Espionage

The U.S. attorney general and intelligence director warned Friday that the nation has lost potentially critical intelligence during the last week because telecommunications companies cut their cooperation with the government after a controversial espionage law was allowed to lapse. In an unusually blunt letter to Congress, Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence J.

Editor's note: Rachel Abramowitz will be periodically checking in on the trial of Anthony Pellicano -- former private eye to the stars, who faces 110 counts of racketeering, wiretapping, conspiracy and other federal charges -- and writing about what the case means to Hollywood. -- For once, Chris Rock wasn't laughing. Dressed in a black suit, the comedian was subdued and spoke in such a hushed voice that the judge had to urge him to "project" during his brief 8 a.m.

A Bush administration plan to issue new orders realigning the chain of command over U.S. spy services has triggered turf-related skirmishes across the intelligence community. The changes could erode the CIA's standing as the nation's lead spy service abroad by requiring agency station chiefs in certain countries to cede authority to officials from other U.S. spy agencies, officials said.

Citing a journalist's need to keep news sources confidential, a federal judge in Santa Ana declined Thursday to order a reporter to reveal the names of federal officials who leaked information to him for a 2006 story about a grand jury investigation into a scheme to send sensitive military technology to China. Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz was subpoenaed to testify in federal court by U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney.

An American lawyer was sentenced Monday to three years in prison in Belarus in a case that raised already high tensions between Washington and the authoritarian ex-Soviet republic. Emmanuel Zeltser was convicted at a closed trial of commercial espionage and using false documents. He is an expert on organized crime and money laundering. The United States protested his detention and raised concerns about his health in custody.

Before she became a famously untidy television chef, Julia Child had a secret career as an American spy, winning praise for her attention to detail as she managed the flow of classified communications from remote posts in Ceylon and China during World War II. Long before he appeared on screen as a lunatic general in "Dr. Strangelove" and a corrupt cop in "The Godfather," Sterling Hayden was parachuting into fascist Croatia as a secret operative for America's fledgling espionage service.

She's called the Mata Hari of North Korea, a temptress-spy who for years used her sensual charms to seduce South Korean military officers into giving up secrets. The method was potentially lethal: Won Jeong-hwa reportedly plotted to assassinate South Korean agents with poisoned needles provided by handlers from Pyongyang.

On an early autumn day more than four years ago, the CIA station chief in Rome allegedly presented Italy's top spymaster with a list of people he described as prime targets in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. The CIA wanted the targets "taken away," in the words of one Italian official. At the top of the list of about 10 names was a radical Egyptian cleric widely known as Abu Omar. Within months, Abu Omar was abducted, allegedly by CIA operatives, as he walked along a Milan sidewalk.

Can the coins jingling in your pocket trace your movements? The Defense Department is warning its American contractor employees about a new espionage threat seemingly straight from Hollywood: It discovered Canadian coins with tiny radio-frequency transmitters inside. In a U.S. government report, it said the coins were found planted on U.S.

Reversing itself, the Defense Department says its espionage report that warned about Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters was not true. The Defense Security Service said it never could substantiate its own published claims about the mysterious coins. It has begun an internal review to determine how the false information was included in a 29-page report about espionage concerns. The service had contended since late June that such coins were found planted on U.S.