Espionage

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.

An Iranian-born Israeli was charged with passing defense information to Tehran, police in Jerusalem said. The man, who lives abroad, was arrested by police and agents of the Shin Bet security agency on May 8 after arriving in Israel for a visit, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The man told interrogators he repeatedly visited the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, and gave the Iranians names of acquaintances who he said served in the Israeli security forces, Rosenfeld said.

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.

Russian officials have said Michael Lee White was a U.S. agent involved in the recent fighting between their troops and Georgia. They claim to have found the Army veteran's passport in Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia. But in his cramped teacher's apartment at a business college in southern China, the American said Wednesday that he'd never been to Georgia. When the five-day war was raging last month, White said, he was in his hometown of Austin, Texas, caring for his sick father.

Facing allegations that the U.S. spied on its Iraqi allies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended relations between the two governments as "very open and transparent." Rice did not directly confront the assertion, raised in a new book by Bob Woodward, that the Bush administration spied extensively on Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and other Iraqi officials. Rice said in Morocco, "I myself work constantly with Prime Minister Maliki, and we share information." From Times Wire Reports

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.

A South Korean court convicted a North Korean defector charged with extracting state secrets from military officers in return for sexual favors and sentenced her to five years in prison, media said. Won Jeong-hwa, 34, was arrested in August on suspicion of posing as a defector and sleeping with South Korean military officers so she could get classified information.