Tag: InternationalNews

{Federal police ordered some 200 Terena Indians to leave a former congressman’s ranch in south-central Brazil on Thursday in the latest flashpoint of a widening conflict over land ownership in South America’s farm belt.}

The ranch’s owner, Ricardo Bacha, skipped a meeting in Brasilia with the country’s vice president over the land conflicts to return to the disputed area, claiming his wife and son were being held hostage by the Indians.

Brazil’s indigenous policy, which includes returning land to natives based on anthropological studies, is considered one of the world’s most progressive. But it has sparked violence since the country became an agricultural superpower and Indian policy clashed with farming interests.

Federal police planned to give the Terena Indians a day to respond to the evacuation order, said Francisco das Chagas, a police spokesman in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the ranch.

“The Indians may or may not leave; if they don’t obey, the police will draw up a plan for their removal,” he told Reuters.

Funai, the federal government’s Indian affairs agency in Brasilia, said in a written statement that the Terena had not taken anyone hostage and had not used violence, although they had ignited fireworks outside the ranch.

{wirestory}

{{Iran’s state radio says authorities have executed two men convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad and the American CIA spy agency.}}

Sunday’s report says Mohammad Heidari, who was accused of providing Mossad with classified information in return of money, and Kourosh Ahmadi, who allegedly gave the CIA intelligence on Iran, were hanged.

The report didn’t say when the men were arrested or tried.

Iran occasionally says it has dismantled Western spying networks in the country and announces arrests of individuals on espionage charges.

Tehran accuses Israel and the U.S. of spying on its vital interests, particularly its nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at producing an atomic weapon. Tehran denies the charge.

Both Israel and the U.S have not ruled out a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

AP

{{Pope Francis lamented that investment losses by banks trigger more alarm in the economic crisis than the struggle of people to feed their families, as he led a huge rally Saturday to invigorate the church’s moral conscience, hours after he held talks at the Vatican about the economic crisis with Germany’s leader.}}

Some 200,000 people, from Europe, Asia and the pope’s native South America, filled St. Peter’s Square and nearby streets to join Francis in hours of prayer, music and speeches aimed at encouraging Catholics to strengthen their faith and making morality play a greater role in everyday life.

“If investments, the banks plunge, this is a tragedy, if families are hurting, if they have nothing to eat, well, this is nothing, this is our crisis today,” Francis told the crowd, insisting that the true crisis is one of morale values.

Francis said his church “opposes this mentality” and pledged that it will be dedicated to “the poor people.”

Earlier in the day, the pope met privately with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made a brief visit to Rome, mindful of the importance of Christian voters back home ahead of an election she faces in September. She joined the pope in expressing concern about the many victims of Europe’s economic crisis.

Francis, who is Argentine, has picked up on campaigns by the two previous popes, the Polish John Paul II and German Benedict XVI, to reinvigorate what the Catholic church sees as flagging religious enthusiasm on a continent with Christian roots, including dwindling number of churchgoers in much of Western Europe, and a decline in morality.

“I see continuity in the missionary aspect, in becoming aware of the importance of Christianity for our Christian roots,” said Merkel, adding that the “simple and touching words” of Francis, who was elected pontiff two months ago, are already reaching people.

The vast cobblestone square outside St. Peter’s Basilica is traditionally the boundary for pontiffs greeting the faithful at outdoor Vatican gatherings. But Francis kept going in his pope-mobile past the edge of the square as he waved cheerfully and sometimes blew kisses to the enthusiastic crowd, which the Vatican said numbered some 200,000.

He was driven halfway down the Rome boulevard that leads from the square to the Tiber River before turning back.

Merkel’s Christian Democrat party depends heavily on support from Protestant and Catholic voters in Germany, and the 45-minute chat and photo opportunity in the Apostolic Palace could be a welcome campaign boost for a leader largely identified by Europe’s economically suffering citizens as a champion of debt reduction, including painful austerity across much of the continent.

{wirestory}

{Russian ex-spy Anna Chapman, center, walks a Turkish catwalk flanked by two men posing as secret service agents at a fashion show in Antalya, Turkey.}

{{The embarrassing arrest of a suspected CIA officer in Moscow is the latest reminder that, even after the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in an espionage battle with secret tactics, spying devices and training that sometimes isn’t enough to avoid being caught.}}

The most recent skirmish involves Russian security services ambushing a 29-year-old diplomat who they say was trying to court a spy. The Russians said Ryan Fogle was caught red-handed with a recruitment letter, a compass, two wigs and a wad of cash.

The Russians published photographs of his arrest and displayed all his supposed spy gear for the world. It was intended as proof to the public that the young diplomat was in fact working for the CIA: Gotcha.

None of these tactics are new. Humiliating and outwitting the other side is a tradition that extends back decades. In 1977, the KGB arrested a pretty blonde named Martha Peterson in Moscow trying to leave a message for an important spy, code-named Trigon.

Just as in the case of Fogle, the Russians were waiting with cameras when they nabbed Peterson. Eight years later, the KGB filmed the arrest of A.G. Tolkachev, a top CIA spy, which it later made available to Russian television.

In a case that made headlines across the world, the FBI in 2010 wrapped up a ring of sleeper agents it had been following for years in the United States.

The Russians were not amused. Eventually the sleeper agents, including Anna Chapman, who later posed for a magazine cover in lingerie, were returned in a swap.

These are the perils of working overseas. “I was angry,” Peterson recalled in interview. “I was caught with things in my possession too. That is a bad feeling.”

The idea is not to get caught. But that’s easier said than done. The Russians are famously adept at identifying and catching spies. The Russians have netted at least a dozen agency officers conducting clandestine activities over the years, former CIA officials said.

To reduce its exposure, the CIA goes to great lengths to train its officers to avoid what happened to Fogle — if he was doing what the Russians said.

Agency officers undergo intense training at the CIA spy farm in Virginia, taking what is known as the “field tradecraft course.” It’s a basic spy course in which agency officers learn to identify when they’re being followed.

In CIA jargon, they’re taught to perform surveillance detection runs. They are supposed to perform these before a mission. The rule of thumb: If a CIA officer sees something twice over time and distance, he or she is likely being watched.

For those being deployed overseas to places like Moscow, they receive further training, including a hostile environment tradecraft course. FBI agents in Washington and New York, who have the most experience following spies, put rookie case officers through their paces.

These FBI agents are also trained by the CIA. They play rough, giving the young agency officers a taste of what Fogle likely experienced. The course formerly was known as “internal operations” for CIA officers living behind the Iron Curtain.

The wives or husbands of agency officers stationed in Moscow also took the course. Everyone was expected to be prepared.

Despite precautions, Moscow is a place unto itself. Former agency officers call them “Moscow rules” because of the complex cat-and-mouse games. It can be a hard place to do business, perhaps one of the toughest places in the world to recruit agents. In the past, paranoia has swept through the CIA station in Moscow.

In the late 1980s, when the Cold War was still raging, the Moscow station was practically paralyzed, believing its officers were under constant surveillance. There was no way they could leave the station and recruit people without being spotted.

Operations almost came to a halt. By the early 1990s, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the CIA figured out it could do business again in Moscow.

The agency officers in Moscow developed a list of quirky indicators to help determine whether they were being followed. A former CIA officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss intelligence operations, recounted that the Russians tended to use cars so inconspicuous that they were conspicuous.

There were always two Russians in the car in case one needed to get out on foot. At a red light, they behaved like they were parking rather than stopping at the light. The CIA determined that certain cars with an inverted pyramid on the front grill were used by the KGB.

One former agency officer said he never took shortcuts in Moscow. He would run detection routes that could last hours. The final step involved leaving a car and riding public transportation. Then and only then, eventually moving on foot, would he secretly meet a source. Another agency officer used his wife as a decoy to distract the KGB when he left secret messages.

{{Sometimes the banal worked.}}

Persuading the Russians to stop following agency officers sometimes meant boring them. If the Russians believed it was another routine day — walking the dog, grocery shopping and taking the children to the park — they might abandon their surveillance.

To beat the Russians, they also relied on technology. The U.S. government had cracked many of the Soviet Union’s encrypted frequencies they used to conduct surveillance. An agency officer using an earpiece could sometimes determine whether chatter about making a “left” or “right” was about him and safely abort his mission.

Even with precautions, Peterson said there are things a spy doesn’t know. She had no idea the Russians had learned the identity of Trigon. They knew she was leaving something for him at a designated place at a bridge.

They were waiting for her with cameras and flashbulbs when she arrived one summer’s night in Moscow. After groping her, KGB agents found a small receiver she had hidden. She was questioned for hours then kicked out of the country.

Later, she found out the CIA had itself been compromised. In 1984, the FBI arrested Karl Koecher after learning he was a KGB mole who once worked for the CIA as a translator. Koecher had a played a role in Trigon’s downfall and ultimately in Peterson’s arrest.

“I had that feeling I had made a mistake. But it was clearly an ambush in my case,” said Peterson, who published a book last year about her experience, “The Widow Spy.”

Almost a year after she was caught, the KGB in 1978 publicly revealed Peterson’s CIA employment, payback for the FBI disclosing the arrest of three Soviet spies in the U.S. Newspaper reports carried the Soviet claim that she was a “CIA agent” who was involved in a plot to poison one of their citizens. She worked for the CIA but the rest of the story was fiction.

Fogle was waylaid, too, raising questions about what happened. Former CIA officials said that little about his case makes sense.

Disguises are typically used to leave the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and sneak past nearby Russian observation points. But once an officer runs the final phase of his detection route, there would have been no need for a wig, much less two.

It’s also unlikely, officials said, that Fogle would have been recruiting anyone at that time. Typically, that would have happened already in another setting. You don’t use the streets of Moscow to sign up a spy, they said.

And the source would have been vetted before any face-to-face meeting. He would have been assessed and then developed before any recruitment.

“I say it would be extremely unusual unless you had 150 percent confidence in the relationship,” said Joseph Wippl, a former senior CIA clandestine officer who has worked overseas.

Fogle could have been tempted by a provocation or dangle, something that has always worried the CIA, especially in Russia.

Someone could have provided the CIA such sensational “feeder” information that the CIA couldn’t resist trying to send a message to the possible recruit in a predetermined place. But the Russians would have been waiting.

Why the Russians made a show of Fogle’s arrest is unclear, even as it’s happened in other cases. Were they sending a message to the U.S., expressing diplomatic displeasure?

“I don’t know what to make of it,” Wippl said. “It doesn’t add up.”

The CIA has declined to comment on Fogle’s arrest.

Not every blow-up like Fogle obviously makes the nightly news. In 1988, the KGB executed Soviet Gen. Dmitri Fyodorovich Polyakov for being a spy for the U.S. government, which had code-named him “Tophat,” ”Bourbon” and “Roam.” Afterward, according to two former CIA officials, the KGB sent a video of his execution to the CIA.

{The Moscow Times }

{{French President Francois Hollande has signed a law authorizing gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, after months of nationwide protests and wrenching debate.}}

His signature means the first gay marriages may be celebrated in France within about 10 days.

Hollande’s office said he signed the bill Saturday morning, a day after the Constitutional Council struck down a challenge to the law.

Hollande, a Socialist, had made legalizing gay marriage one of his campaign pledges last year.

While polls for years have shown majority support for gay marriage in France, adoption by same-sex couples is more controversial.

The bill prompted months of widespread protests, largely by conservative and religious groups. Some were marred by clashes with police.

It became a flashpoint for frustrations at the increasingly unpopular Hollande.

AP

{{North Korea fired three short-range guided missiles into its eastern waters on Saturday, a South Korean official said. }}

It routinely tests such missiles, but the latest launches came during a period of tentative diplomacy aimed at easing tensions.

The North fired two missiles Saturday morning and another in the afternoon, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said by phone. He said the North’s intent was unclear.

In March, North Korea launched what appeared to be two KN-02 missiles off its east coast. The country routinely launches such short-range missiles in an effort to improve its arsenal.

North Korea recently withdrew two mid-range missiles believed to be capable of reaching Guam after moving them to its east coast earlier this year, U.S. officials said.

The North is banned from testing ballistic missiles under U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Earlier this year, North Korea threatened nuclear strikes on Seoul and Washington because of annual U.S.-South Korean military drills and U.N. sanctions imposed over its third nuclear test in February. The drills ended late last month.

Analysts say the North Korean threats were partly an attempt to push Washington to agree to disarmament-for-aid talks.

This past week, Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy on North Korea, ended trips to South Korea, China and Japan.

On Friday, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned from North Korea but didn’t immediately give details of his talks with leaders there.