owned Saudi companies convinced a Toronto judge in an ex-parte, or private, hearing to freeze Aljabri’s world-wide assets. The freezing order application was underpinned by a 156-page forensic audit by Deloitte, two lengthy sworn affidavits, and nearly 7,000 pages of documents. The companies argued Aljabri received unauthorized payments he was prohibited from receiving as a government employee. They allege he set up companies, ostensibly to combat terrorism, but instead funnelled money through them to himself, his family and associates. The plaintiffs allege the auditors uncovered 26 properties in Saudi Arabia, many of which were allegedly gifted to Aljabri’s children, nine luxury properties in the U.S. and others in Geneva and Vienna. The auditors also found two homes in Canada purchased with cash: The Bridlepath house for $13 million and another purchased by Aljabri’s son, Khalid, for nearly $4.5 million. Aljabri’s lawyers filed a motion to immediately lift the freezing order, arguing that the plaintiffs misled the court. On Monday, Superior Court of Ontario Justice Cory Gilmore denied the request. She ruled there was sufficient plausible, but unproven evidence to meet the basic legal threshold for the asset freezing order. She extended the order to Feb. 19 for another full hearing. “There is overwhelming evidence of fraud that has been presented to court,” Gilmore wrote. “In response, I have an affidavit from [Aljabri’s] son, which is more of a political treatise than any concrete response to the serious allegations raised.” The affidavit by Khalid Aljabri contained many of the same allegations, including intimidation and death threats, advanced by Aljabri in his U.S. lawsuit and in his pleadings to the Ontario court. “The Deloitte report and the affidavits and exhibits filed demonstrate that Aljabri used fraudulent means to divert funds that rightfully belonged to the plaintiffs and the Plaintiffs suffered a loss from that conduct,” Gilmore wrote. […]