New in SpyWeek: Mossad Guy's Congo Caper
Also: Heightened concerns about espionage on U.S. military bases and the Egyptian intel officer blamed for torpedoing a Gaza ceasefire deal lead.
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Rumble in the Jungle: Intelligence agencies steal secrets, break other countries' laws, eavesdrop on allies, and commit all manner of shadowy acts. Still, sometimes there are limits.
“There are things that spy agencies do not do, things that they won't do, and that are forbidden for them to do,” former Mossad director Tamir Pardo said. “And this is one of them."
Pardo was speaking of a report in The Guardian of London that claimed that the man who succeeded him in 2016 as the head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, threatened the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to thwart an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. The Guardian quotes Cohen allegedly telling the prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”
Pardo doesn’t believe it happened. Or he doesn’t want to believe it. “It sounds like Cosa Nostra-style blackmail,” he told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. There’s more.
The Guardian’s report explains three puzzling trips that Cohen made to Congo in 2019. Cohen’s trips, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu almost certainly approved, were part of an operation to gain compromising information on the ICC prosecutor and her family. The Mossad obtained a cache of material, “including transcripts of an apparent sting operation against her husband,” The Guardian reported.
Israel was desperate to protect its Congo secret. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed Thursday that it was blocked from reporting in 2022 that the Congo trips were part of an operation to “extort or recruit” Bensouda. A Gambian lawyer, Bensouda was ICC Prosecutor from 2012 to 2021, and for eight years before that, Deputy Prosecutor in charge of the Prosecutions Division of the ICC.
The Guardian’s reporting revealed that Joseph Kabila, a former president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was an Israeli intelligence asset. In 2018, Bensouds met with then-President Kabila in a Manhattan hotel room. The meeting turned out to be a setup. Cohen unexpectedly entered the room and spoke to the ICC prosecutor.
A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Guardian story “false and unfounded” and “meant to hurt the state of Israel.”
The man who opened doors for Israel in Congo was Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire whom the Trump administration sanctioned for “opaque and corrupt” mining and oil deals in Congo. Gertler accompanied Cohen on his trips to Congo and introduced him to Kabila, Gertler’s longtime friend. On his third visit, Cohen was expelled by Congo’s new president, Felix Tshisekedi.
If the Guardian’s report is true, Cohen’s effort to pressure Bensouda backfired spectacularly. In 2021, the ICC announced a formal investigation into allegations of war crimes by Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza and the West Bank. Last week, Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders.
“I still very much hope that this is a false libel,” Pardo says of the Guardian report. "I'd say— God help us—if such a thing happened, we are not only cutting off the branch on which we sit, but the entire tree trunk.”
Odd Events: On May 3, a 35-year-old Chechen man was shot and killed outside the North Carolina home of a U.S. Army Special Forces colonel. The same day, two Jordanians driving a box truck attempted to force their way onto the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Va.
Miscommunication? Mistaken identity? Or is something more sinister happening? The murky circumstances and strange coincidences in both incidents underscore concerns about possible foreign terrorism and espionage targeting military facilities and personnel.
Ramzan Daraev, of Chicago was shot and killed on May 3 in Carthage, N.C., a 45-minute drive from Fort Liberty, formerly known as Fort Bragg. Fort Liberty is home to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which includes the Army’s secretive Delta Force.
Fox News identified the shooter only as an Army Special Forces colonel who lived at the home. The colonel, whose name has not been released, has not been charged with a crime.
The colonel’s wife called 911 and reported that someone was taking photographs and had become “very aggressive” towards her husband outside their home. Another Chechen man located in a vehicle some distance from the incident was questioned and released.
Daraev was working as a subcontractor for New Jersey-based Utilities One, which said he was performing pole surveys for a fiber infrastructure project. He was found along a power line 250 yards from the roadway but was not in possession of any utility equipment, utility clothing, or identification at the time of the shooting.
Utilities One said Daraev had immigrated to escape Russia’s war in Ukraine. He was in the United States illegally, according to Fox. In a Change.org petition called "Justice for Ramzan Daraev," Daraev’s family said he was unarmed and was shot four times, twice in the back.
In the other May 3 incident, which Potomac Local News first reported, two men drove up to the gate of Marine Corps Base Quantico and claimed to be Amazon subcontractors making a delivery in Quantico, Virginia, which is accessed through the base. When military police directed the two to go to a holding area, the driver continued to drive onto the base. Guards put up the vehicle denial barriers, blocking the truck from getting farther onto the base, and detained the pair.
Fox News reported that one of the Jordanians had illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in April but was released with a court date. The other overstayed a student visa. The two men were arrested for trespassing.
Chinese Snooping, Too: Military bases across the United States were already on edge due to a huge increase in the number of Chinese nationals suspected of spying on American military personnel.
On March 27, a Chinese national who was illegally in the United States tried to enter the Marine Corps’ sprawling training center at Twentynine Palms, California without authorization or valid identification.
In January, a Chinese graduate student, Fengyun Shi, was charged under a rarely-used law with six misdemeanors under the sprawling Espionage Act for flying a drone and taking photos over a Virginia shipyard that manufactures U.S. aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. But he’s not being charged with acting on behalf of a foreign government, only with illegally taking pictures with a drone over the sensitive facility.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Chinese nationals, sometimes posing as tourists, have accessed military bases and other sensitive sites in the United States as many as 100 times in recent years. The incidents appear designed to test security practices at U.S. military installations and other federal sites.
The United States expelled two Chinese Embassy officials in 2019 on suspicions of espionage after they improperly drove onto a military base south of Virginia Beach, Va., that’s home to SEAL Team Six. At least 20 Chinese students with valid visas have been refused entry into the United States since November, according to Bloomberg.
Gaza Ceasefire Scuttled: CIA Director Bill Burns is not known for emotional outbursts. But the soft-spoken, mild-mannered career diplomat “almost blew a gasket” when he found out a potential ceasefire deal in Gaza had been scuttled by Egyptian intelligence.
Three sources told CNN that Maj. Gen. Ahmed Abdel Khalek, a senior Egyptian intelligence officer, quietly inserted more of Hamas’ demands into the framework after Israel signed off on it earlier this month. Other mediators and the Israelis were not informed.
“We were all duped,” one source told CNN.
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Israel quickly rejected the ceasefire deal Hamas announced on May 6 and launched its assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah the following day. Dozens of civilians were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike on a Hamas compound in Rafah that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “tragic mishap.”
A spokesman for the Egyptian government called CNN’s story “wrong” and said the “insult” to Egyptian mediators may lead them to abandon talks to end the conflict.
Did Khalek act recklessly? Was he too close to Hamas? Or did someone want to sideline him? Inside the Mukhabarat, Egypt’s intelligence service, Khalek was responsible for the Palestine file and built a close relationship with Hamas. In 2018, Khalek attended a funeral procession organized by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, to mourn recently slain fighters, a move that helped win the group’s trust. His boss, Abbas Kamel, visited Gaza in 2021, the first Egyptian intelligence chief to set foot in the strip since the early 2000s.
Sailor Spy: A Navy chief was sentenced to 18 years in military prison for handing over classified information to a woman he met on the Internet.
Chief Fire Controlman Bryce Pedicini, who was also given a bad conduct discharge, was convicted of espionage at a seven-day trial in April.
Navy prosecutors said a woman posing as a Japanese researcher reached out to Pedicini in 2022 on Facebook, inviting him to write research papers. The woman was a spy working for a foreign government the prosecution didn’t name in open court. Pedicini sent her a classified document relating to a ballistic missile system and documents outlining Chinese and Russian threats in exchange for $1,000, according to the government.
In an unsworn statement, Pedicini told the judge that his actions were "foolish and wrong” but that he never meant to harm the United States.
Double Agent in Place: There’s an interesting wrinkle in the story of the 71-year-old former CIA officer who pleaded guilty last week to providing national defense information to Chinese intelligence officers.
As we reported last week, Alexander Yuk Ching Ma and his brother, also a former CIA officer, met in Hong Kong in 2001 with intelligence officers from the Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB), which reports to the Ministry of State Security, China’s version of the CIA. The two men divulged CIA secrets in exchange for $50,000.
Ma had been a CIA officer in the 1980s, but most of the information came from Ma’s brother, David, who had worked for the CIA from 1967 to 1982. David Ma had served as a case officer running agents somewhere in Asia in a “location of critical interest to the SSSB.” (Ma’s brother, who is now deceased, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was not charged due to cognitive issues.)
The plea agreement, which arrived too late to be included in last week’s roundup, revealed that by 2003 (and possibly earlier), the FBI had learned of Alexander Ma’s ties to Chinese intelligence.
That year, Alexander Ma applied for a job at the FBI bureau in Honolulu and was hired as a contract linguist. The plea agreement called the FBI’s decision to hire Ma a “ruse.”The FBI hired him “for the purpose of monitoring and investigating the defendant’s activities and contacts” with Chinese intelligence officers. In addition, keeping a double agent like Ma in place would have allowed U.S. intelligence to feed disinformation back to China.
According to court documents, FBI agents obtained an audio and video recording of the 2001 meeting in Hong Kong between Alexander Ma, his brother David, and Chinese intelligence officers.
Court documents show the FBI was closely watching Alexander Ma after he started working as a translator at the Honolulu bureau. An affidavit lists numerous dates when he photographed and made copies of classified documents with the intent to provide them to his Chinese handlers. The FBI terminated him in October 2012.
In 2019, Ma was exposed in an undercover FBI sting. He accepted $2,000 in cash as an appreciation for his past efforts on behalf of Chinese intelligence. An undercover FBI agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer convinced Ma of his bona fides by showing him the video of the Hong Kong meeting. According to a court document, Ma told the undercover officer, “I just want to help the motherland.”
Pocket Litter:
Police in Belgium and France searched the properties and office of a European Parliament employee suspected of receiving money from Russia to promote its propaganda via a controversial news website. The employee under investigation works for lawmaker Marcel de Graaff of the far-right Dutch party Forum for Democracy. (The Telegraph)
Israel’s Mossad says Iran has recruited criminal organizations across Europe to target Israeli and Jewish targets. The Mossad says Iran was behind a May 24 attack by a man who threw two airsoft grenades at the Israeli Embassy in Brussels. (Al-Monitor)
A rocket launched by North Korea to deploy the country’s second spy satellite exploded shortly after liftoff. It did manage to float balloons full of trash into South Korea. (AP)
John Mark Dougan, a former Florida sheriff’s deputy who fled to Russia to avoid a felony cyberstalking arrest, has built up a network of 167 Russian disinformation websites masquerading as independent local news publishers in the United States. (NewsGuard)
Lev Parnas, the erstwhile Russian-American “businessman” who helped Rudy Giuliani create the “Biden crime family” myth on behalf of Russian intelligence and President Trump, respectively, is the guest of former senior CIA officers John Sipher and Jerry O'Shea on their Mission Implausible podcast.
Is there something we missed? Or something you would like to see more of? Send your tips, corrections, and thoughts to SpyTalk@protonmail.com.
Impressive!! You've moved my morning from espresso shots to double whiskey shots. Now I'm inclined to pay a social visit to Trump Tower.
The Weekly out does itself again. So many stories. So many new insights. I kept thinking that I must have read the last article only to find that there were several more juicy items to read. I'm worn out.