The Security & Intelligence Digest from Aleksey Shcherbakov
The Security & Intelligence Digest from Aleksey Shcherbakov
This open-source digest is distributed to intelligence agencies, former
intelligence officers and specialist journalists & writers in the CIS,
North America, Europe and Australia.
1. Putin Recalls Spying Days on a German Talk Show
By Adam Tanner
Reuters
WEIMAR, Germany, Thursday, Apr. 11, 2002
The usually reserved President Vladimir Putin talked about
his
days as a KGB spy in Dresden in the 1980s in an unusual talk show
appearance
late Tuesday when visiting the east German city of Weimar.
In the hour-long interview alongside Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der, Putin
said
the
German leader helped him quietly meet an old friend linked to the former
East German
spy agency when he returned to Dresden in September.
“I told Gerhard that when I am in Dresden, my wife and I would like to
meet
someone ...
a woman who belongs to a family of a former State Security official.
“Gerhard’s answer pleased me greatly,” he said. “He said it was all the
same
to him, it
was a personal meeting, and he said he would be glad if our friend came
along. He invited her to lunch and to a ride on the Elbe River.” “It seems
like a minor detail, but for me it was a good sign,” he said in the live
television show that ended at midnight.
At the time both the Kremlin and German officials denied that Putin had
met
any friends with connections to the Stasi, whose former members are
shunned
in German public life.
Putin told the story to illustrate his good ties with Schr?der, who was
hosting the Russian leader for a two-day summit in Weimar that was to end
Wednesday.
Putin served as a spy in Dresden from 1984 to 1990. In the interview, he
joked at first
that the job was full of adventure as in James Bond novels, but then he
changed his line.
“Speaking seriously, it was really routine work. I was dealing with
information,” he said, providing no further details.
Speaking at Weimar’s National Theater, Putin told how he had developed a
taste for beer while living in Germany and how his daughters both speak
German like natives. Putin has told some of these stories before, but he
rarely goes into much detail when discussing his work before he became
involved in politics.
Asked how he had such a positive attitude toward Germany given his
parents’
suffering in World War II—his father was a soldier, his mother was in the
Leningrad
blockade—Putin cited past Russian military victories.
“The Russians have no hate toward the Germans,” he said. “I don’t know if
Germans
will like this answer, but Russia never lost a war against Germany. ...
There is no inner
feeling of being wounded.”
Putin spoke in Russian on the talk show, but Schr?der praised his German.
“He has a very intense relationship to the German language and Germany,”
he
said.
“He can tell many jokes in German.”
Putin also showed his appreciation for local cuisine before the show by
sharing blood
sausage, suckling pig and baked apple with Schr?der at a nearby
restaurant.
2. Chile helped Britain spy on Argentina during Falklands War
AFP|Published: Thursday April 11, 9:05 AM
SANTIAGO, April 10 AFP
Chile’s armed forces collaborated with Britain in
its 1982 war with Argentina over the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands, a
Santiago
daily reported today, citing a former chief of Chile’s intelligence
services.
“Intelligence services from the army, navy and air force gave intelligence
support to British expeditionary forces, with the knowledge, of course, of
top authorities in the three institutions,” general Ramses Alvarez Sgolia
was quoted as saying in El Mercurio de Santiago.
The revelation was made during Alvarez Sgolia’s testimony Tuesday in a
Santiago appeals court. Alvarez Sgolia is the prime suspect in the
February
1982 murder of union leader and Pinochet opponent Tucapel Jimenez.
The reference to the Falklands war emerged when thegeneral was asked about
a
Chilea intelligence agent’sinvolvement in the murder of Jimenez and in
joint
missions with Britain.
In late March, the Tercera de Santiago daily published an interview with a
former Chilean air force chief who said that his agents spied for Britain
with the knowledge of then-president Pinochet, and received military
assistance from Britain in return.
Pinochet’s government had promised neutrality in the
conflict shortly after the start of the war.
In 1999, in a statement defending Pinochet, who was then being detained in
London for human rights violations during his regime,
British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher cited Santiago’s “valiant”
aid during the Falklands War.
She revealed that a momentary disruption of Chilean spy radar had enabled
Argentine planes to sink two British ships, Sir Galahad
and Sir Tristan, which were transporting combat troops to the Falklands.
Britain and Argentina fought a 74-day war over the territory, claimed by
Argentina, after Buenos Aires sent troops there. Almost 1,000
soldiers were killed, 652 of them Argentines.
3. Moscow claims irrefutable proof of US spying in Russia
Ian Traynor in Moscow
Thursday April 11, 2002
The Guardian
President Vladimir Putin’s ambition to make Russia a strategic ally of the
US suffered a setback yesterday when his security service accused two US
diplomats of spying.
The FSB announced that it had thwarted a CIA plot to obtain Russian
defence
secrets and confidential information on security connections between
Russia
and unnamed states of the former Soviet Union.
“The FSB has irrefutable proof of the CIA’s spying activities against
Russia,” a spokesman told the Interfax new agency.
An FSB officer, speaking anonymously on Russian state television last
night,
said the plot was nipped in the bud a year ago when a Russian arms
industry
employee recruited by the CIA was uncovered by the FSB and agreed to work
as
a double agent, enabling the Russians to mount a sting operation.
The FSB identified one of the Americans involved as Yunju Kensinger, a
woman
said to have been working under cover as third secretary in the consular
department of the US embassy in Moscow. She was said to have left Russia.
The other American was said to be David Robertson, a diplomat at the
embassy
in an unnamed former Soviet state, who was said to have had several
meetings
outside Russia with the double agent.
The US aim was to obtain secrets about new Russian military projects and
its
military cooperation with former Soviet countries, according to the FSB.
It announced the allegation a little more than a month before President
George Bush is due to make his first visit to Russia for a meeting with Mr
Putin intended to seal the new strategic partnership the two countries
have
developed since September 11, and to agree on radical cuts in their
nuclear
arsenals.
The Russian double agent is said to have been an employee of a secret
Russian defence ministry installation. The anonymous FSB source said on
television that the Americans drugged him.
“They used psychotropic preparations unknown to us,” the FSB official
said.
“They did not bear in mind the person’s physiological features, and left
him
in a sorry state.”
The Itar-Tass news agency accused the CIA of using “the most unscrupulous
methods” on the double agent, named only as Viktor, who it said had needed
medical treatment to recover from his alleged experience with the
Americans.
“They sent him letters with secret writing which indicated the location of
the dead letter drops. These dead letter drops contained various
intelligence assignments and a certain sum of money,” the FSB official
said.
The American embassy in Moscow refused to comment on the allegation.
It was not clear last night what impact the accusation will have on Mr
Putin’s seeming determination to use the war on terrorism to fashion a
fundamentally new relationship between Moscow and Washington.
By Judith Ingram
The Associated Press
Thursday, Apr. 11, 2002. Page 1
The Federal Security Service on Wednesday accused the U.S.
Central Intelligence
Agency of trying to acquire Russian military secrets, using
two agents posing as
American diplomats to try to recruit an employee of a
classified military facility.
The allegations included such traditional spy tradecraft as
invisible ink, secret drop
points and mind-altering drugs. Television news programs
made
their usual
contribution to such espionage scandals, showing grainy
footage provided by
security officials.
A spokesman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said
that CIA officers posing as
embassy officials in Russia and another, unnamed former
Soviet
republic had tried to
recruit an employee at a secret Defense Ministry
installation.
The service named two alleged participants in the operation:
David Robertson, whose
post at an unnamed embassy in the former Soviet Union was
not
described, and Yunju
Kensinger, reportedly a third secretary in the consular
department of the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow. Citing an "informed source," Interfax said
Kensinger had already left
Moscow.
The news agency quoted the FSB's press office as saying that
Kensinger, like other
alleged American intelligence agents in Russia, had not met
personally with her
Russian contact or contacts. Instead, she used secret drop
points and messages in
invisible ink. It was not immediately clear when the events
in
question took place.
State-controlled ORT television showed grainy footage of a
woman identified as
Kensinger walking with other embassy employees. It also
broadcast pictures of a
plastic-wrapped package stashed among some bushes in what it
identified as the
Sokolniki neighborhood of Moscow, and an interview in a
darkened room with a man
identified as an FSB operative.
The man explained that the Defense Ministry employee,
identified only by his first
name, Viktor, had gone to a U.S. Embassy in another former
Soviet republic last spring
to try to find information about a relative who had gone
missing abroad. Embassy
officers allegedly slipped him psychotropic drugs to get
information out of him,
because he was found a week later wandering the streets in
shock and with amnesia.
Itar-Tass reported that only after psychiatric treatment had
Viktor -- whom an FSB
employee called a "real patriot" -- been able to reconstruct
the details of his visit.
"As a result, the Federal Security Service took the
necessary
steps to stop the leak of
Russian secrets through this channel and unmask the Langley
employees who used
the most unscrupulous methods," Itar-Tass said.
Despite the end of the Cold War, experts say the spy
business
is alive and well
between Russia and the United States and that both sides
have
a healthy interest in
trying to predict the other's next moves -- even if they are
now allies.
Shortly after Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, became
acting president in December
1999, U.S. businessman Edmond Pope became the first American
convicted of spying
in Russia in 40 years. Putin pardoned him shortly after his
conviction.
Last year, Russia ordered 50 U.S. diplomats to leave the
country, mirroring the U.S.
expulsion of Russian diplomats following the arrest of FBI
agent Robert Hanssen on
charges of spying for Moscow. The Russians' arrest of U.S.
Fulbright scholar John
Tobin on marijuana charges also attracted wide attention
after
security officials said
they believed he was a spy-in-training. Tobin was freed from
prison in August 2001.
Analysts noted the latest spy scandal emerged just weeks
ahead
of a May summit
between U.S. President George W. Bush and Putin.
"It's the choice of timing that immediately raises
questions,"
said Tom Sanderson, an
analyst at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies
in Washington. "There are
a number of people who are unhappy at how Putin is walking
in
lockstep with the
Americans. You could see this as a shot across the bow, that
he not get too cozy."
"Of course spy scandals aren't good for bilateral relations,
but they don't have any
negative consequences," Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director
for
the USA and Canada
Institute, was cited by Interfax as saying. "I don't think
that this scandal will be of such
a scale as to affect preparations for the summit."
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow would not comment on the
espionage
accusation, which
came amid heightened U.S.-Russian tensions following a warm
spell prompted by
Russia's participation in the U.S.-led anti-terror campaign.
In December, Bush announced that the United States would
dump
the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow had vowed to
preserve. The two nations
have sparred over recently imposed U.S. steel tariffs, which
Russia says will severely
damage its metals industry, and Russia's ban on U.S.
poultry.
5. RUSSIA ALMOST DELIVERED AN AMERICAN SPY TO AMERICA
Sergey Borisov
PRAVDA.Ru
19:16 2002-04-09
The intelligence services sometimes play complicated
games, which may successfully tangle both the services
themselves, and their adversaries. FBI agent Robert Philip
Hanssen’s case is a very good example of this: he was
charged with espionage in Russia’s favor. The committee
that conducted the investigation on Hanssen’s case was
shocked when it found out that the Russian special services
were going “to deliver” the super-spy to Americans ten years
ago. Russian special services wanted to deliver the American
spy to Americans! As it becomes clear from the report, Russia wrote an
official protest to the Americans in
connection with Hanssen. A “displeased” FBI agents (his name is not known)
wanted to hand American
secrets over to a Russian diplomat. Such “protests” were usually submitted
when the agents working under
diplomatic protection sensed a dirty trick on the part of their
adversaries
and feared that they could be
trapped. In other words, the agent of the Russian special services did not
believe Hanssen for some
reason. The Russians decided to make the situation secure and almost
delivered the spy to his own
employers in FBI.
The committee that is investigating the case in the FBI is no longer
surprised: so many notorious failures
have been discovered in the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
recently. Nevertheless, the fact that
Russians informed Americans about their own spy, Hanssen, is an
eye-opener.
One of Hanssen’s relatives that was also employed in FBI reported to the
authorities that Hanssen was
working for Russians. The same opinion made in 1997 by another FBI agent,
Earl Pitts, who was arrested
for spying for Russia’s himself, by the way.
The discrepancy with delivering Hanssen by Russian agents happened due to
the spy himself. He broke
his contacts with Moscow for two years (The Americans say he has been
working for Moscow since 1985).
In 1993, he tried to establish links again. An officer of the Russian
intelligence did not know about
Hanssen’s previous work. “He refused the secret documents that Hanssen
offered, and convinced the
authorities to come out with a protest to the Americans.” The report of
the
committee that investigated the
case said that Russians presented Hanssen to the Americans as “a
displeased
FBI agent.” The meeting
between a Russian intelligence officer with Robert Hanssen took place in a
parking lot not far from
Washington.
However, the Americans could not use the “gift” from their Russian
colleagues. FBI assistant Director John
Collingwood said there was not enough information at that time to
determine
the personality of a man that
Russians were talking about.
If the information in the report is true, then it is not clear how such a
mistake could happen, when Russian
special services almost gave their agent away to their own adversary? It
is
not clear, how the Russians
could “forget” that they had a guy in FBI.
There is no point in the Americans making up the story, since the
committee
was investigating the
drawbacks and mistakes in FBI’s work. William Webster is the head of the
committee, and Webster is the
former director of FBI and then the CIA. The report, which will be soon
presented to the US Congress,
harshly criticizes the activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It
was Hanssen himself who had to
correct the mistake of the Russian special services. The FBI started
checking on the information that they
received from Russia, without even knowing that it was all about Hanssen.
The spy hacked the FBI’s files
and obtained the information pertaining to the process of the
investigation.
He stopped his activity before
1999, fearing being caught. The contact resumed only in October of 1999.
As
AP reported, Hanssen
received a message from Russians, in which it was said: “We are very happy
to hear from you!” The FBI
found Hanssen’s traces and did not lose him in December of the year 2000.
> >
>
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
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non-profit research and educational purposes only.
1. Is NSAs DSA flawed?
Cryptologist at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs offers improvement for future security of e-commerce
FOR RELEASE MONDAY FEBRUARY 05, 2001
- Scientist discovers significant flaw that would have threatened the
integrity of on-line transactions
MURRAY HILL, N.J. - A cryptologist at Bell Labs, the R&D arm of Lucent
Technologies (NYSE: LU), has
shown how to improve a standard method for ensuring the trustworthiness
of e-commerce transactions,
after discovering a flaw that could have made such transactions
vulnerable to tampering in the future.
Daniel Bleichenbacher, a member of Bell Labs' Information Sciences
Research Center, recently discovered
a significant flaw in the random number generation technique used with
the widely implemented Digital
Signature Algorithm (DSA). A digital signature enables software at the
receiving end of an electronic
transaction to confirm the identity of the party initiating the
transaction and to verify the integrity of the
received information.
The vulnerability of DSA, which is part of the Digital Signature
Standard, does not pose an immediate
threat because of the computing power required to launch an attack. If
not addressed, however, this
weakness could have compromised the future integrity of secure
transactions on the Internet and on
corporate and governmental intranets. Virtual private networks, online
shopping, and financial
transactions are among the applications that could have been affected.
DSA and other elements of the Digital Signature Standard are focused on
making transactions trustworthy
- ensuring that no one can impersonate another party or alter
information
in a signed transaction without
being detected. Complementary standards provide techniques for keeping
confidential information
secure.
The vulnerability that Bleichenbacher found in DSA lies in the method
that it specifies for generating a
secret, random numerical key for each message. The effectiveness of the
keys depends on how random
the numbers actually are, since this determines how much information an
adversary can infer about them.
The probability that the algorithm will generate any particular number
should be virtually uniform across
the range of all possible results.
Bleichenbacher discovered that DSA's random number generator is
biased -
it is twice as likely to choose
a secret key from one range of numbers than from another.
Bleichenbacher
further discovered that this
bias significantly weakens DSA and could eventually make it more
vulnerable to tampering. Though the
task of cracking digital signatures would challenge today's most
powerful
supercomputers, it will become
easier for future generations of computers.
"While e-commerce is not currently threatened," said Bleichenbacher, "a
good cryptosystem should always
have a comfortable security margin. That is, it should be secure even
in
10 or 20 years from the day it is
used, assuming the usual progress in hardware development. Without a
fix,
DSA would not have that
security margin."
DSA was designed by National Security Agency and is one of three
authentication algorithms approved for
generating and verifying digital signatures under the Digital Signature
Standard. This standard was
developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
and has been adopted by both
the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE). According to Bleichenbacher, these organizations could specify
a
simple fix to DSA, which providers
of applications and services could implement in software.
"NIST commends Dr. Bleichenbacher for his work and agrees that the
weakness due to the bias of the
random key generation that he has discovered should be fixed to
preserve
the future security of the
DSA," said Edward Roback, chief of the Computer Security Division in
NIST's Information Technology
Laboratory. NIST is now preparing a revision of the specification,
which
will be proposed in February. "In
the meantime," Roback said, "those who are using DSA can continue to
use
it with confidence that DSA
signatures done under the present standard will remain secure for many
more years."
Bleichenbacher first presented his findings on November 15, 2000, at a
meeting of the IEEE P1363
working group. The conference, on standard specifications for
public-key
cryptography, was hosted by the
National Security Agency at its headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
Bleichenbacher found the flaw while analyzing an appendix to the
Digital
Signature Standard. He has
devised a modification to the algorithm that would, for all practical
purposes, eliminate the the bias in
DSA's random number generator and ensure the effectiveness of the
secret
keys.
With 30,000 employees in 30 countries, Bell Labs is the world's largest
R&D organization dedicated to
communications and the leading source of new communications
technologies.
Bell Labs has generated
more than 28,000 patents since 1925 and has played a pivotal role in
inventing or perfecting key
communications technologies, including transistors, digital networking
and signal processing, lasers and
fiber-optic communications systems, communications satellites, cellular
telephony, electronic switching of
calls, touch-tone dialing, and modems. Bell Labs scientists have
received
six Nobel Prizes in Physics, nine
U.S. Medals of Science, and six U.S. Medals of Technology.
Lucent Technologies, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, designs
and
delivers the systems, software,
silicon and services for next-generation communications networks for
service providers and enterprises.
Backed by the research and development of Bell Labs, Lucent focuses on
high-growth areas such as
broadband and mobile Internet infrastructure; communications software;
communications semiconductors
and optoelectronics; Web-based enterprise solutions that link private
and
public networks; and
professional network design and consulting services. For more
information
on Lucent Technologies and
Bell Labs, visit the Web sites http://www.lucent.com and
http://www.bell-labs.com.
.
A Jordanian mercenary was arrested on Tuesday
as
he was photographing railway tracks and buildings in a town in Chechnya,
Russia's FSB security service said on Wednesday.
The Jordanian was arrested near the railway station in Gudermes. He had
a
passport naming him as Sultan Nadir al-Shishani and indicating his year
of birth as 1974, the FSB public relations center has told
Interfax.
3. CIA Pool Maintenance or profiling?
CIA chief praises Castro's 'gene pool'
Sun Sentinel
Reuters : 5:00 p.m. Feb. 7, 2001
WASHINGTON -- Cuban President Fidel
Castro received a compliment from an
unlikely source Wednesday when the head
of the CIA, which tried to overthrow
Castro in the past, praised the Cuban
leader's strong gene pool.
Asked by U.S. senators to assess the
state of Castro's health, Central
Intelligence Agency director George Tenet
said he anticipated the Cuban leader would
live for many years to come.
"He's got a great gene pool. He's going
to be around for a while," Tenet told a
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on
security threats facing the United States.
The CIA has been involved in many
actions against Castro over the years,
including organizing the abortive 1961 Bay
of Pigs invasion by armed Cuban refugees.
In the early 1960s, following President
John F. Kennedy's wish to get rid of the
communist leader, the CIA plotted such
scenarios as the use of poisoned cigars,
poison-tipped pens and exploding seashells
during a scuba-diving trip.
At one time the CIA even considered a
plan to make him look ridiculous by using a
chemical to make his famous beard fall out.
Castro, 74, continually faces questions
about his health and has endured false
reports of his death in the past. In 1999
he joked that his "enemies kill me off from
time to time."
.
4. Tenet warns of Arab Internet threat. CIA chief voices concern over mood in Arab world
Heightened popular activism in Arab nations such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could lead to turmoil
Arabia.Com February 08, 2001, 08:05 AM
WASHINGTON
(Reuters)
Heightened popular activism in Arab nations such as
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could lead to turmoil, CIA Director George
Tenet said onWednesday.
"In many places in the Arab world ... average citizens are becoming
increasingly restiveand getting louder," Tenet said in delivering an
annual
report on national security threats to the United States. "Recent events
show that the right catalyst -- such as the outbreak of
Israeli-Palestinian
violence -- can move people to act." At least 318 Palestinians, 52
Israelis
and 13 Arabs have died since the Intifada, or uprising, erupted in late
September 2000 after peace talks deadlocked.
Tenet said a restive public was increasingly able to act "without any
identifiable leadership or organizational structure" by using
communication
tools such as the Internet.
The new generation of Arab regional leaders, including Syria`s President
Bashar al-Assad, "will have their mettle tested both by populations
demanding change and by entrenched bureaucracies willing to fight hard to
maintain the status quo." Tenet has participated in Middle East peace
efforts and has visited the region frequently to help craft security
arrangements between Israelis and Palestinians.
He said gloomy economic prospects combined with high population growth
were
contributing to the tension.
"Arab governments will soon face the dilemma of choosing between a path of
gradual reform that is unlikely to close the region`s widening gap with
the
rest of the world, and the path of comprehensive change that risks fueling
independent political activity," he said.
"Choosing the former risks building tension among a younger, poorer and
more
politically assertive population," he added.
As Robert Steele points out in his book "On
Intelligence", in many instances the very best information and analysis
is available free on the Internet by simply reading the major world
newspapers on-line. It also doesn't require some absurd clearance(s)
that, despite the huge cost of vetting, produces such colossal
traitorous goons of the sort we repeatedly see in the headlines.
2. Russian faces spy trial over UK trip
British contacts vanish after meeting arms control expert
Ian Traynor in Moscow
Monday February 26, 2001
The Guardian
When Igor Sutyagin turned up at an international security
conference at the University of Birmingham three years ago last
week the brilliant young Russian had little inkling that the
contacts he struck up could bring him a 20-year term rotting in a
Russian jail.
Facing charges of state treason and spying for the west, the
36-year-old father of two and academic expert on
Russian-American arms control goes on trial this morning in the
district court of Kaluga south of Moscow.
The case, brought by Russian counter-intelligence, the FSB, will
be heard in closed session. The investigation is also secret.
After being held on remand for more than a year it was only
recently that Mr Sutyagin learned that the charges relate to the
handover to alleged American agents of information on Russian
nuclear submarines. He could be sentenced to 20 years if found
guilty, and there are few precedents for acquittals in Russian
treason trials.
Mr Sutyagin's relatives, fellow scholars, and international
associates are fearful for the fate of a respected colleague they
insist could never have been a spy.
Letters have been written, appeals dispatched, and websites
organised complaining of harassment and intimidation of
researchers in President Vladimir Putin's Russia.
But the British subject Mr Sutyagin admits he met that February
weekend in 1998 in Birmingham has failed to surface to assist
the suspect. Nor has that person's alleged British business
associate, whom Mr Sutyagin met several times. And the
London-based company the two men claimed to represent has
also mysteriously vanished.
The alleged risk analysis consultancy is no longer at the London
address known to Mr Sutyagin, although the Russian has visited
the putative firm's London office and described the premises to
his FSB interrogators. Nor is the firm responding to emails.
"I wish these people would just come out and tell their story,"
said Sergei Rogov, Mr Sutyagin's boss and director of the
USA-Canada Institute, one of the most prestigious foreign and
security policy thinktanks in Moscow. "I've no idea who the hell
these people are. It sounds like something from John Le CarrÈ.
Are they just going to wash their hands of it and see a young
man destroyed?"
A physicist and historian from the town of
Obninsk, a Soviet-era
closed town of scientists south of Moscow, Mr Sutyagin joined
the Moscow thinktank as a postgraduate student in 1988 and
had risen to head its military-political studies department by the
time he was arrested in October 1999. He was charged with
treason shortly thereafter.
Mr Sutyagin worked exclusively with open sources and his
institute has no access to Russian classified materials,
although the 1987 law on treason is deliberately vague and the
passing of unclassified analysis to foreign agents can be
prosecuted as espionage.
After being approached by the Briton in Birmingham, Mr
Sutyagin, who was paid ¸70 a month by his institute, agreed to
work as a consultant for the alleged London firm. Over the next
18 months, he has told the FSB, he earned some ¸14,000
pounds from the company, which also paid his travel expenses
to around a dozen meetings with either or both of his British
contacts in Birmingham again, London, Brussels, Budapest,
Warsaw, and Rome.
"The prosecution," said Boris Kuznetsov, Mr Sutyagin's lawyer,
"claims the company was a front organisation for US military
intelligence. The two men were British subjects, the firm was
British, but they were working for the Americans."
The names of the two men and the firm are known to the
Guardian.
"The FSB says 30 subjects were discussed, 12 of
them
classified as secret, including naval affairs, submarines, nuclear
missiles, deployments of Russian armed forces and the
processes of Russian military decision-taking," Mr Kuznetsov
said.
"Igor doesn't deny being at these meetings. He doesn't deny
discussing these issues. He does not deny taking the money.
But he did not know they were intelligence agents."
"He's a rare species, Igor," said Mr Rogov. "I've known him for 22
years. He's much more patriotic and nationalistic than me. I
could never believe he's the kind of person who would
intentionally harm Russia."
.
RUSSIA'S security service has published the address and contact numbers of
a mysterious London company at the centre of an espionage trial.
The FSB, successor to the KGB, believes Alternative Futures, based in
Leadenhall Street, was "a front organisation for an intelligence service of
one
of the Nato countries".
It claims that the company closed in 1999 after the arrest of Igor Sutyagin,
an
academic on trial in Russia for treason. The FSB also named two employees
of the company, Nadia Locke and Sean Kidd.
Anyone calling the number yesterday was told that they had reached a
business centre and Alternative Futures was no longer based there.
Sutyagin, 36, an expert on arms control issues at the prestigious Moscow
Institute of the USA and Canada, is said to have been paid ¸14,000 in
consultancy fees after meeting the firm's representatives at a conference at
Birmingham University in 1998. They later met in several European capitals.
The firm's behaviour is reminiscent of Trufax, an MI6 front operating out of
Mayfair and run by Richard Tomlinson, the rogue intelligence officer who
disclosed its existence in his memoirs published in Moscow.
Sutyagin is also accused of passing state secrets about Russia's nuclear
submarine fleet to American agents
.
The East German secret police had a favor
to ask of their KGB comrades -- could the Soviet Union recruit a man who
lived next to a German Communist party guest house in Dresden and ask him to
spy on visitors there?
"Comrade V.V. Putin to accomplish this," a Soviet official scribbled by hand
on the secret 1987 letter from the Stasi, referring to KGB agent, now
Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
Later, another Russian note suggested the recruitment did not go ahead: "To
be returned, unaccomplished".
Whether Putin failed or whether his KGB bosses later simply refused the
mission is unclear. Another handwritten Russian note says curtly the
document is to be destroyed -- "Unichtozhit".
Yet the letter survived.
It was one of hundreds of pages of previously unpublished documents obtained
by Reuters on KGB-Stasi activities in the Dresden area from Germany's vast
archives of Stasi material. They cover 1984 to 1990 when Major Putin was a
junior member of a small team of 10 to 15 KGB agents in Dresden, East
Germany.
In keeping with the protocol of the times, the letters are mostly between
the top Stasi and KGB officials and Putin is rarely mentioned by name. But
the documents give insight to the cloak-and-dagger world where he lived much
of his adult life.
NO DIAL TONE
One rare instance when Putin himself wrote to the local Stasi head,
General-Major Horst Boehm, concerned a KGB informant who worked in East
Germany's state wholesale trade enterprise.
The man's "telephone connection was mistakenly cut off in March 1989", Putin
wrote, seeking to fix the problem.
"Considering that our informant was a former member of the police who
support us, the People's Police headquarters applied to the post office to
get a phone line," he wrote. "Nonetheless, there are still problems in
solving this problem."Subsequent notes show the phone line was installed
days later, lightning speed in a country where it could take years or even a
lifetime to get a telephone.
The informant's name and why he was of interest to Putin remains a mystery.
The informant's name is blacked out in the document, which Reuters obtained
under German freedom of information rules from the agency overseeing the
Stasi archives.
BROTHERLY TENSIONS
The files also reveal tensions between Putin's office and the Stasi,
especially when the KGB tried to recruit Stasi agents without their bosses
knowing. In one 1989 instance, two plain-clothes Soviet agents sought to
recruit a German Stasi informant working at the Hotel Bellevue, then the
baroque Saxon city's top hotel and a magnet for important foreign visitors.
The KGB agents deceived the man into believing that the Stasi knew about
their recruiting effort.
"I am asking that no further talks and measures with people who are actively
working for us be undertaken," Boehm wrote in a stiff complaint to Putin's
boss, KGB General Vladimir Shirokov.
"It is not possible for GDR (East German) citizens, as planned reservists
for the People's Army, to receive official training from Soviet military
intelligence for wireless communications." The files do not tie Putin to the
incident but they were issued in response to a request for documents on the
Russian president and on KGB activities in Dresden during his time as an
agent there. Intelligence experts said recruiting of agents was a central
focus of Putin's work in the small KGB branch office.
"In each district of East Germany there were small groups of KGB agents,
usually led by a general," said former Stasi foreign intelligence chief
Markus Wolf, who did not know Putin. "They comprised 10 to 20 staff who had
contacts with the local State Security (Stasi) administration and also
(Stasi) Department 15 on operations targeted at the West."They also had a
few people who had the task of working against the West. Putin presumably
worked only with informants inside the GDR, probably scientists, teachers
and so on."
Horst Jehmlich, the top assistant to Boehm in Dresden, said Putin's local
efforts were part of the East-West struggle. "His activities were directed
against the West, gathering information about the economy, politics and the
military," Jehmlich told Reuters last year. "He came to us when he needed a
connection to a business or to a factory or to police." Occasionally, Putin
did rise above anonymity. In February 1988, the file shows, Stasi boss Erich
Mielke signed a decree awarding him a bronze National People's Army service
medal.
Mielke said the medal was "in recognition and appreciation of your service
in the struggle for peace, in defense of our Socialist homeland and
proletarian internationalism in years of fraternal cooperation between the
GDR's Chekists (secret police) and the Soviet security organs against the
common enemy".
Nice language perhaps. But most of the 37 other Soviet agents named that day
received higher-ranking gold and silver honors.
TOASTS AND FRATERNAL PARTIES
A year before, according to the file, Putin was one of 13 KGB agents at the
festive "Brothers in Arms" ball at Stasi headquarters, close to the Dresden
apartment he shared with wife Lyudmila, to mark the 70th anniversary of the
October Revolution. Boehm took a somber tone in his address that evening, as
a copy of his secret speech, preserved in Putin's Stasi file, shows.
"To implement a long-term policy of intensive rearmament and confrontation,
the imperialist (Western) secret services have stepped up their activities
to obtain any information that is or might be significant for further action
against the GDR and the other socialist states," he said. "Just on the eve
of this jubilee, a spy for the U.S. secret service, resident in Dresden was
uncovered and arrested," Boehm told Putin and the other spies present. "The
information obtained by this spy clearly served the planning and preparation
of a military first strike."
Whereas Putin was soon to make a rapid ascent in Russian political life
after leaving Dresden, Boehm, the ruggedly handsome embodiment of Stasi
power, would have a different fate. In 1990, apparently distraught at the
collapse of East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he took his own
life.
Yet all that was far in the future and unimaginable on that festive evening
on the banks of the Elbe.
Putin, whose fluent command of German impressed many of his Stasi
counterparts and has opened doors for him more recently with German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, was awarded a gold medal of honor from the
German-Soviet Friendship Society and then the secret agents drank a toast of
Soviet brandy.
Dancing continued past midnight.
"Alcohol was standard at such events as we tried to make conversation easier
to learn things from the Soviets," Thomas Mueller, a Stasi agent in Dresden
who knew Putin, recollected in an interview with Reuters this month. "At the
same time, they were trying to find out things from us."
HOSTILITY TO TROOPS
But Mueller said that despite the attempts at good cheer, there were often
difficulties in relations officially and even in internal Stasi documents
called "fraternal". "There were tensions, as there are in any family," he
said at his home in Dresden, where he is now unemployed.
The Stasi files chronicle a series of East German complaints about the
behavior of Soviet soldiers in the Dresden area, part of the huge occupying
army there since the end of World War Two. The files record that one soldier
sold a grenade for 30 marks, others sold pornography or blue jeans, often to
get money for vodka. Soldiers stole vegetables from private gardens. One
broke a store window to take chocolate Easter bunnies.
Quite what was the connection to Putin himself is not clear, though former
officials say the regional KGB office would have dealt with frictions
between Soviet troops and local police "There is a strained relationship
between some of the public and members of the Soviet military," Boehm wrote
to the KGB in a blunt 1986 letter after a series of thefts and rowdy
incidents. "In connection with the use of alcohol, there is the danger of
uncontrolled behavior and outbreaks of violence."
Sometimes the Soviet soldiers took more drastic action. In 1986, three
Soviet soldiers escaped to West Germany, setting off a full-scale search and
investigation, the Stasi file shows. On another occasion, the arrival of a
Soviet troop transport train in 1989 set off a near-riot when youths leaving
a disco jeered at the soldiers, some of whom then raised their rifles. The
end result was a Stasi request, just months before the fall of the Berlin
Wall was to change life forever, to ban big troop transports when German
crowds were likely to be around.
All these episodes are in the Putin-related file prepared by the German
government but he is named in only a few documents. Sometimes the files
between the east bloc's two great spy agencies, in retrospect at least, are
somewhat comical. One long series of letters on file seeks contact details
for a man in West Germany and ends when a Stasi officer writes to say he has
finally tracked him down -- in the West Berlin phone book.
In a 1988 case, the KGB asks the Stasi to accommodate three visiting KGB
officials free of charge, because the seemingly all-powerful Soviet agency
was low on funds. Another time, the KGB asked the Stasi to provide 1,200
free tickets for soldiers to watch Dynamo Dresden play visiting Spartak
Moscow at soccer. But many documents are deadly serious, even during a time
of improved East-West relations in the Gorbachev glasnost era.
Ahead of the arrival of U.S. officials implementing the latest arms control
agreements, the Stasi and KGB sprang into action to assure that the
visitors' rooms and telephones would be bugged and a series of informants
were put on alert.
BUNGLED FINAL MISSION
The released Stasi files do not detail Putin's last major mission in Dresden
after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, that of recruiting a ring of agents
to continue to spy for Moscow after the coming reunification of East Germany
with the West.
Johannes Legner, former spokesman for the agency overseeing the Stasi files,
said the spy ring collapsed after one of the recruits from the Stasi went
over to West German counter intelligence, the BND. Soon after, in 1990,
Putin quietly returned home. Within a decade he was in the Kremlin.
Since becoming president more than a year ago, Putin has shown his continued
faith in the KGB, where he worked for 16 years. He has named a former KGB
man who served in East Germany as his foreign intelligence director and the
steely head of his national Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, is a key
adviser.
Experts say Putin's lack of clear footprints in Dresden and in the Stasi
files itself is a sign he was successful spy. "In espionage, you want to
know everything about the outside world without drawing attention to
yourself," ex-Stasi officer Mueller told Reuters. "One should not reveal
much of one's personality, lest it reveal weaknesses which should be kept in
the dark."
.
5. FSB Chief in Finland to avoid microphones.
Putin a vampire, wife says
Friday, 23 February 2001 16:43 (ET)
HAMBURG, Germany, Feb.23
(UPI)
Lyudmila, wife of Russian President
Vladmir Putin, thinks he is a vampire, and mourns the fact that the former
KGB agent went back into espionage as head of Russia's Federal Security
Service in 1998 -- and even then he would regularly go to Finland to get
away from the omnipresent microphones.
Putin, by contrast, hated his wife's obsession with horoscopes, and once
complained that anyone who could stay with her for three weeks "deserved a
monument."
These insights into the domestic life of Russia's first couple come from a
new book written by Lyudmilla's best friend, to be published in Germany next
week. Extracts appeared today in the German magazine "Der Spiegel."
Irene Pietsch, wife of a German banker based in Hamburg, became friends
with Lyudmila in 1995 when Putin was deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Keen to
revive the commercial links of the old medieval Hanseatic League, Putin
became a regular visitor to Hamburg. The Putins and Pietsch family became
close friends and exchanged family visits.
The two women swapped letters and faxes, and talked privately about sex
and God, the etiquette of tipping in restaurants and whether or not it was
right to take your own food into a bar.
"My husband always goes to Finland when he has something important to
say," Lyudmila confided. "He doesn't think there is anywhere in Russia where
you can speak without being overheard."
"Unfortunately, my husband is a vampire", Lyudmila told Irene with a
rueful smile. "But he is just the right man for me -- he doesn't drink and
he doesn't beat me."
Putin has hitherto kept tight control over his image as a modern and
efficient post-Soviet man, a judo expert and fitness fanatic, at home in the
West and determined to make Russia into a prosperous democracy. This account
is the first leak in the tight wall of image control that Putin has built
around himself, and Kremlin officials Friday refused to comment on the
remarks of Russia's first lady.
The last time the two women spoke was in July 1998, when Boris Yeltsin
promoted Putin to run Russia's security service.
"It's terrible. We won't be allowed to contact each other ever again,"
Lyudmila told her friend over the phone. "This isolation is dreadful. No
more traveling wherever we want to go. No longer able to say what we want. I
had only just begun to live".
One evening, the two couples were talking of the fundamentals of life over
dinner. Lyudmila said that the greatest virtue was truth.
"Who cares about your truths?" her husband said, and turned to Irene.
"Anyone who can spend three weeks with Lyudmila deserves a monument".
"His two green eyes are like two hungry, lurking predators, like weapons",
Irene recorded, after the couples spent a week together at a Russian
government guesthouse in Archangelskoye, where they lived on Lyudmila's
tasty Russian soups.
Lyudmila said she had one regret about their German friends. Her husband
had learned that German wives woke early to prepare breakfast while their
husbands slept on, and started demanding that she do the same.
In 1997, Lyudmila took a trip alone to Hamburg for four days, mostly spent
shopping, but paying in cash. Putin was worried about the fuss made over the
credit cards used by Mikhail Gorbachev's wife, Raisa, and members of Boris
Yeltsin's family. "I will never be like Raisa", Lyudmila told her friend.
The book, "Fragile Friendships,", is published in German by Molden Verlag,
Vienna.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
Russian security agents have
recovered four stolen surface-to-air missiles in the southern Siberian city
of Chita, the Interfax news agency reported Friday.
The shoulder-fired Igla missiles, recovered by the FSB security services,
were stolen from a military storage facility near Chita a few years ago, but
the perpetrators left them in the area, apparently unable to use or dispose
of them, law enforcement officials said.
The missiles are worth up to 200,000 dollars each on the black market,
officials added. ((c) 2001 Agence France Presse)
.
7. China aids Pakistani, 'rogue' missile programs, CIA says
Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published 2/27/01
China continued to send "substantial" assistance to Pakistan's missile
program during the first half of 2000 and also aided
missile programs in Iran, North Korea and Libya, according to a CIA report.
"Chinese missile-related technical assistance to Pakistan continued to
be substantial during this reporting period," the CIA
said in its semiannual report to Congress on arms proliferation.
The report said that Chinese missile assistance is helping Pakistan
move rapidly toward full-scale production of short-range
ballistic missiles that are solid-fueled meaning they can be launched on
short notice.
"In addition, firms in China provided missile-related items, raw
materials, and/or assistance to several other countries of
proliferation concern such as Iran, North Korea and Libya," the report
said.
The Clinton administration last year waived U.S. economic sanctions
against China for its missile sales after gaining a
promise that Beijing would not sell missiles or components to anyone seeking
nuclear-delivery vehicles.
"The Clinton administration refused to sanction China even in the teeth
of overwhelming evidence of violations," said Gary
Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. "The
question now is whether the Bush administration
will do anything about it."
The report comes after a public dispute between the United States and
China over Beijing's development of a fiber-optic
communications network connecting Iraq's air-defense network.
The report also said that U.S. intelligence agencies "cannot rule out"
intelligence reports that China is continuing to assist
Pakistan's nuclear-weapons programs despite a pledge by Beijing in May
1996 to halt support to nuclear facilities in
Pakistan operating outside international controls.
The report covering the first six months of 2000 is required by law. In
addition to Chinese arms proliferation, the report also
states that:
* Russia sold ballistic-missile goods and technology to China, Iran,
India and Libya, and its efforts to curb dangerous arms
sales to rogue states "remain uncertain."
"Russian entities during the first six months of 2000 have provided
substantial missile-related technology, training and
expertise to Iran that almost certainly will continue to accelerate Iranian
efforts to develop new ballistic missile systems," the
report said.
* Moscow also is a major supplier of conventional arms to China, India,
Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea.
* Iraq is developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) by converting
Czech L-29 trainers into pilotless jets. The UAV
could be used to deliver chemical or biological weapons. Iraq also has
rebuilt key elements of its missile production facilities
and is rebuilding chemical weapons plants.
* Syria is seeking to purchase nuclear material from Russia that could
help Damascus develop nuclear weapons. A joint
Russian-Syrian nuclear cooperation program was drawn up in January 2000.
* Libya is expanding its missile program since sanctions were lifted
last year and is seeking a medium-range-missile
capability. Tripoli also is seeking to acquire material and equipment for
biological weapons. Russia and Libya resumed joint
nuclear cooperation last year.
Regarding North Korea, another major arms proliferator identified in
the report, the CIA said Pyongyang is continuing to
buy material for its missile program and also sought to buy technology with
nuclear weapons applications.
"During the first half of 2000, Pyongyang sought to procure technology
worldwide that could have applications in its nuclear
program," the report said. "But we do not know of any procurement directly
linked to the nuclear weapons program."
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korea was supposed to have
halted its nuclear weapons program in exchange
for nuclear power reactors considered less useful in nuclear arms
applications.
Henry Sokolski, director of the private Non-Proliferation Policy
Education Center, said the report shows the need for the
new Bush administration to do more to combat the spread of weapons of mass
destruction and missiles.
"This report only highlights even further why we not only will need to
strengthen defenses, including missile defense, but to
renew our nonproliferation efforts," Mr. Sokolski said.
Slobodan Milosevic's former secret service chief
has been
arrested over allegations he was involved in assassinating
the former president's political opponents.
Rade Markovic was fired last month when the new
Serbian
government was elected. He was one of Milosevic's closest
allies, responsible for carrying out some of the former
president's key policies.
The arrest of Markovic, reported by Belgrade's independent
B92 Radio, tightens the noose around Milosevic, blamed by
the new authorities for widespread crime and corruption
during his 13-year rule.
Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, of Serbia, the dominant
Yugoslav republic, has pledged that Milosevic himself will
soon be behind the bars.
He left open whether the charges would include war crimes
- something the UN war crimes tribunal has indicted him for
- or for embezzlement, politically-motivated violence and
mistreatment of opponents in Serbia. Markovic has been
accused by former opposition leader Vuk Draskovic of
orchestrating an alleged assassination attempt against him
in 1999.
Draskovic narrowly escaped death in a car crash that killed
four other people.
Last updated: 20:39 Saturday 24th February 2001
.
Saturday February 24, 10:12 PM
LIMA, Peru (Reuters)
One of Peru's most-wanted fugitives,
accused of being a key accomplice of former spy master
Vladimiro Montesinos, has been flown from Miami to Lima to
stand trial on corruption charges.
The United States extradited Victor Alberto Venero to Peru after
the FBI apprehended the 47-year-old businessman last month on
an international arrest warrant stemming from the Peruvian
charges. Venero's lawyer said his client would cooperate with Peruvian
authorities.
It was the first extradition of any alleged accomplice of the fugitive
Montesinos, who
Peruvian authorities accuse of running a mafia that committed extortion
against judges,
politicians and businessmen while he served for a decade as former President
Alberto
Fujimori's closest aide.
Venero, 47, wearing a bullet-proof vest, arrived in the early morning at
Lima's
international airport and was driven to the headquarters of international
law enforcement
organization Interpol, local television reported. He was expected to be
taken to a Lima
prison later on Saturday.
The FBI said last month that Venero had deposited about $15 million in a
Miami bank
account. The account was frozen by order of a U.S. court.
Peruvian witnesses have said Venero was responsible for laundering much of
Montesinos'
fortune in bank accounts. Investigators in Peru say they have proof
Montesinos has held at
least $93 million in bank accounts.
Venero had business deals with Peru's military during Fujimori's reign.
Media reports have
portrayed Venero as one of Montesinos' closest accomplices.
"Venero will collaborate with the (Peruvian) justice system, which may
not only lead to a
reduction in his sentence but also its lifting," Luis Roy Freire, Venero's
lawyer, told
Reuters in Peru.
Under Peruvian law, people accused of corruption may have sentences reduced
if they
cooperate with investigators.
FORMER SPY CHIEF AT CENTRE OF SCANDAL
Montesinos, whose last known location was Venezuela, was at the centre of a
bribery
scandal last year that sparked Peru's worst political crisis in a decade. It
led Congress to
dismiss Fujimori as "morally unfit" to govern.
Under the new interim government of President Valentin Paniagua, courts have
probed
Montesinos's huge web of influence and ordered the arrest of dozens of
suspected
accomplices in the military, media, business and courts.
The key evidence uncovered by courts has been more than 700 videos
secretly taped by
the spy master of his meetings with some of Peru's most well-known
businessmen and
politicians.
The tapes, which are broadcast on television almost daily to Peruvians, have
shown how
Montesinos offered cash-for- favours and arranged political dirty deals.
Several people considered key accomplices of Montesinos, including top
generals under
Fujimori's 10-year government, fled Peru, and the government is seeking
their extradition.
On Friday, Congress voted to charge Fujimori with abandoning office and
dereliction ofduty after he fled to Tokyo last November to escape the
corruption storms.
Those charges could lead Peru to open criminal proceedings against Fujimori
and press for his extradition from Japan.
10. Shayler to give statement to Bloody Sunday inquiry
Liam Clarke, Northern Ireland Editor
Sunday Times February 25 2001
DAVID SHAYLER, the former MI5 agent who has revealed the
secrets of the British security service, may give evidence at the
Bloody Sunday inquiry.
Shayler, who has returned to Britain to face charges of
breaching the Official Secrets Act, will make a statement to
Lord Saville's inquiry this week. He is expected to rubbish a
claim that Martin McGuinness fired the first shot on Bloody
Sunday.
Annie Machon, Shayler's girlfriend and former colleague in MI5,
is also willing to talk to lawyers for the inquiry, which is
investigating the shooting dead of 13 civilians by paratroopers
in Londonderry on January 30, 1972. Another civilian later died
from his injuries.
Shayler and Machon, who left MI5 in 1997, will be important to
Lord Saville's investigation because they had access to
potentially damaging intelligence about one of its key
witnesses, an agent code-named Infliction. The agent has
claimed he heard McGuinness, Northern Ireland's education
minister, confess to firing the first shot on the day of the civil
rights march, precipitating the chaos that followed.
Shayler said this weekend that Infliction was an unreliable
source. A former IRA member, Infliction was first debriefed by
MI5 in 1984, 12 years after Bloody Sunday. He had no contact
with the IRA at that time, but offered to tell all he knew in
exchange for help in building a new life.
"At first he was taken seriously, but then he was found to be in
conflict with other intelligence sources," Shayler said. "His file
was marked 'source whose reliability is being re-assessed'. In
MI5 speak that means 'we can't trust this bugger as far as we
can throw him'. Infliction was later discontinued. We stopped
using him."
Shayler will also explain the system of intelligence
classification to the inquiry. He and Machon will give written
statements this week and may be called later to give evidence.
McGuinness, who was a leading IRA member but not the
commander on Bloody Sunday, has been denied legal
representation at the tribunal until he provides a statement.
A former Force Research Unit (FRU) officer who has been in
communication with lawyers acting for the families of the
Bloody Sunday victims has cast further doubt on Infliction's
claims to his MI5 handler, outlined in a source report
document.
The former soldier, who handled military intelligence agents in
Derry in the 1980s, read intelligence records gathered around
the time of Bloody Sunday. He said they showed that military
intelligence believed the IRA did not intend to open fire and that
there was no record of McGuinness having done so.
The former FRU member also pointed out that the intelligence
grading on the Infliction source report - an indication of its
reliability - had been blacked out.
SPECULATION that MI5 will be given responsibility
for intelligence gathering within the new police
service has gained momentum.
According to press reports, MI5 may be given
control of the direct anti-terrorist intelligence
services when the RUC special branch transfers to
a new crime department within the police force in
April.
This takeover by MI5 is a move favoured by many
nationalist politicians who have campaigned for
the disbandment of the special branch, following
allegations of collusion after the murder of Pat
Finucane.
But DUP minister Gregory Campbell yesterday
warned that his party would object strongly to a
centralised MI5 intelligence service.
Emphasising his partys opposition to any changes
under the Patten report, Mr Campbell predicted
that anti-terrorist intelligence gathering would
particularly suffer if it was taken over by MI5.
Intelligence gathering as an art will suffer if the
department moves to MI5 as it will lead to the
loss of an expert unit.
Mr Campbell said the intelligence gathering unit
was already under strain because of the imminent
retirement of senior special branch officers as a
result of the Patten report.
12. CIA tightened security after Aldrich Ames espionage case
By CAROLYN SKORNECK, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (February 24, 2001 8:38 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com)
The CIA tightened security dramatically
after one of its own, Aldrich Ames, pleaded guilty to espionage in
1994 so random lie-detector tests could hit any employee at any
time.
The FBI, by contrast, tiptoed into internal lie-detector, or polygraph,
exams of employees. Now that agent Robert Philip Hanssen has been
charged with spying for the Soviet Union and then Russia for more
than 15 years, some are calling for the bureau to match the CIA's
earlier response.
"When the Ames case hit, Congress came down very hard on the
agency, and the agency did a lot to change the culture so people
were more supportive of counterintelligence and understanding
counterintelligence," said Cindy Kwitchoff, who left the CIA last year
after a decade.
The CIA has conducted lie-detector tests on employees since its
inception. Even before the Ames case, all employees were given
polygraphs before hiring, after a three-year probationary period and
every five years thereafter, an agency official said.
After Ames, the CIA instituted random polygraphs, enhanced the
quality of those tests and expanded the subjects to include
contractors as well as staff officers, said the official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
Former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro said the discovery that Ames
had been able to access a message delivery system of overseas
operational traffic prompted the CIA to clamp down on such
trespassing.
"There's better access controls at the CIA in the wake of Ames ...
but they were not implemented within the counterintelligence
directorate of the FBI," Cannistraro said Friday.
The CIA also started having counterespionage experts train its
security investigators, required all employees to file detailed annual
financial disclosures and established databases that looked at
employees' personal foreign travel, foreign contacts and outside
activities.
If you want to moonlight, you need the agency's permission. If you
travel to Cancun, you have to tell the CIA.
At the FBI, annual financial disclosure forms are required only of
people in specified supervisory or procurement positions, bureau
employees must disclose their travel plans and agents are banned
from taking second jobs, agent Jay Spadafore said.
As for polygraphs, the FBI started requiring them before employment
only in 1994 - long after Hanssen was hired - and it now requires
additional lie-detector tests only when someone needs access to
certain classified areas. Hanssen never took an FBI polygraph.
A critical 1997 report by the Justice Department's inspector general
prompted the FBI to increase counterintelligence training for national
security and operations division managers, improve use of the
bureau's counterintelligence analyses and work more closely with the
CIA to share information when there are intelligence losses.
"Cooperation between the CIA and FBI on counterintelligence
and
counterterrorism and other issues has never been better," CIA
spokesman Mark Mansfield said Friday.
Both agencies' counterintelligence experts started looking for other
spies for Russia when they could not blame on Ames all the
intelligence operations that had gone bad, an official close to the
investigation said. In cooperation, they methodically compiled and
checked out a list of people who would have had the information
needed to botch those plans.
But it's the lie-detector tests, not interagency cooperation, that have
grabbed attention.
Last week, Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard
Shelby, R-Ala., called for regular polygraphs of counterintelligence FBI
agents.
President Bush deferred commenting on polygraphs during a news
conference Thursday, saying he would wait until former FBI and CIA
Director William Webster completes his evaluation of FBI procedures.
Polygraph evidence is not admissible in courts. Some question
whether the tests are a good idea, both on civil liberties grounds and
because of questions about whether they really work.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has raised concerns
about routine polygraphs of FBI agents.
"We have to be smart about it," she said. "I don't want to demoralize
our people and disrespect their rights." Freeh himself has expressed
skepticism
about lie-detector tests as
the be-all and end-all for security.
American University professor Christopher Simpson, who has written
on intelligence issues, defended the bureau for not leaping into
full-scale polygraphing.
"If a person is a trained espionage agent, there are relatively easy
ways to beat a polygraph test," he said. "You can purchase a book on
it through the Internet."
.
13. Unsecret life of spy suspect: piety and no pizazz
Philip Shenon
New York Times
Sunday, February 25, 2001
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For a man accused of betraying his country to the
godless leadership of the Soviet Communist
Party, Robert P. Hanssen could not have seemed a more devout communicant
of the Roman Catholic Church -- or a more
committed anti-Communist.
He often told his friends in the counterintelligence division of the FBI,
where he worked for most of his 25-year career, that heloathed communism and
that Lenin's teachings were incompatible with those of Jesus.
"Bob would walk into my office and tell me that without religion, man is
lost," said a former supervisor, David Major, "and that the Soviet Union
would ultimately fail because it was run by the godless Communists."
The bureau's former chief China analyst, Paul Moore, recalled that when
FBI agents held going-away parties at strip clubs,
Hanssen refused to attend, saying his faith would not permit it.
"He said, you shouldn't do that because it's an occasion of sin," said
Moore, who used to carpool to work with Hanssen.
If Hanssen's piety and staunch anti-communism were simply a front for his
treachery, if they were a cover for a long career in
espionage, they were remarkably convincing to the professional spycatchers
who worked day in and day out with the shy,
socially awkward, highly intelligent agent.
Hanssen could face the death penalty after his arrest Monday on charges of
spying since 1985, initially for the Soviet Union
and then, after its collapse, for Russia.
The case is described by officials as potentially the worst intelligence
breach in the FBI's history, given Hanssen's access to
some of the most highly classified information in the bureau's computer
banks. The FBI has said that at least two Russian
double agents who were executed may have been exposed because of his
disclosures.
A traditional service
In his quarter-century at the FBI -- at the time of his arrest, he was
only a few months from retirement -- Hanssen gave every
appearance of living the life of a God-fearing Christian.
Every Sunday for years, he and his wife, Bonnie, a teacher, were found in
the same pew at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic
Church in Great Falls, Va.
The Hanssens told friends they selected the church because it was one of
the few in the region that still conducted a Latin mass and they preferred
a traditional service. Among the church's other regular parishioners: FBI
Director Louis Freeh and
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. (Freeh said through a spokesman that
he knew the Hanssens through a handful of
contacts at the church but was never a "social friend" of theirs. )
The Hanssens were adherents of Opus Dei, an elite conservative Catholic
order whose name means "the Work of God."
Opus Dei urges its members to attend daily mass, and Hanssen also
regularly took part in evening prayer-and-confession
sessions called recollections.
While the Hanssens lived in a suburb of Washington known for the quality
of its public schools, they chose instead to send
their three boys and three girls to private schools affiliated with Opus
Dei.
Former colleagues said they would be shocked if Hanssen turned out to have
spent the money he is accused of having
received from his handlers in Moscow -- at least $600,000 in cash, the FBI
says -- on alcohol or fancy automobiles or
women. Instead, they suspect, he probably used much of the proceeds from
his spying to pay tuition at his children's schools.
The Heights School of Potomac, Md., which his youngest son, a junior,
attends, charges annual tuition and fees of nearly
$11,000, which alone would make a large dent in Hanssen's FBI salary of
about $100,000 a year. His older sons also
graduated from the school. His daughters' school, Oakcrest, did not return
calls for comment.
'Just a game'
In interviews since his arrest, many of Hanssen's closest friends and
colleagues, dumbfounded by the spying accusations, say
they can only offer a guess as to why a man so committed to his faith
might have volunteered for espionage on behalf of the
political system that made destruction of organized religion a cardinal
tenet.
Several suggested that Hanssen must have been able to completely
compartmentalize his life, deluding himself into thinking thatespionage was
simply an exciting intellectual challenge that had nothing to do with
leading a Christian life.
"I think Bob was able to bifurcate his life," said Major, his former
supervisor. "He somehow made the intellectual leap, which I just cannot
rationalize, that the compromise of information was somehow OK, and that it
was just a game. It's too simple to
say thrill, but I do believe that he was in for the game, not the gain."
Rusty Capps, a retired counterintelligence agent who worked with Hanssen
at FBI headquarters in the early 1990s, agreed
that Hanssen is a "brilliant guy" who may have needed "the thrill -- this
is a guy who needs stimulation, who liked to walk on
the razor's edge."
"I probably recruited 50 or 60 people over the years to provide
information to the United States, and the vast majority of them
did it because their lives weren't all that exciting," Capps said.
"Certainly money is always there, revenge, disgruntlement, ego
gratification. But it's also excitement."
FBI officials say that Hanssen's career stalled years ago, and that
resentment over his failure to rise higher in management
despite his obvious intelligence could have been a factor in his decision
to spy. But many who know him say that it was clearly not the full
explanation. Evidence released by the FBI suggests that greed would not have
been the sole motivation, either.
In a letter supposedly written by Hanssen to his Soviet handlers in
November 1985, the writer, known to the Russians by the
code name B, asked them to stop sending money beyond an initial $100,000.
"I have little need or utility for more," the letter
said. "It merely provides a difficulty since I cannot spend it, store it
or invest it easily." Timid, dour
Neighbors who live near the Hanssens' brick and wood home in Vienna, Va.,
remember a quiet, reclusive man who seemed
little interested in money or material goods, apart from computers, which
were always a passion.
FBI colleagues say he did not drink or swear. He made clear that clothes
were not important to him. He wore dark, fraying,
unstylish business suits, often the same one for two or three days in a
row. His wardrobe and retiring, dour personality earned
him nicknames among colleagues such as Dr. Death, the Mortician and
Digger, short for gravedigger.
Richard McPherson, a fellow member of Opus Dei and the headmaster of the
Heights School, said he continues to believe
that Hanssen's shows of piety and his lack of interest in material goods
"were not some sort of cover." He remembered
Hanssen's devotion to his children and how he volunteered for school
dances, where he served as a chaperon, and attended
his sons' sporting events.
"I thought he was a great father, a good husband and a good professional,"
McPherson said. "Of course, if he did what he is
purported to have done, then he was living a lie as a Christian and a
citizen. But I'm still hoping there's an explanation."
Father was a cop The roots of Hanssen's commitment to the church and to
law enforcement are found in Chicago, where he was born in April944 to a
Catholic family.
"When people from Chicago meet, they ask what parish are you from," said
Moore, who also grew up in the city.
Hanssen's father was a Navy petty officer who later joined the Chicago
Police Department. Robert graduated with a degree in
chemistry from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., in 1966. His FBI records
show he also studied Russian there.
Hanssen had trouble settling on a career after college. He dropped out of
Northwestern University's dental school after two
years to enter its business school, where he received an MBA. In 1972 he
followed his father into the Chicago Police
Department, where he was quickly assigned to undercover work.
He arrived at the FBI in 1976, hired to work initially on a
white-collar-crime squad in Gary, Ind.
Colleagues say that from the earliest days of his career at the bureau,
Hanssen impressed everyone with his intelligence; some
called him brilliant.
He distinguished himself early for his mastery of computer technology,
which he helped introduce to the counterintelligence
division -- a fact that alarms FBI investigators who are now trying to
figure out what damage he may have done.
"He was always on the leading edge of computers," said John Gaskill, a
retired agent who considered Hanssen a friend. "He
had access to pretty much anything that we were involved in."
While his superiors were excited about his technical skills, they were put
off by his awkwardness in social settings, his
indifference to his wardrobe, his slouching posture. A tall man, he always
seemed to be hunched over, his head perched on his
neck at an odd angle, colleagues said. In an organization that had always
prided itself on a military-style esprit de corps and tended to prefer
managers with drill-instructor voices, friends in the bureau say Hanssen
should have known he was never going to rise very far in the FBI.
Copyright 2001 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
14. Spy found in Berlin 22 years after betraying Nato
Press Association Last updated: 15:52 Monday 26th
February 2001
A spy who worked for Nato has surfaced in Berlin 22 years after she
disappeared.
Treason charges against Ursel Lorenzen had been dropped, but they could now
be revived. When she fled to East Germany, she supposedly gave the
authorities information about Nato's nuclear plans.
Lorenzen was the personal assistant to Briton
Terence Moran, the second most-informed Nato man at the time.Her case was a
serious blow to Nato at the time and she was greeted as a people's heroine
in East Germany.
By Carol Morello and William Claiborne
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 25, 2001; Page A01
In the fall of 1985, agents were leaving the FBI's Manhattan office at the
rate of seven a month, complaining they couldn't
afford to live in New York on a G-man's salary. With beginning agents making
less than a city sanitation worker, and salaries
no better in New York than in El Paso or Boise, many quit the bureau rather
than be sent there.
The money squeeze was so bad that Assistant FBI Director Thomas L. Sheer,
who headed the Manhattan office, publicly
warned that his agents were vulnerable to recruitment by hostile powers.
Some joked blackly about spies in their ranks.
Into this cauldron of malcontent came a new transfer from FBI headquarters
in Washington.
Robert Philip Hanssen, a nine-year bureau veteran known for being cerebral
and standoffish, was assigned to head a foreign
counterintelligence squad, an unglamorous but important job in a city where
one-third of the 2,800 Soviet-bloc diplomats were
thought to be spies.
For the Hanssen family -- Bob, his wife, Bonnie, and their six children, the
youngest just an infant -- the new posting meant
sacrifice. They sold their four-bedroom, 2-bath house in Fairfax County for
$175,000, then turned around and spent almost as
much for a cramped three-bedroom, 1-bath ranch house in Yorktown Heights, 90
minutes north of New York City.
By early 1987, Sheer had quit the FBI, saying flatly that his $72,500 salary
left him broke. Hanssen, who was earning about
$46,000, would make a different choice.
While his motive remains unexplained, within nine days of joining the New
York office Hanssen mailed the first of his letters tothe KGB, the FBI
alleges, offering stolen secret documents in return for $100,000.
Today, New York FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette says, "Tom Sheer looks like the
smartest man in America."
Diverging Impressions
Those who thought they knew 56-year-old Robert Hanssen well are shocked and
mystified by the 15 years of betrayal and lies
laid out in clinical detail in a 109-page federal affidavit last week. To
them, his fruitful career as a wily but crass double agent is
all but impossible to reconcile with the seemingly pious, Chicago police
lieutenant's son who kept a crucifix on the wall behind
his office desk.
Hanssen, arrested on espionage charges at a drop site in a Fairfax park last
Sunday, stands accused of taking more than
$600,000 in cash and diamonds from the Russians, with $800,000 more
allegedly waiting for him in a Moscow bank.
His attorney has said Hanssen will plead not guilty.
A complex and often contradictory portrait emerges from the pages of the
FBI's charges and interviews with dozens of
Hanssen's friends, relatives, colleagues and neighbors.
To be sure, the financial pressures he faced with six children in private
school were substantial for a man on a government
salary. In one of his earliest communications with his KGB handler, the
would-be spy asked for payment in diamonds, "as
security to my children." He later returned two gems to the Russians, asking
for cash instead, according to the FBI.
Some who worked with Hanssen through the years cannot believe he is the man
who wrote those letters and sold out his
country for money.
They describe a man who seemed to shun all displays of ostentation. He
favored hamburgers for lunch, owned three older
vehicles and drove his family to Florida on vacation to visit their
grandmother.
Hanssen, some suspect, must have been energized by the intellectual rush of
outsmarting an opponent -- even if that opponent
was his agency and the cause he served for 25 years.
"It's not a story about gain. It's a story about game," said David G. Major,
a former FBI counterintelligence official who has
known Hanssen for more than two decades and was once his boss.
The public Hanssen railed in 1950s terms against Marxist-Leninist
infiltrators. Raised as a Lutheran, he converted to
Catholicism after he married and later became deeply involved with Opus Dei,
a conservative Catholic organization.
His politics, too, were conservative and family-oriented. He attended
antiabortion demonstrations and gun shows, decried
communism for being "godless" and referred reverentially to the FBI's first
director as "Mr. Hoover."
By contrast, the double agent who operated under the code names B, Ramon and
Garcia was routinely profane and dismissive
of his employer and country. He contemptuously compared the United States to
an idiot savant and referred to his KGB
handlers as "dear friends" to whom he was "insanely loyal," in letters
quoted in the affidavit. His disdain for the FBI only seemed
to increase as he continued to elude discovery.
Boasting degrees in chemistry and accounting, Hanssen was known within the
bureau as an intellectual for his mastery of arcane
details. Initially, some acquaintances said he had the nickname of Dr. Death
because he dressed as properly and somberly as a
mortician. But his good friends say it was because he sometimes was so
deadly boring that he could induce sleep in colleagues.
He delved into computers in the early 1980s, when everyone else was still
using electric typewriters, and taught himself two
computer programming languages, C and Pascal.
James Bamford, an author of books about intelligence-gathering, met Hanssen
through a mutual acquaintance seven or eight
years ago. The two became friends -- Hanssen attended Bamford's wedding --
but Bamford said he now believes there was
another, darker side to the man. "He had an extremely secret life," Bamford
said. "It was almost to the point where he had a
split personality right down the middle. It's the most complete alter ego
I've ever seen."
David Charney, a psychiatrist who has studied spies and was a defense expert
in the case of Earl E. Pitts, an FBI agent
charged with espionage in 1996, said Hanssen may have privately been
frustrated with how his life was turning out. "Everyone
is their own worst critic," Charney said. "If they're not satisfied with
these ideals, it creates a disease within them."
A target is needed to release the frustration, he said, and often it's the
workplace. "To anybody in espionage, what's the worst
thing you can do to sabotage someone who didn't appreciate you, who didn't
promote or support you? Give away their
secrets," he said. "But here's the crux: Once you've stepped over the line,
there's no turning back. . . . You're trapped. There
are no credible exits. So you resign yourself to living this life."
James K. Kallstrom, who met often with Hanssen in the 1980s as head of the
FBI's special operations division, now wonders
whether Hanssen was as smart as he seemed.
"He had to know the Russians were keeping a record of every contact they had
with him," Kallstrom said. "And it's obvious
once the FBI got hold of his [Russian] file, they were able to figure out
who he was. The guy may have been smart and cunning,
but he was dumb."
Midwestern Roots
Hanssen was born in April 1944, the only child of a Chicago cop. As a young
man, he seemed to be seeking a way out of the
blue-collar life represented by his boyhood neighborhood of modest brick and
wooden bungalows on the city's western edge.
At Taft High School, the 1962 yearbook lists him as an honors student, a
member of the Radio Club and a teaching assistant,
and bears this notation under his photograph: "Science is the light of
life."
With a degree in chemistry from Knox College, a private liberal arts campus
in downstate Illinois, he next flirted with dentistry
but dropped out of Northwestern University's dental school after two years.
Paul Moore, a friend and former FBI agent, remembers Hanssen saying he was a
good enough dentist, he could look at a
decayed tooth and figure out how to approach the problem, "but he didn't
want his fingers to be stuck in somebody's wet
mouth all day."
Instead, he switched to accounting, receiving a master's in business
administration in 1971.
Hanssen was raised in the Lutheran faith, according to his mother, Vivian,
and attended Lutheran churches through college.
Soon after his 1968 marriage to Bonnie, who comes from a large Catholic
family, he converted "because he wanted to keep his
family one religion," Vivian Hanssen said.
After Northwestern, he worked briefly as an accountant, then joined the
Chicago Police Department in October 1972, three
months after his father, Howard, ended his 30-year police career and retired
to Florida.
Directly out of the police academy, the younger Hanssen was named to a new
undercover unit called C-5, so cloaked in
secrecy that its 30 or so members had fictional assignments placed in their
personnel files. Hanssen was listed with the vice
squad but never worked there, nor did he ever walk a beat, said Pat Camden,
a department spokesman. C-5's job was to
ferret out corrupt police officers, and its members were considered an elite
corps.
Even in that rarified group, Hanssen stood out, said Ernie Rizzo, a private
investigator who knew Hanssen when they attended
a secret electronics surveillance school that operated in a Chicago
storefront disguised as a television repair shop.
"He wasn't flashy. He was just a plain, church-going kind of guy, the kind
of guy you get in counterintelligence," Rizzo said. "He
was too young in the business then to have a reputation, but you could tell
he was really smart."
Jack Clarke, a security consultant for C-5, thought Hanssen overqualified to
be a police officer: "Finally, one day I took him
aside and said, 'Go down to the federal building and put in an application
for the FBI. You shouldn't be here.'"
Brainy and Philosophical
There was a Walter Mitty quality to the beginning of Hanssen's career in the
FBI.
He joined Jan. 12, 1976, and did stints in Indiana and New York City before
being transferred to headquarters in 1981.
Much of his early work drew on his accounting background. He tracked
white-collar crime. He set up an automated database
to monitor foreign officials assigned to the United States. He worked on
budget requests to Congress and spent two years in
the Soviet analytical unit.
If Hanssen stood out, it was as a brainy guy who had little interest in
standing around the water cooler talking about the
Redskins.
"The kind of person who would walk into your office and have a very
philosophical discussion about anything from computers
and counterintelligence tradecraft to philosophy, ethics and classical
music," said Major, who now trains CIA officers in
Alexandria.
"He was a moral and ethical man," said Major, recalling that Hanssen
characterized communism as "godless."
"Not that many people talk like that, but he did."
Hanssen was comfortable talking about his faith. Moore recalls driving with
Hanssen when someone on the radio obliquely
referred to morality as an implied social contract. Hanssen reached over,
clicked off the station and said: "That's enough of that.
The basis of morality is God's love."
Bamford, the writer, said Hanssen's professed Christianity and
anti-communism defined him. "The two most prominent aspects
of his personality were his religiosity and, ironically, his anti-communist
passion," he said. ". . .And he was extremely
conservative in terms of his political philosophy -- very, very
antiabortion, marching in antiabortion rallies, and very pro-gun."
An incident with a civilian FBI employee in February 1993 gave some the
impression that he had misogynistic tendencies. The
employee, Kimberly Lichtenberg, said she enraged Hanssen by walking out of a
meeting. He chased her, grabbed her by the
arm and swung her around so violently she fell, then started to drag her
back into the meeting room, Lichtenberg said. She said
that she had bruises on her arm and face and that Hanssen was suspended for
five days without pay. A government official
confirmed the incident.
"He thinks women are beneath him," said Lichtenberg, who filed a lawsuit
against Hanssen that was later dismissed when she
failed to appear for a court hearing. She said she had never been notified.
"How dare I disobey him? That's the worst thing I
could've done."
No one remembers Hanssen explicitly criticizing the bureau, at least not at
the time he is alleged to have started spying.
"He seemed to be disappointed in the FBI at the end there," Moore said. "But
not before, and certainly not in 1985."
To his friends, Hanssen sounded resigned to moving from FBI headquarters
back to New York in 1985 as necessary to
advance his career.
"You have to get your ticket punched, be a squad supervisor," Moore said.
"And he had a good post up there, as opposed to
being in Queens or someplace. He seemed to be happy about it and reconciled
to the idea that it was going to be expensive."
Neighbors in New York recall that the Hanssens pinched pennies.
"Like any big family, they seemed a little strapped for money," said Mary
Barchetto, who lived across from the family on Mead
Street in Westchester County. "The mother was handy, though. She made the
duvet covers herself from sheets she bought.
"Westchester is a tough place to live if you don't have a lot of money."
The Hanssens did well on real estate transactions, though. They sold their
first Vienna home for $25,000 more than they paid
four years earlier; and their Westchester house, which they owned for 20
months, for $47,000 more.
A Frugal Lifestyle
In the comfortable Vienna neighborhood around Talisman Drive, where the
Hanssens settled in 1987 on their return to
Washington, Hanssen was thought of as an involved father, a religious man, a
well-respected FBI agent -- and arrogant.
"This was no Ward Cleaver," said neighbor Francine Bennett, who recalls
Bonnie Hanssen remarking how much she missed
her larger house on the other side of Vienna and found it tough to squeeze
her children into the new one.
Robert Hanssen, she said, "was aloof to the point that most of us just
stopped trying to interact with him. I've lived across the
street from him for over 10 years, and I've never talked to the man. I've
repeatedly said 'Good morning,' 'Good evening,' 'How
are you?' 'Drop dead,' whatever -- and no reaction."
For most of last week, the family's $290,000 split-level house sat empty,
surrounded by yellow "Crime Scene" tape. With
Hanssen in federal custody and his wife and two teenagers still living at
home temporarily ousted, FBI agents scoured the
four-bedroom house, picking through his belongings and his past.
Friends and neighbors continue to grapple with the jarring possibility that
one of the most damaging spies in history lived in their
midst.
"There's nothing outstanding that would prepare you for something like
this," said Mauro Scappa, 23, a technical recruiter in
Washington who was close to Hanssen's oldest son in high school.
The family lived frugally, neighbors said. The parents attended school
functions, shuttled the kids around and participated in
church activities. They restricted what TV shows their children watched.
Their rectangular dinner table has a chair at each end
and a bench on either side for the kids.
FBI officials have told reporters that Hanssen used computers in a locked,
basement room to record and process his
communications with the Russians. Friends and neighbors, however, say the
basement computer room they are familiar with
was neither locked nor off-limits.
"I beat the game Frogger twice on the computer in that room," said neighbor
Hadley Greene, 13, a friend of the youngest
Hanssen daughter.
Robert Hanssen irritated some neighbors by letting his dog, a black Lab mix
named Sunday, run unleashed in their yards,
prompting at least three visits by county animal control and police
officers.
Hanssen's unwillingness to control his dog despite repeated warnings
antagonized neighbors, said Mike Shotwell, president of
the homeowners association.
"Most of us knew he was an [FBI] agent," said Shotwell, describing Hanssen
as aloof and unfriendly. "That's where we figured
the arrogance came from."
One after another, the six Hanssen children trooped off to private schools
affiliated with Opus Dei: the three daughters to
Oakcrest, a girls' school now in McLean; the sons to The Heights, a Potomac
school also attended by a son of FBI Director
Louis J. Freeh.
Tuition at The Heights is currently $10,700 a year, while Oakcrest charges
$9,000. One Hanssen son attended the College of
William & Mary and is in law school at the University of Notre Dame. Another
son is enrolled at the University of Dallas, a
small Catholic school.
FBI officials place Robert Hanssen's salary at $87,000 to $114,000 a year.
Bonnie Hanssen is a part-time teacher at
Oakcrest, friends said.
"He lived like a guy making his salary who has six kids," Moore said. "I
used to kid him, 'They're all insurance policies. They're
all going to take care of you when you're old.'"
Hanssen's attorneys declined to comment for this article. Bonnie Hanssen,
through those attorneys, also declined to comment.
One of the couple's grown daughters said the children still love and support
their father, but she declined to say more.
Hanssen's mother, Vivian, interviewed by telephone from her home in Florida,
said: "It's unbelievable to me, and I can't imagine
him doing something like that. But I love him just the same."
Orthodox Catholics
Religion was central to the family's life. Instead of attending Mass near
home, the family drove eight miles to a more traditional
parish, St. Catherine of Siena, in Great Falls.
Both Hanssens belonged to Opus Dei, an international organization of
Catholics whose members consider themselves orthodox
followers of church doctrine. Members are expected to meditate and attend
Mass daily and to regularly confess to a priest.
The group, founded by a Spanish priest in 1928, has 84,000 adherents
worldwide and has generated controversy over the
years. Some Catholics and others contend that it pressures vulnerable people
to join, sometimes urging alienation from family
and friends who don't strictly share its beliefs.
Opus Dei members say the group is about helping people find God in daily
life. Members believe that all people are called to
sainthood and that they get there by following orthodox rules and rituals.
Those who've known the Hanssens through church and school question how
Hanssen the Catholic could have been Hanssen
the spy, working on behalf of a political system that sought to repress
religious expression.
"I still think of them as a family with very deep Catholic affections and
roots," said Alvaro DeVicente, college counselor at The
Heights. "But I'm baffled. If this were a single man who had no family
connections and no other passions, I can see it. But how
do you go home every night and look at your wife? How do you go to your
parish every Sunday?"
Church leaders say they certainly didn't see the kind of big money Hanssen
is alleged to have taken. His contributions to Opus
Dei, according to a national spokesman, totaled $4,000 from 1988 to 1992;
and he gave The Heights $200 or $300 annually
-- not counting tuition -- from 1988 to 1998.
"Everything is alleged," said the Rev. C. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest
based in Washington. "But obviously if it is true,
he couldn't have done anything more against what Opus Dei stands for, or for
that matter the church. It's unthinkable."
Examining the Pieces
In the realm of spydom, double agents intrigue the most.
Colleagues and friends alike marvel that, if the allegations are true,
Hanssen could have survived so long, never seeming to
crack under the strain of living two fundamentally different and
compartmentalized lives.
They now wonder: What was true and what was the illusion? Was the life they
saw a ruse, no more than clever cover? Or was
there truth in both?
John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary, believes he sees clues in
the letters authorities say Hanssen wrote to the
KGB. They begin businesslike, Hamre notes, and degenerate into slavish
thanks to his handlers for their good wishes and pleas
for them to respond.
"It sounds like a guy who was living further and further into this
deception," he said, "and was starving for the attention he felt he
deserved."
To Paul Moore, Hanssen's longtime friend, it's a vexing puzzle.
"I can't make all the pieces fit together," Moore said. "I still have the
question of why."
2001 The Washington Post Company
by Peter Pae
Los Angeles Times Sunday, March 18, 2001, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
LOS ANGELES - A team of Southern California aerospace companies - overseen
by Boeing - is covertly recruiting engineers across the country for a new
generation of spy satellites under what analysts believe is the largest
intelligence-related contract ever.
The supersecret project for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is
estimated to be worth as much as $25 billion over the next two decades.
Equipped with powerful telescopes and radar, the nation's newest eye in
space is expected to form the backbone of U.S. intelligence for several
decades, analysts said. The satellites will be farther out in space and
harder to detect than the massive spy probes that currently orbit the Earth.
They will also be able to fly over and take pictures of military compounds
anywhere in the world, in darkness or through cloud cover, with far more
frequency.
Company officials are restricted from talking about the highly classified
contract, but Roger Roberts, general manager of the Boeing unit in Seal
Beach overseeing the project, gave a hint of its scope and size.
The endeavor will require 5,000 engineers, technicians and computer
programmers over the next five years, and that will be just for the initial
design and development of the satellites, he said.
The satellites most likely would be assembled at Boeing Satellite Systems in
El Segundo, Calif.
The need for engineers has been so great that two months ago Boeing opened a
recruitment office in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Sunnyvale, where it
is targeting both dot-com survivors and Lockheed Martin engineers who built
many of the spy satellites now in orbit. After dominating that business
since the 1950s, Lockheed lost the new contract to Boeing.
John Pike, a Washington, D.C.-based military space consultant, believes that
in all, the work could be similar in scope to the $20 billion Manhattan
Project, the 1940s program to build the first atomic bomb.
"Lots of kids will be sent to college, lots of swimming pools are going to
get built and a lot of people will spend their career working on this
project," Pike said.
Still, most state officials said they know little about the project.
"I don't think most people are aware of how big this is," said Mike Marando,
a spokesman for the California Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency. "We
know California benefits substantially, but by exactly how much we just
don't know."
The National Reconnaissance Office hasn't helped. The enigmatic agency
announced the contract in a three-paragraph news release posted on its
bare-bones Web site little more than a year ago. The project is officially
known as Future Imagery Architecture.
Despite slowly opening itself up in recent years, the NRO remains one of the
most secretive government agencies. Even its innocuous logo - a space probe
circling the globe - was a secret until 1994.
Besides saying it awarded the contract to Boeing "to develop, provide launch
integration and operate the nation's next generation of imagery
reconnaissance satellites," not much else has been revealed.
Virtually everything else about the contract - its dollar amount, the number
of satellites to be built, who is doing what and where, and the capabilities
of the satellite - is secret. Even the duration of the contract is deemed
classified.
"This program is so secret that most of the people who work on it won't have
a good sense of what they are doing," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst
at the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute.
Still, aerospace analysts have been able to draw some conclusions through
past reconnaissance programs based on public information gleaned from
different sources, such as watching the size and frequency of rocket
launches carrying secret spy satellites.
Analysts generally agree that the number of satellites involved in the new
program will be at least a dozen to two dozen, compared with roughly half a
dozen spy satellites now in orbit. The new models are likely to be
significantly smaller and cheaper than the current generation of spy
satellites, which cost about $1 billion each, weigh 15 tons and can take up
to 18 months to build.
With a bigger constellation of satellites, the probes will be able to
revisit and take pictures of an area more frequently than the current
versions. The need is driven in part by inadequacies identified during the
Persian Gulf War, when military commanders complained about untimely
intelligence photos.
The new system would be less predictable than current satellites. For
instance, U.S. intelligence officials were alarmed recently when they found
a large contingent of North Korean troops lined up near the demilitarized
zone with South Korea. Analysts believe that the North Koreans were able to
move troops undetected by coordinating the operation with the orbit of a
U.S. spy satellite.
And with improvements in optical and radar technology, U.S. intelligence
officials hope to place the satellites at a higher orbit so they can take
pictures of a ground target for a longer period.
Currently satellites can "linger" over an area about 10 minutes. U.S.
officials hope to double that span with the new probes. In all, the
Federation of American Scientists believes that the new satellites will be
able to collect eight to 20 times more images than the current system.
The agency now operates three optical satellites called KeyHole, which take
photographic and infrared images, and three school-bus-size radar satellites
known as Lacrosse, which can see through clouds and darkness, analysts said.
Boeing is building both types of satellites under the contract.
In an unusual moment of candor, an NRO spokesman confirmed this week that
the satellites will be smaller and cheaper but more numerous than the
current constellation.
"I can tell you that we plan to begin launching (the satellites) around the
2005 time frame," said NRO spokesman Art Haubold. "It's a multiyear effort
that will provide a more capable but less costly means of filling the
nation's imaging needs."
Haubold declined to specify the value of the contract, although he said,
"We're talking about a big part of our business. That's all I can say."
Boeing and other contractors - which would normally gloat - aren't talking,
other than to confirm that they are part of the winning team. In addition to
Boeing, which will oversee the contract and build the satellites, the other
main companies include Raytheon, Eastman Kodak and Harris. Analysts believe
that Aerospace Corp., a government-funded research operation in El Segundo,
drew up the blueprints for the new satellites.
Although the companies declined to discuss the contract, workers at
Raytheon's El Segundo facility are probably developing the radar-imaging
equipment as well as the ground-based controls for the satellites.
Meanwhile, Rochester, N.Y.-based Eastman Kodak is working on processing the
images captured by the satellites. The role of Harris Corp., a Melbourne,
Fla.-based maker of telecommunications components and provider of support
services to the Defense Department, is unclear.
The NRO, which was created in 1960 to build and operate spy satellites, has
an annual budget of at least $6 billion, exceeding spending for both the CIA
and the National Security Agency.
Pike estimates that the new contract accounts for about $1 billion of the
annual budget and has a lifetime of at least 20 years. After factoring in
about $5 billion for design and development, he believes the total worth of
the contract to be as much as $25 billion, which includes building the
satellites and maintaining them. By comparison, the Manhattan Project to
develop the atomic bomb, which at one time employed as many as 125,000
people, cost the U.S. $20 billion after adjustment for inflation.
The NRO program "will be the most expensive program in the history of the
intelligence community," a recent assessment by the Federation of American
Scientists concluded.
Bulgaria said on Saturday it had asked
Russia to withdraw three diplomats it accused of links to alleged spies.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Radko Vlaikov told Reuters the actions of the
Russian diplomats in Sofia were incompatible with their status and
threatened Bulgaria's national interest.
"In a sign of goodwill we will not declare them persona non grata and will
wait for a week for the problem to be resolved," he said, adding that Deputy
Foreign Minister Marin Raikov discussed the matter with Russia's ambassador
on Friday.
Vlaikov said there was evidence linking the three diplomats, whose names
were not given, with the arrest for alleged spying last week of Defense
Ministry employee Lilyana Gesheva and retired colonel Yani Yanev.
State news agency BTA quoted Defense Ministry sources as saying Yanev was
arrested at the entrance of the Russian embassy.
Russian Ambassador Vladimir Titov has denied any Russian involvement in the
case.
Bulgaria was one of the Soviet Union's staunchest allies, but relations with
Moscow soured after the fall of communism, not least over Bulgaria's moves
to join the NATO military alliance.
(C)2001 Copyright Reuters Limited
.
3. Moscow agencies do not comment on spying scandal in Bulgaria
MOSCOW. March 19
(Interfax)
Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and the
General Staff's Chief Intelligence Board declined to comment on Monday on
reports that the Bulgarian authorities had told three Russian diplomats to
leave the country "for activities incompatible with their status," a polite
description of spying.
The activities of the diplomats threaten the country's security, Deputy
Foreign Minister Radko Vlaikov has said. No names have been given. The
Bulgarian authorities seem not to intend to declare the diplomats
personas non grata.
The diplomats may have had contacts with several Bulgarians detained
for spying a few days ago.
The Russian Foreign Ministry is not commenting on the reports. Russian
Ambassador to Bulgaria Vladimir Titov has denied the diplomats' involvement
in spying activities.
4. Hanssen Case May Be Linked to Defector
After Dry Spell, Two Intelligence Officers Gave Up Allegiance to Russia Last Fall
By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 18, 2001; Page A05
He lived in a modest apartment at a Russian complex in the Bronx and was
virtually invisible at the United Nations, where he served as "first
secretary" in Russia's mission to the United Nations.
But Sergei Tretyakov's real career as a spy with diplomatic "cover" has
become the subject of international speculation since veteran FBI
counterintelligence agent Robert P. Hanssen was arrested last month and
charged with selling secrets to Moscow for the past 15 years.
Tretyakov defected to the United States in October, around the time that FBI
investigators obtained the contents of a KGB case file that quickly led them
to finger Hanssen as a mole. The timing has prompted media reports in the
United States, Russia, England and Canada that Tretyakov may have been the
source of the Hanssen file.
When FBI Director Louis J. Freeh announced Hanssen's arrest on Feb. 9 --
declaring it a "counterintelligence coup" - he was asked about Tretyakov and
tersely denied any connection. But numerous former intelligence and law
enforcement officials insist that the timing of Tretyakov's defection,
combined with his role as a Russian intelligence officer in New York and his
quick acceptance in a U.S. program for valuable defectors, makes him a
logical candidate for involvement in the Hanssen case.
"I don't believe in coincidences," said one former high-ranking FBI
official. "It's either that defector or someone exactly like him."
Indeed, Tretyakov is not the only Russian spy to defect since the FBI
obtained the KGB's file on Hanssen last year. In December, while Hanssen was
under FBI surveillance, Yevgeny Toropov, another Russian intelligence
officer, defected in Ottawa, according to U.S. officials.
News of Toropov's defection, first reported in Moscow and confirmed 10 days
ago by Canadian officials, set off another round of guessing about the
source of the Hanssen material. Such defections, which occurred with some
regularity during the Cold War, have been rare since the fall of the Soviet
Union in 1991.
Intelligence experts are focused on Tretyakov and Toropov as possible
sources because they believe the FBI would not have filed an affidavit in
court revealing extensive detail about Hanssen's alleged activities if the
bureau's source or sources were still working for the Russian government.
Given Russia's extremely close hold on sensitive intelligence, those experts
believe Moscow either knows who betrayed Hanssen or has a very short list of
suspects.
If the case against Hanssen goes to trial, prosecutors may have to produce
at least one Russian, if not more, to vouch for the authenticity of the
documents and establish some chain of custody from intelligence files in
Moscow to their possession by prosecutors.
In late 1999 or early 2000, the FBI got "a firm indication" that a mole was
still operating inside the bureau, according to informed sources.
A similar tip years earlier was followed by the arrest in 1997 of FBI
counterintelligence agent Earl Edwin Pitts. He was fingered by a defecting
Russian diplomat who had served as a contact in the 1980s. Pitts was
recontacted by the defector in 1996 and caught in a sting operation,
apparently after not spying for more than a decade.
Although the FBI's Russian counterintelligence squad at the Washington Field
Office had continued its operations after Pitts, the new information about a
mole caused it to bring the CIA into the hunt, with both agencies
intensively working all their sources, particularly in Moscow.
"We made a major effort to get materials, and over time it worked," said one
official familiar with the operation.
The first documents from Russian intelligence files were copies of reports
from and about an agent in the United States using the pseudonym "B" and
"Ramon Garcia" or just "Ramon." According to an American official, the
Russians kept a working file on "B" with photocopies of their correspondence
with him. But the KGB and its successor, the SVR, stored the original
documents, along with the envelopes, bags and other containers in which they
came, in so-called "bulkies," boxes that handle both regular and extra-large
documents.
When copies of documents from the "B" file came into U.S. hands, they gave
few clues to the identity of the mole. It was not until last fall that an
individual working for U.S. intelligence apparently got into the original
"bulky" file and retrieved a plastic bag that "B" had used to deliver
documents, sources said. That bag, tested in an FBI lab for fingerprints,
led the investigators to Hanssen, they added.
It was acquisition of the plastic bag, along with the accumulation of copied
documents, that Freeh was talking about on Feb. 9 when he called the entire
operation a "counterintelligence coup," sources said.
Asked why the Russians working for the FBI and CIA did not take original
documents, except for the plastic bag, one former intelligence officer said,
"Missing originals would get them to sound the alarm, and the first person
to be alerted would have been `B.' " "I'm sure whoever went into the files
and retrieved that bag is no longer in Russia and hiding out," a former top
CIA official said.
Little is known about Tretyakov's career as an SVR officer, or about the
five years he spent in New York at Russia's U.N. mission. After news of
Tretyakov's October defection broke in the U.S. media in late January,
before Hanssen's arrest, the Russian Foreign Ministry asked the State
Department to arrange a "consular meeting" with Tretyakov so Russian
officials could determine whether he and his family were under duress.
Russian officials subsequently complained that the State Department refused
their request. A State Department spokesman declined to comment.
William Geimer, a former State Department lawyer and president of the
Jamestown Foundation, a group that was established in the early 1980s to
work with defectors, said he found the State Department's refusal to set up
such a meeting "puzzling."
In past defector cases involving Moscow, he said, such meetings were
arranged as a matter of course for the protection of foreign service
officers from both countries. "I've never heard of that before, where one
side or the other refuses," he said.
Tretyakov, a tall, hefty, balding man in his late forties, attracted little
attention during his stint at the United Nations.
"There were over 100 diplomats at the mission," recalled a former Russian
official who said he had a passing acquaintance with Tretyakov but did not
know he was an intelligence officer. "As a Russian diplomat, you don't want
to know more than you need to know." Tretyakov lived in a modest apartment
at the Russian-owned housing complex in the Riverdale section of the Bronx,
where his teenage daughter studied at a high school for children of Russian
diplomats.
At the United Nations, several diplomats said they could not recall having
ever seen him. "You will not find a `straight' diplomat who knows him," said
one European. "I've asked everyone in my mission, and nobody recalls having
worked with him.
"If a Chinese and a Russian diplomat meet in Lusaka, people would notice,"
said the official, referring to the capital of Zambia.
"This city is unique in that you have officials from 186 countries living in
a city of millions, so it's easy to blend in."
Even in U.N. departments that attracted foreign agents, such as the U.N.
special commission, or UNSCOM, the now-defunct weapons agency responsible
for disarming Iraq, Tretyakov was unknown.
"When we heard about it we tried to find out who this guy was," said one
former UNSCOM official, who requested anonymity.
"We never even heard the name."
After Tretyakov's disappearance, Russian officials contacted the U.S.
government to ask about his whereabouts. Kirill Speransky, a spokesman for
the Russian mission, confirmed that Tretyakov "disappeared" last October but
declined to say whether he was an intelligence officer.
"He worked for the Russian mission as a first secretary," he said. "Whatever
his duties were I wouldn't comment on that."
Special correspondent Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this
report.
The Guardian
Friday March 16, 2001 11:10 am
SEATTLE (AP)
The Central Intelligence Agency is appealing a federal
judge's decision to allow a case brought by two Cold War spies to proceed.
In January, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik ruled for a second time that
he would not dismiss the case, which involves a Seattle-area couple who say
the agency reneged on a promise of lifetime financial security in return for
their help in obtaining intelligence about their homeland.
The CIA maintains that under an 1875 Supreme Court ruling, courts have no
power to enforce secret government contracts. In an order made public
Thursday, Lasnik agreed to let the CIA take the matter to the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
At issue is whether the CIA should be able to break promises to defectors
while leaving them no recourse for appeal. The agency and the courts have
ignored or dismissed the claims of numerous spies and defectors by falling
back on the 1875 ruling, Totten v. United States.
The Totten ruling, which involved a spy hired by the Union during the Civil
War, said courts could not rule on alleged secret contracts because the
disclosure that such contracts existed could jeopardize national security.
The spies in this case are a former high-ranking foreign diplomat and his
wife, now living in the Seattle area. They are identified only as John and
Jane Doe in court papers because they may still face charges in their
homeland, which has not been disclosed.
The CIA has refused to comment about the case or say whether it made any
promises to the couple.
6. CIA Declassifies Its Records On Dealings With Ex-Nazis
Documents May Give Clues About Obstacles in Hunt for War Criminals
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 18, 2001; Page A04
7. German armed forces ban MS software, citing NSA snooping
By: John Lettice
Posted: 17/03/2001 at 18:59 GMT
The German foreign office and Bundeswehr are pulling the plugs on Microsoft
software, citing security concerns, according to the German news magazine
Der Spiegel. Spiegel claims that German security authorities suspect that
the US National Security Agency (NSA) has `back door' access to Microsoft
source code, and can therefore easily read the Federal Republic's deepest
secrets.
The Bundeswehr will no longer use American software (we surmise this
includes Larry and Scott as well) on computers used in sensitive areas. The
German foreign office has meanwhile put plans for videoconferencing with its
overseas embassies on hold, for similar reasons. Under secretary of state
Gunter Pleuger is said by Spiegel to have discovered that "for technical
reasons" the satellite service that was to be used was routed via Denver,
Colorado.
According to a colleague of Pleuger's this meant that the German foreign
services "might as well hold our conferences directly in Langley." We're not
entirely sure whose interesting video conferencing via satellite service has
a vital groundstation in Denver, but we note that Pleuger seems to have
gleaned this information from a presentation held earlier this month in
Berlin by, er, Deutsche Telekom.
Which just happens, along with Siemens, to have picked up the gig. The two
companies have supplanted Microsoft (and anything else American) and will be
producing a secure, home-grown system that the German military can be
confident in.
A FORMER Army officer who secretly negotiated with Serb leaders on behalf of
the British government during the war in Bosnia is suing the Ministry of
Defence after being wrongly arrested for spying.
Milos Stankovic, of the Parachute Regiment, was part of the United Nations
team that met Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb President, during
negotiations for the ceasefire. He was arrested in 1997 under suspicion of
breaking the Official Secrets Act despite being decorated for his conduct
during the conflict.
Major Stankovic, who left the Army last year, was awarded an MBE for his
part in a secret mission to smuggle civilians from the war zone given the
codename "Schindler's List". After the conflict ended, he was arrested by
MoD police and accused of spying, and remained under investigation for three
and a half years.
He has launched a claim through the High Court after the MoD decided to drop
all allegations against him. Friends of Major Stankovic have told The
Telegraph that he will claim hundreds of thousands of pounds in
compensation. He believes that the MoD arrested him after being given poor
intelligence by the CIA. MoD police raided his family home in Farnham,
Hampshire, and took away "30,000 possessions", thought to be documents and
personal items that have yet to be returned, according to the writ.
His arrest was carried out despite opposition from some of the Army's most
senior officers. General Sir Michael Jackson, the commander-in-chief of
Britain's land forces, was so astonished that he ignored MoD advice and
provided an affidavit defending Major Stankovic's "professional
understanding, intelligence, articulateness and humanity".
Despite this, the investigation continued into allegations that he had
colluded with Serbian warlords and the Belgrade government. The writ claims
that the British Army issued Major Stankovic with a false passport bearing
the name "Mike Stanley" to help him work with Secret Intelligence Services.
The MoD interviewed dozens of soldiers who served in Bosnia. During the two
years he served in Bosnia, Major Stankovic was the chief liaison officer
with General Sir Michael Rose and General Sir Rupert Smith, the UN
commanders.
The MoD has admitted spending £226,000 on the investigation, which led to
officers questioning 107 people in America, Germany, Switzerland, Cyprus and
the Balkans. The MoD police said that the claim for damages would be
contested in the High Court. A spokesman said: "Our legal advisers are
preparing a defence which will be presented in good time."
.
New Zealand's Security Intelligence Service has placed newspaper adverts for
spies for the first time in 20 years.
The potential Career Intelligence Officers should be graduates and have some
work experience.
Richard Woods, director of Security Intelligence Service, says the service
had become more open in recent years.
He adds in The Evening Post: "These are important and challenging jobs. We
want to draw on a wide pool of talent so that we get the best possible
people."
Earlier in March, Ananova reported that the Australian Secret Intelligence
Service advertised for graduates to train as spies on its website
.
IN August 1943 a frightened German bureaucrat crossed into Switzerland with
a stack of stolen Nazi documents taped to his torso. At the British legation
in Berne he was shown into the office of Colonel Henry Cartwright, the
military attaché.
Cartwright took one look at the sweating would-be informer, glanced at his
papers and showed him the door. "Sir, you take me for an utter fool," he
declared. "I know you are sent as a plant to get me into trouble. I do not
deal with cads."
More than a half a century later Cartwright appears the fool. The man he
booted out of his office was one of the most remarkable spies of the 20th
century. Spurned by the British, Fritz Kolbe, an official at the Nazi
foreign ministry in Berlin, turned to the Americans.
Newly declassified wartime intelligence documents at the national archives
in Washington show the scale of Kolbe's extraordinary feat in smuggling
hundreds of Nazi military and political secrets to his American contact in
Switzerland.
Although the outline of Kolbe's story has been known to historians for
years, the recent release of more than 1,600 cables by the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS), the US wartime espionage service, confirms that
the British turned away a brave undercover opponent of the Nazis with some
of the war's most startling intelligence. Kolbe was a perfect spy.
The boxes of OSS files holding the bulk of Kolbe's cables - codenamed the
Boston series - have been unsealed under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure
Act, which has seen more than 3m once-classified wartime documents made
public by the CIA, FBI, the State Department and other agencies. Up to 7m
more await release, including such gems as the CIA file on Hitler.
Among the secrets of Kolbe, right, given to the US after Britain
turned him down, was an early warning of the Holocaust
Photograph: Universal
Greg Bradsher, a senior archivist, said: "People looking for smoking guns
have been disappointed in some respects. These documents cover a lot of
familiar ground, but they are mainly helpful in connecting the dots,
completing the picture - that's the fun part."
The Kolbe files reveal a stunning array of Nazi intelligence. From 1943 Alan
Dulles, who ran the Berne OSS office, passed some of Kolbe's material to MI6
for evaluation. In doing so he disgusted Claude Dansey, the British agency's
deputy head who, says James Srodes in a Dulles biography, went into "a
sputtering rage at the notion Dulles was paying attention to such a spurious
and obvious plant".
For months intelligence agents debated the possibility that the Nazis were
using Kolbe to lure the allies into a trap. According to documents seen by
The Sunday Times, the Americans slowly shed their doubts.
In March 1944 Colonel Alfred McCormick, director of US military
intelligence, claimed to have smelt a "dead fish" in Kolbe's files, but by
the December he declared: "In no case has an item been conclusively proved
to be spurious."
By then items of "considerable value" were being circulated as far as the
White House. At Bletchley Park, British cryptographers operating a stolen
Enigma code-breaking machine were astounded to find that secret Nazi
documents which they had spent weeks decoding had already been handed to the
Americans by Kolbe.
By an extraordinary twist of fortune, among the first at MI6 to realise the
value of the Kolbe material was the British traitor Kim Philby, who boasted
in his memoirs that he had passed off the OSS material as a British product,
thereby emerging as a hero when the cables turned out to be authentic.
Philby, who would later defect to Russia, slyly confirmed that his MI6
career had taken off thanks to "our German friend with his useful suitcase".
The spy whose story seems to beg for the full Hollywood treatment seems to
have been an eccentric civil servant who detested the Nazis, but whose
administrative skills earned him the post of special assistant to Karl
Ritter, a Nazi ambassador who liaised between the Berlin foreign office and
the military high command.
Kolbe's job was to screen and reroute top secret cables from Hitler's
generals and diplomats around the world. "Only the Führer himself had a
better vantage point for German intelligence," said Srodes.
Perhaps Kolbe's most sensational coup was to reveal to the Americans - and
through them to the British - that the Germans had a spy codenamed Cicero
inside the British embassy in Ankara. The Cicero affair became an
international cause celebre when it emerged after the war that the valet to
Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador, had photographed
secret documents on the ambassador's desk while his master played the piano
at his diplomatic soirées.
The affair inspired the 1952 film Five Fingers, starring James Mason as
Elyesa Bazna, the manservant who escaped British capture but who died in
misery - the Germans repaid his treachery with counterfeit British
banknotes.
Cock-a-hoop at their triumph in planting a spy inside a British ambassador's
residence, the Nazis had no idea that the material Cicero provided was being
copied in Berlin by Kolbe and smuggled to the Americans.
The awesome scale of Kolbe's achievement becomes clear only from scrutiny of
the full Boston series of reports, which include information on everything
from the Nazi V-2 rocket programme to reprisals against Greek partisans,
Japanese troop positions, espionage in Dublin, grain shipments to Spain and
the interrogation of captured British pilots in Hungary. Page after page of
secrets tumble from the Boston files.
For some historians, potentially the most inflammatory revelation is Kolbe's
early warning of the Holocaust. A report from October 1943 cites orders to
seize 8,000 Jews in Rome "to be liquidated".
Bradsher said: "The question has often been asked why President Franklin D
Roosevelt did not take a more aggressive stand on the Holocaust. The
questions these papers pose is: what did the president know and what did he
do about it?"
Kolbe died in 1970, having received little acclaim for his extraordinary
role. Many Germans thought of him as a traitor and he was bitter about
falling on hard times. "Pity we weren't Nazis," he said.
MI5 chief Stephen Lander accepts political scrutiny Security chiefs are
considering introducing US-style lie-detectors in a bid to unmask traitors.
According to politicians overseeing British intelligence, the use of
polygraph tests to check for rogue spies is being considered.
The news came as MI5 director general Sir Stephen Lander addressed a
conference entitled the Oversight of Intelligence and Security, in central
London.
Sir Stephen told delegates that he welcomed the involvement of politicians
in the work of MI5.
But he admitted that the setting up of a parliamentarycommittee to oversee
the work of the security services had made his job harder and had driven up
administration costs.
He said that MI5 now employed seven lawyers, instead of one in the past, and
a host of accountants.
The Intelligence and Security Committee was set up in 1984 to oversee the
administration and policy of the security services.
Recruit vetting
Tom King, chairman of the committee, said that it was actively looking at
the possibility of using lie detectors to vet recruits and root out
traitors.
The defections to thethen Soviet Union ofGuy Burgess, Donald
Maclean and KimPhilby, who had all worked for British intelligence, caught
the
public's imagination in the 1950s and 1960s.
But, in US intelligence at least, the danger and detection of traitors
selling secrets
to foreign powers is still an active issue even after the end of the Cold
War.
"It is important to look at the issue of betrayal," Mr King said.
"I think the jury is out on polygraphs. We believe it could have benefits."
A senior security source told the Press Association that MI5 officers were
regularly visiting the US to check on the latest lie detector techniques.
"I don't think the question of polygraphs is a dead question, I think it's
an open question," the source said.
`Curious' politicians
Speaking to Thursday's conference, Sir Stephen said: "In the last decade
there has been very considerable change for security agencies, bigger than
at the end of the Cold War.
"The degree of engagement of ministers in our business has grown
exponentially."
The security chief said that as well as inquiring about policy and
administrative matters, politicians were becoming more and more curious
about operational issues.
"If I had a pound for every time the committee has asked about operational
matters I would be a rich man, for example Sierra Leone and Irish
terrorism."
Sir Stephen said he was expected to contact the committee to alert them of
possible newspaper headlines or if "we have lost another laptop".
"I think the committee has done a good job," he added.
Confusing statements from German member of the Echelon Committee in
European Parliament
The German member of the temporary Echelon committee Gerhard Schmid (Labour)
stated on Wednesday that the committee had no hard proof of Americans spying
on European business. The Echelon Committee of the European Parliament was
set up In July 2000 to verify the communications interception system called
Echelon and to detect if European industry is put at risk by the system.
Although the report in Echelon is not yet finished, Schmid said that no hard
proof could be found of the existence of Echelon. `Until we get a secret
service or industry to come forward ... we have no proof that it is
happening,' said Gerhard Schmid, the EU assembly's vice president, according
to the Associated Press. `We don't have any facilities for conducting
investigations into the activities of the secret services. We cannot find
out what the American secret services are doing, we cannot find out what the
European secret services are doing,' Schmid said.
He also stated that the capacities of Echelon were exaggerated. After six
months of listening to experts in communications, national security and
other fields, Schmid said that his committee was coming to the conclusion
that no single country could do what some claim the United States are doing:
eavesdropping on every phone call, e-mail and fax message around the world.
`The possibilities here for such eavesdropping have been hopelessly
overestimated,' Schmid said. But, he added, if a group of countries worked
together, most strategic areas around the world could be listened into.
Schmid warned that even though it was hard to prove, European companies
should be aware that economic eavesdropping is probably a reality. `We have
to protect ourselves,' Schmid told AP.
Last week, vice-chairman of the Echelon committee Ellie Plooij (The
Netherlands, Liberal Party), told Telepolis that a delegation of the Echelon
committee had not yet spoken to American representatives. `A visit to the
United States is scheduled for the beginning of May.'
Plooij further told Telepolis that British governmental representatives
first refused to appear in front of the committee. But during a visit to
Britain the committee had spoken to several ministers. During this
discussions the Brits implicitly acknowledged the existence of the secret
UKUSA Agreement, Plooij stated. `They didn't say it in clear terms. But when
we asked if we could see the UKUSA Agreement, the officials told us this was
impossible because it is secret.'
Plooij didn't want to comment on the findings of the Echelon committee. But
she was convinced that the possibilities of large scale cross bounder
interception constitute a threat for citizens and companies:
`Secret services are bound by national legislation when it comes to
interception. But there are no rules for cross border interception. This is
a big flaw in the protection of international communication. We have to make
international agreements on this issue. First within the European Union,
later on an international scale.'
The remarks of Schmid come at a moment when there is already a lot of
confusion around the work of the Echelon committee. In February, Desmond
Perkins, an European Commission staff responsible for the cryptographic
security system, told the Echelon committee `the NSA usually check our
systems to see that they are being well looked after and not being misused.'
After the message had hit the media and caused a stir, the European
Commission stated last week that the words of Perkins were misunderstood.
The Commission has no links to the NSA and never transmitted material for
verification purposes, according to the Commission.
The Greens in European Parliament now call for an open debate on the issue
in the plenary
session of the European Parliament next week. `It is extraordinary to think
of European
secret codes being checked for security by American spies. The truth is that
American
technological superiority in encryption technology and operating software in
computers hascreated an American capacity to crack everyone else's secrets -
or practically everyone's,' said Neil MacCormick. `The Perkins case reveals
again acute failures of managerial control in the European Commission. We
must ensure that the reforms in progress just now bring about tight controls
on European secrets.'
.
Sunday March 18, 2001 10:10 pm
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP)
Eight Sudanese opposition leaders accused of
espionage and plotting to wage war against the state stood trial Sunday in a
case that could further strain U.S.-Sudanese relations.
The Sudanese government said in December it had caught opposition leaders -
members of the Democratic National Alliance, an umbrella organization for
opposition groups - meeting with an American diplomat to allegedly plan an
armed uprising. Their alleged plot was to leak information to rebels and
sabotage vital installations in the country.
U.S. envoy Glenn Warren was ordered to leave the country. A U.S. State
Department spokesman has said Warren was involved in "nothing more than a
discussion of the political situation in Sudan."
The eight defendants were brought to court as police armed with batons
prevented journalists from talking to them.
A request by the defense council that the eight be released on bail was
turned down.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Sadiq el-Mahdi, Sudan's toppled prime minister,
said Sunday he had accepted a U.S. invitation to discuss democracy and his
country's 18-year civil war with U.S. officials.
The war is between Arab-descended, Muslim northerners, who control the
military-dominated government, and African southerners, who mostly practice
indigenous religions. About 5 percent of Sudan's population is Christian,
according to U.S. data, almost all in the south.
"We are looking forward to a more effective American role in adopting what
comes in line with the will and desire of the Sudanese people," said
el-Mahdi, leader of the opposition Umma Party.
He said he met on Saturday with the U.S. charge d'affaires and a political
officer based at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss the
invitation. The date for his trip to Washington has yet to be fixed, he
said.
He said he told the diplomats that the
U.S. administration "should back the right
national agenda as adopted by our party
and it should openly back the democratic
transformation ... instead of backing the
war as well as backing one side of the
Sudanese equation."
The United States has provided millions of dollars in food aid and to
support rebel "civil society" groups in southern Sudan.
El-Mahdi was prime minister of the elected government overthrown by
President Omar el-Bashir in a 1989 coup.
Since his return, he has come to terms
with the president and said he would take
advantage of what he called "relative
freedom to mobilize inside Sudan."
He has since advocated a political solution involving the opposition in
Khartoum as well as the southern, mainly Christian rebels.
In 1997, the United States withdrew its ambassador and imposed limited
sanctions on Sudan, saying it supports terrorism and has an appalling human
rights record.
Relations deteriorated further in 1998 when U.S. aircraft bombed a
pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum following the deadly bombings at two
American embassies in East Africa, alleging it was manufacturing the
precursors for chemical weapons. Sudan said the plant produced only
medicine.
According to Sevodnya, Russian foreign intelligence, SVR, and the agency
charged with monitoring signals intelligence, FAPSI, had trouble finding the
Tomlinson e-mail and web site. Col Lyubimov said: "The Internet is something
of a mystery to our intelligence services."
.
15. Spy vs. Counter Spy
Conversations With a Former KGB Chief
By Nikolai Dobryukha
Moscow Times Friday, March 16, 2001
Vladimir Semichastny was a KGB man to the end. A staunch critic of the
politics and
morals of the new Russia, Semichastny headed the KGB from 1961 to 1967.
Under his
watch the Cold War turned chillier during the rise of the Berlin Wall and
the Cuban
Missile Crisis.
"I have no regrets. I believe everything was done correctly," Semichastny
told NTV
shortly before his death earlier this year at the age of 77.
It was also during Semichastny's tenure that the KGB arrested Oleg Penkovsky
- the
Russian intelligence officer often credited in the United States and Britain
as being the
most valuable double agent during the Cold War.
Penkovsky joined the Soviet army intelligence directorate, GRU, in 1949.
Shortly
thereafter he became an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of colonel
by 1960. His job
was to collect scientific and technical intelligence on the West, but
between 1961 and
1962 he passed information to the United States and Britain on Soviet
weapons
technology - data that the United States found particularly valuable in
identifying
Soviet missile systems placed in Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Arrested by the Soviets in October 1962, Penkovsky was convicted of treason
and executed the following May.
The following is an excerpt from Semichastny's memoirs, compiled before his
death by Moscow writer Nikolai Dobryukha. During his conversation with
Dobryukha, Semichastny discusses his dealings with Penkovsky after the spy
was arrested in 1962 - at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Dobryukha:
Penkovsky was convicted of treason nearly 40 years ago, yet the affair
continues to raise interest today. Some say he was the most dangerous
traitor in the history of the Soviet Union who paid for his deeds with his
life. Other accounts say Penkovsky was a phony double agent set up to
misinform the West and that he is still alive today, living under a
different name with a different face. Still other say his body was burned
after his conviction to leave no trace of him. This was all happening while
you were heading the KGB. What can you tell us of the Penkovsky case?
Semichastny:
In reality, he didn't go anywhere. He was shot. All sorts of things have
been said about Penkovsky. Some claim he was the resident coordinator for
all of the West's intelligence activities in the Soviet Union. They even say
the KGB burned Penkovsky alive in a furnace.
There are certainly a lot of fairy tales about the KGB!
If you like I can tell you what happened after he had just been arrested. He
was working at the time in the Soviet army intelligence
directorate. When Penkovsky was arrested they brought him straight to me at
Lubyanka. I wanted to get a look at him so as to be sure that
he was our man. They brought him to my office and, as I recall, he sat at
the far end of my long table. He looked crestfallen and disheveled - like a
pitiful mouse. And suddenly he said to me, "Citizen chairman - I could offer
you my services and work for the state - " He
immediately started trying to come to an agreement with me.
I said to him: "First tell us what harm you have done to the state. What
have you told the Americans and the British?" He started muttering
something, and I said: "Keep in mind that we know more than what you are
telling us now. Go off to prison. When it all comes back to you in
your cell and you decide to tell us everything then let us know and we'll
meet again."
As it happens, I didn't meet with him again. Our investigators were already
on his case. They had arrested Greville Wynne [the British businessman who
served as Penkovsky's link to British intelligence] and started playing with
him. One day, as if by accident, they lead
Wynne along the corridor as Penkovsky was approaching in the opposite
direction so that both could see that the other had been arrested.
Of course, they had no idea how much the other would reveal. This kind of
psychological game made them easier to handle during interrogations.
Dobryukha:
What were the consequences for his family after he was arrested? Did they
also suffer?
Semichastny:
No. In fact the opposite is true. After all we had broken into his apartment
earlier. We had already discovered the hiding place [in his
apartment] where he had a fake passport and several thousand rubles. Later I
gave the order that a large portion of this money should be left for his
family. While observing Penkovsky we became convinced that the other members
of his family (his mother, wife and two daughters) were respectable
individuals who never suspected his treachery.
In order to protect them we swiftly transferred his older daughter to a
different school and moved the family to a new area. But the family
remained intact. Later, it turns out, they changed their surname so that
Penkovsky's crimes did not haunt them. Penkovsky's wife,
incidentally, wasn't just anyone. She was the daughter of the head of the
political department for the Moscow military district. How about
that!
Back to Penkovsky. He had been working as an aide to Artillery Marshal
Sergei Varentsov, commander of the Red Army Rocket Forces. He
managed to worm his way into the good graces of Varentsov's family, his wife
and daughters. They even trusted him with the keys to their
dacha.
Much of what the agent passed on to the Americans and the British originated
from Varentsov. He socialized, after all, with members of the
military, weapon designers and other individuals with high security
clearance. Penkovsky knew in detail about all of Varentsov's trips and
where the rocket forces were deployed. He passed all of this on to the West.
Ultimately, even the unsuspecting Varentsov suffered because
of Penkovsky: He was demoted from artillery marshal to the rank of major
general.
When I first called Varentsov in for a talk he was outraged. But I told him:
"What do you mean? Do you think I personally decided to talk to
you? Do you think the Party isn't aware of the way you work, the way you
spend your time? Think about whom you've allowed to get close
to you. Who is this type who has been hanging around you all this time?" He
nearly swore at me. Then I said: "Here's the deal. Either I call in
the stenographer and officially interrogate you, or you can take my
questions with you and bring me back full answers to all of them!" He
wilted immediately. And that was it!
Penkovsky, of course, had been looking for an opportunity to betray [his
country]. On several occasions he sent letters to the Americans
and to the Brits offering his services. As I recall, the Americans were
initially wary. But the British went for him. We started to notice him
when he started to establish a link with the British. Or, to be more
accurate, we caught him with a fleeting contact at GUM department store,
by the fountain. That's where our external observer got a fix on him. After
that they followed him and followed him. We stuck with him for
about four months, shooting an entire documentary film about Penkovsky. This
film is still in the KGB archives, but it will never be shown. It
is forbidden to show secret documents. But I'll mention one interesting
moment in the film, when the wife of a secret agent in the British
Embassy is sitting in a public square. Penkovsky gives her little girl, who
is about 3 or 4 years old, a box of chocolates. The girl runs to her
mother with the box - which contains microfiche as well as sweets. She was
like a postman for the secret mail service.
Penkovsky also traveled abroad, to London and Paris, where the American and
British special services met and spoke with him at length.
These negotiations revealed his true, mercantile nature - his constant
requests for money and rank. Do you know, he was actually a colonel
serving in three intelligence agencies: ours, the Americans' and the
British. He conceitedly believed that the queen herself should grant him
audience. In fact, he wanted to meet the queen so much that the British had
to introduce him to some lord or other in order to cool him off.
He asked for money - allegedly in order to give presents to the necessary
people. In reality, it was all for himself.
Dobryukha:
The West called Penkovsky their most valuable agent of the Cold War. Is it
true that he caused a great deal of harm to Soviet security?
Semichastny:
Of course not! He was certainly the greatest traitor of all our spies. And
it is true that we were forced to recall some 200 spies from overseas
because Penkovsky knew them personally, but this business of the Western
secret services turning Penkovsky into their "agent of the century" is
nonsense. They made it sound as if they had recruited one of the
highest-ranking secret officers of the Soviet Union. People
talked about it for so long that they made it sound as though - thanks to
Penkovsky, who allegedly stole the Soviet's secret formula for rocket fuel -
a nuclear war was avoided. Rubbish! Nothing of the sort happened! All he did
was use the library of the Soviet intelligence
directorate. They say that he took top-secret materials from there and,
after photographing them, sent them on to the West. You may ask,
what top-secret materials could they keep in a library, even in the
intelligence directorate? The fact was that the foreign secret services
exaggerated the success they had with their "super agent" in order to secure
additional financing for their activities.
How could he have sold Soviet rocket fuel secrets to the Americans? He could
not have gotten hold of this formula - even from Varentsov.
He might have been able to show where the rockets were deployed, the names
and types, but he couldn't have given the exact number and said exactly
which rockets were deployed where. He could only record their general
location based on Varentsov's working trips.
Of course, he also heard whatever Varentsov said when he was drunk at the
table. Whenever he topped off Varentsov's glass, his tape recorder was on.
But what could he have found in the library? There was nothing he could have
taken from there. Top-secret defense materials never went through the
science and technology committee. Secondly, if an employee - even a general
- showed particularinterest in a certain subject in the intelligence
directorate library they would have informed the authorities and established
appropriate surveillance for this kind of curiosity. The people working
there are not, after all, your typical librarians. This is the special
service. Someone just can't come along of his own accord and ask for
something that goes unnoticed. Even in ordinary libraries everything is
recorded - all the more so in special libraries. All the materials lent out
are released under a special license, the license is granted by special
decree, the decree is part of a specially developed plan, and so on. Of
course deviations do occur, but as soon as they take on a systematic
character
the state security structures are notified immediately.
Furthermore, not a single sheet of paper will be given out - even to a
highly placed official - until that person presents in writing why he
needs it. At least, that is the way the system is meant to work. This is the
way it was with Penkovsky. We filmed four, 30-minute-long films of his
"research." I even showed these films to Fidel Castro, who told his
[security] minister: "Watch and learn!" We gave Penkovsky some
kind of junk to make the Americans' heads spin. He passed it all on to them,
and they took it for the real thing, paying him handsomely. As a
result, they poured money into unnecessary countermeasures.
Dobryukha:
What about Penkovsky's arrest?
Semichastny:
Penkovsky was supposed to have gone abroad on several occasions, but we
stopped him under some pretense or other. We didn't arrest
him because we were waiting to catch Wynne [his British contact]. But Wynne
didn't come to Moscow. He did travel to Budapest, though. I immediately sent
my plane there with a team to capture him and bring him back here. Once we
had Wynne, Penkovsky was brought in.
Dobryukha:
Recently another book, "Espionage and the Cold War: Oleg Penkovsky and the
Cuban Missile Crisis," came out in the West, signaling that they still
consider him to have been a key agent.
Semichastny:
The Americans may have had their doubts about Penkovsky, but he never gave
them the opportunity to come to their senses. He had the
gift of gab, convincing his contacts in the West that he was on friendly
footing with one and all. That enabled him to milk even more money out of
them. The Americans and the British were stuck with him. And later, in order
to cover up for this almost comical situation they got themselves into - one
that is unforgivable for such super powers - they had to posthumously dub
Penkovsky their super agent of thecentury.
But we really did have super agents - such as [the Soviet's double agent in
the British intelligence service Kim] Philby, and others they will only hear
about a hundred years from now. The main thing is that these spies can't be
compared to Penkovsky; he worked for money, while
they worked for an idea. Time will speak in defense of these spies who
worked for an idea. They are the real people - the ones who cannot be
bought.
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only.
A FEMALE British Army officer has
been kicked out of Kosovo over
her affair with a Russian military
spy, it was revealed last night.
Captain Helen Molyneux, of the Royal Signals, is
believed to have
been deliberately targeted by the “dashingly
handsome”
lieutenant colonel.
He is a member of the feared GRU - responsible for
much of
Russia’s military and technical espionage and
desperate for
information on our communications.
Back home in Merseyside, Army girl Helen, 31, was
“distraught”.
She added: “I had hopes I would be made a major -
that will
never happen now.”
But some sniggering colleagues jokingly compared
the
affair to
the title of cult teen movie Austin Powers: The Spy
Who
Shagged Me.
Russian-speaking Helen - with 89 Signal Squadron on
a
posting
to war-ravaged Kosovo - was picked to escort the
military
high-flier on peacekeeping duties.
Helen’s bosses were horrified to hear from security
officers of his
real role - and of their fling in the capital
Pristina.
However defence chiefs insisted that British
national
security
had NOT been imperilled.
Last night a security source said: “There is little
doubt what the
Russian was really after. He saw this innocent girl
as a possible
passport to details of British military
communications systems.”
But friends insisted Territorial Army girl Helen
was
“too bright” to
blab. One said: “She is obviously very upset, but
she
has told
the investigators that she has not betrayed any
secrets.”
The spy, in his late 30s, is among a group trained
in
the art of
seduction. Men are known as “romeos” and women as
“swallows”.
Security expert Chris Dobson said: “Victims can
fall
so much in
love they are willing to betray their country - or
if
they are
unwilling, they are at risk of being blackmailed
into
treachery.”
The Royal Signals is a prime target because of its
secret
communciations networks. And the TA plays a crucial
role in
providing temporary officers.
Mr Dobson said the Russians would be particularly
keen to find
out about Britain’s Bowman digital communications
system, due
to go into operation in two years.
He said: “The Russians support the Serbs. If they
could read our
signals, they and the Serbs would have
foreknowledge
of our
operations.”
But a senior Ministry of Defence source stressed:
“We
have
discovered no evidence that national security has
been
compromised.
“However, it was felt the TA captain had become too
close to
the Russian and that is why she was sent home.
“It looks more like a boy meets girl than a spy
scandal. The girl
was not there in an intelligence or signals
capacity.
“She was there as an escort and it seems that the
escorting
unfortunately went beyond the military sense of the
word.”
Friends said graduate Helen was using the 12-month
Kosovo
posting to decide whether she wanted a full-time
career in the
Armed Forces.
At her parents’ home in Bromborough, the Wirral,
she
said: “I’m
distraught about being sent home and really angry
about the
way the Army has treated me.
“I have been swinging from devastation, to tears
then
to anger
about what has happened.
“I’ve lost my pride. Thank God my family have been
supportive.”
Helen took a year out to travel around Bosnia in
1997. She
returned with the TA and in July escorted Forces
supremo
General Sir Charles Guthrie when he visited Army
bases.
Now her future hangs in the balance, and she has
been
ordered
to report to the Army’s Chilwell barracks in
Nottinghamshire on
April 23.
Helen said: “It is then I’ll find out whether I’m
being demobilised
from the TA or not.
“Until then I will just have to keep my head clear
and await my
fate.”
Additional reporting: CHRIS RICHES and GUY PATRICK
.
Four U.S. diplomats expelled from Moscow
in
a spy spat between the old Cold War superpowers have returned to the
United
States, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday.
They quoted diplomatic sources saying the four had flown home on
Wednesday,
within the 10-day grace period they were given after Russian authorities
retaliated for Washington's expulsion of four of its own diplomats.
Both Russia and the United States demanded a further 46 of the other's
officials leave their posts and go home by July, in the worst spy row to
hit
Moscow-Washington relations since the end of the Cold War.
Interfax said the departing Americans included Paul Hollingsworth, whom it
described as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Moscow
operations.
The U.S. embassy refused to comment, saying the matter was strictly
between
U.S. officials and Russia's Foreign Ministry.
The Americans were accused of "activities incompatible with their status",
a
diplomatic euphemism for spying.
(C)2001 Copyright Reuters Limited
.
4. CIA Senior Analyst an Apparent Suicide, Police Say
By Vernon Loeb and Tom Jackman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 6, 2001; Page A19
Russia's air force detects up to 15 spy planes on its vast territory every
week, particularly from the United States, other NATO countries and Japan,
Air Force Commander Anatoly Kornukov said.
"NATO and US spy planes have started paying special attention to us," he
told reporters, according to the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies.
"Each
week, we register 12 to 15 intelligence planes and 100 to 150 combat
aircraft."
He said the tension is much lower than during the Cold War, but still
palpable, especially on the Barents Sea near Russia's border with Norway
and
around the Sea of Japan and along Russia's Pacific coast.
His comments came amid a tense standoff between the United States and
China
over a collision of a US spy plane and Chinese fighter jet over the South
China Sea, which killed a Chinese pilot.
Kornukov also said Russia and Belarus would soon set up a joint air
defence
centre in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, reminiscent of Soviet-era bases.
"There will be a single command post with centralised control so that the
rather important region, which borders NATO, has its own control body,"
Interfax quoted him as saying.
Belarus is sandwiched between Russia and Poland, which became one of the
first former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO in its eastward expansion
in
1999. Russia strongly protested the expansion. - AP
.
The KGB -- once the "shield and sword'' of the revolution -- imagined
itself
to be an elite caste of Soviet supermen. And if this cult had a shrine, it
was the KGB museum tucked away behind the Lubyanka.
Here the holy relics and trophies of the past were lovingly displayed.
Among
the star attractions were a Union Jack confiscated from Reilly, "Ace of
Spies,'' Kim Philby's pipe, and a desk that belonged to Felix Dzerzhinsky,
the ruthless founder of the Soviet secret police.
On my last visit, a decade ago, admission was by special arrangement only.
The same holds today: A repeat tour the other day revealed that those
exhibits are still in place and that little else has changed either.
One difference is that back then the KGB was in retreat, bulwark of a
system
on the brink of self-destruction. Today, Russia's President and its
"first-ever civilian Defence Minister'' are both former intelligence
officers and proud of it. Much of the old KGB ethos has been rehabilitated
as patriotism for the new era.
Normal service has been resumed in the murky world of international
espionage, with Washington and Moscow expelling each other's spies in
numbers not seen since the Cold War.
Superficially, huge changes have swept through the Lubyanka, headquarters
of
what is now called the FSB, but once also a gateway to the hell of Lenin's
and Stalin's prison camps.
Our guide, Colonel Valery -- he refused to give his surname -- was keen to
draw our attention to the new exhibits of the FSB's latest successes.
Just arrived from Chechnya, where the FSB is in charge of Moscow's
campaign
to wipe out rebel guerrillas, was a captured enemy mortar ingeniously
cobbled together from a truck exhaust pipe.
A diagram showed how Soviet embassy staff in London had their flats in
Baron's Court bugged, presumably by MI5, and where the devices were
hidden.
With a flourish of his baton, Col. Valery waved us over to the display
devoted to Platon Obukhov, the diplomat accused of spying for MI6 but
still
waiting for a court to decide his fate five years after his arrest.
Here was a letter written in his cell begging forgiveness, and what looked
like a Sony Discman but, we were told, was really an MI6 gadget designed
to
transmit data to his handlers.
The museum portrayed the KGB and their FSB successors as heroes. But there
was a time when they were also victims.
"Our organization suffered as much as any other during the Stalin
purges,''
said Col. Valery, a reference to the tens of thousands of secret policemen
who, having tortured and murdered others, suffered the same treatment.
It was an astonishing claim, since the cellars of the building served as
torture chambers and a place of execution for years.
As for the KGB's persecution of dissidents and religious believers, it was
as if it never happened.
"Those were the laws of the time,'' Col. Valery said. "We had to enforce
them. We didn't have the right to step out of line on that.''
Such is the authorized version of Russia's recent past.
But let it not be said that the FSB is completely stuck in the past. For a
few years, the building has also been home to one of Moscow's more
exclusive
supermarkets.
Number 12, the Lubyanka, is also the site of the FSB cultural and social
club where tonight DJ Transistor will be rocking the house.
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only.
By Boris Pankin
Moscow Times Thursday, Apr. 12, 2001. Page 8
In a recent interview in Izvestia, Nikolai
Stepanov, the former chief of foreign
correspondents for the Novosti news agency,
stated: “After perestroika and the putsch, the
security organs left our agency. Why that
happened, I don’t know. This was not decided at
the agency, but somewhere in higher political
circles.”
Since I was a member of those “higher political
circles” during the period between the August
1991 putsch in Moscow and the December 1991
putsch in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, serving as
Soviet foreign minister, I may be able to shed
some light on what happened during those
blessed months.
In November 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev signed —and Boris Yeltsin approved —
an
order reducing by one-third the number of military intelligence and KGB
foreign intelligence agents working under the cover of Soviet embassies
and
other Soviet organizations abroad, including media outlets.
Shortly thereafter, newspapers connected to the security organs began
attributing this “scheme” to me, claiming that it was the result of
previous
conflicts “between the ambassador and the station chief.” As a matter of
fact, there were some conflicts of this sort — involving, for instance,
Alexander Yakovlev in Canada and Rafik Nishanov in Jordan. Personally, my
cup of patience overflowed when the KGB station chief in Stockholm made it
clear that, in his opinion, the only significant reason for having
embassies
at all is so that they can serve as cover for intelligence agents. I
encountered an even more striking situation shortly after I was named
ambassador to Prague in 1990. At that time, our fraternal socialism had
reached the point where some of our real diplomats pretended to be
important
by claiming to actually be intelligence agents.
I wouldn’t even deign to call most of these people “intelligence agents.”
Whole swarms of them were just following their own diplomats around,
including even ambassadors.
After I became minister, I was surprised by the domination of these
“colleagues” in the area of personnel and came to the conclusion that it
was
imperative to get them out of my ministry as quickly as possible. I don’t
know whether he was being sincere or not, but surprisingly my efforts were
completely endorsed by Leonid Shebarshin, who was then the head of this
section of the KGB and who even served as acting KGB director for three
days
after the August 1991 putsch. He made an appointment to see me, at which
he
admitted that he too was suffering from this overstaffing. Apparently the
Soviet fashion for grotesque nepotism had not bypassed even his
department.
After I was appointed ambassador to London at
the end of 1991, I saw for myself that
Gorbachev’s order was being carried out even
though Gorbachev himself was no longer
president. However, I don’t know what
happened to this process after 1994, although
there are a number of indications in mass media that it was reversed.
Over
the last few years I have wondered a bit about the fates and roles of
those
intelligence agents in the post-Soviet period. How have they fared since
the
thawing of the Cold War, the dawning of global openness, the collapse of
the
Berlin Wall and other visible and invisible barriers, and since world
leaders began proclaiming a new era of strategic partnership? Everyone
declares that spying on one another is bad form, but no one is ready to
abandon this unseemly business. Obviously, no one is going to renounce
spying unilaterally. And they are right not to. Just as was the case with
nuclear weapons, moving away from espionage requires multilateral
agreements
and mutual concessions. Just as with nuclear weapons —where first
atmospheric testing was banned and later underground testing and where a
long process led to minimizing the threat from tactical nuclear weapons,
the
most insidious type — shutting down the spying game will require a
step-by-step process. Perhaps the place to start would be a ban on
recruiting foreign nationals. That is, all civilized governments will
agree
to stop trying to induce, blackmail or bribe people to spy for them —
especially by using people who face nothing more than the threat of
expulsion if they are discovered. One of these recruiters who worked as a
diplomat in my embassy in Stockholm made it public later that his work was
just like that of a collective farm chairman who would exaggerate his
harvest figures: He would invite some naive citizen of the country where
he
worked to dinner and then write out a report to headquarters about how he
had recruited a new agent. I think that the old saying that every cloud
has
a silver lining is true. The recent exchange of blows between Russia and
the
United States has shaken the entire world and served to demonstrate that
there should be some international legal controls on such jousting. It is
time to retrain our spies as scholars and analysts. After all, in the age
of
the Internet, that would be more practical. And a lot safer. Boris Pankin
served as the Soviet foreign minister from August to December 1991. He
contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.
Wednesday, 11 April 2001 19:23 (ET)
U.S. prepares another spy plane
By RICHARD SALE, Terrorism Correspondent
WASHINGTON, April 11 (UPI) -- Even as the 24 crew members of a downed
spy
plane are on their way home from detention on a Chinese island, the United
States is preparing to send another Navy EP-3E Aires spy plane down the
China coast "within the next week," according to an administration
official
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
This source added that last week, at the height of the tense,
high-stakes
standoff between China and the United States over the April 1 collision
between an EP-3E Navy spy plane and an F-8 Chinese fighter, the U.S.
Department of Defense had sent another electronic intelligence plane on a
mission along the China coast.
According to John Pike, weapons expert for GlobalSecurity.org, an
Alexandra, Va.-based think tank, the spy plane was not "definitely not an
(Navy) Aries," but either an Air Force Rivet Joint flight or Navy P-3
Orion
anti-submarine aircraft.
A U.S. defense department spokesman refused to confirm the flight.
"That's
classified information,'' he said.
But Pike said U.S. intelligence officials had told him that an Aires
flight was due to be sent soon.
Mike O'Hanlon, Chinese expert at The Brookings Institution, said that he
had been told that a U.S. intelligence-gathering flight had flown off
China's coast last week. He said they were hard to stop.
"These flights are planned a long time in advance," O'Hanlon said. He
also
said that U.S. officials had told him that Aries flights targeting China
were to resume soon.
U.S. intelligence officials told United Press International that a
multi-billion dollar U.S. intelligence operation is flying the same number
of intelligence-gathering planes as were flown "at the height of the Cold
War," in the words of one analyst.
"We have the obligation to maintain our vigilance," another
administration
official said. He declined comment on further Aires flights. But Richard
Fisher, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation - a Washington-based
defense think tank -- said: "These flights should resume to make the point
that this is international airspace, and we have the right to conduct
surveillance that is deemed vital to our national security."
He added that the flights were necessary "for the protection of American
servicemen."
Rivet Joint missions, using gray-and-white EP-135 electronic signals
intelligence aircraft, have long been used in Europe, the Middle East, and
the Far East, to collect intelligence on communications. Formerly, they
were
used to gather information on Soviet air defense radars, and have been
reassigned to Chinese air defense and other systems, said sources.
Rivet Joint aircraft have rounded black noses and can stay in the air
for
10 hours before refueling. They have standing mission requirement focusing
on collection of information about Chinese submarine and other ship
activity, air defenses, communications and short-range tactical signals
intelligence.
At the height of the Cold War, Rivet Joint flew about 70 missions a
month
in the Far East and Western Europe, one U.S. official told UPI.
The number of missions being flown today by Aries, Rivet Joint or P-3
Orion aircraft targeting China number above 200 per year, U.S. sources
said.
"This is a multi-billion dollar effort," said a U.S. defense official.
Rivet Joint flights are run by the Defense Department, which processes
requests for flights from regional commanders, forwards them to the
Defense
Intelligence Agency, which, in turn, gives them to the Central
Intelligence
Agency's SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) committee.
The forward base for Rivet Joint flights is Offut Air Force Base near
Omaha, Nebraska with forward operating bases in Kadena, Okinawa, Eilson
Air
Force Base in Alaska, and Hellenikon Air Force Base near Athens, sources
said.
In the 1980s, the Strategic Air Command had 18 Rivet Joint planes in
Latin
America that were used to support government troops in El Salvador and
U.S.-backed Contra rebels, flying out of Howard Air Force Base in Panama.
A
portion of these have been reassigned.
U.S. officials said that the monitoring equipment aboard the Rivet Joint
planes is operated by the Air Force's Electronic Security Command (ESC),
which relays the data in real-time to National Security Agency
headquarters.
The ESC also operates a number of ground listening stations around the
world.
The P-Orion is an anti-submarine warfare aircraft equipped with the
latest
underwater tracking devices and capable of tracing back any transmission
or
emissions to the original sender ship. It would play a critical role in
wartime by revealing the whereabouts of hostile subs and destroying the
surprise on which they depend, U.S. sources said.
According to Pike, the reaction of the Chinese military to Rivet Joint
flights is "less intense" than its reactions to Aries flights although the
electronic suites of both are "almost equivalent."
--
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
All rights reserved
.
3. Russian plane never entered Japan’s airspace - official
MOSCOW. April 11
(Interfax)
The allegations that a Russian combat plane
intruded Japan’s airspace on Wednesday are untrue, Col. Alexander
Drobyshevsky of Russian Air Forceheadquarters told Interfax on Wednesday.
Four Su-24 planes of the 11th Air Force and Air Defense Army stationed in
the Far East were never closer than 60 kilometers from the border, were on
a
training flight and carried no weapons, Drobyshevsky said. They made
their
flights between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., he said. "If the Japanese insist, we
are prepared to send them
airborne monitoring data," Drobyshevsky said.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry made a statement earlier in the day that a
Russian combat plane had flown into Japan's airspace over northwestern
Honshu island. [RU EUROPE ASIA
EMRG JP AER DIP] ap cj
.
Press Association
Last updated: 08:45 Wednesday 11th April 2001
A top secret spy plane which was at the forefront of America’s
intelligence
gathering for 30 years is going on display in the UK.
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird is the latest addition to the collection of
historic aircraft at the Imperial War Museum’s aviation section at Duxford
near Cambridge.
The Blackbird was capable of reaching speeds of more than 2,000 mph and
had
the technology to survey 100,000 square miles in an hour.
The United States Air Force built 32 Blackbirds in utmost secrecy and used
them over Vietnam, North Korea, Libya and Cuba.
“We have been keen to add a Blackbird to the Duxford collection for some
time. The museum is delighted to acquire what is probably the world’s most
enigmatic and exciting aircraft,” said Duxford director Ted Inman.
The Blackbird, which was the world’s fastest production aircraft, first
flew
in 1964 and set speed and altitude records that still stand.
It was based at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk, between 1976 and 1990.
The plane on show at Duxford last flew 12 years ago. In 1976 it set a
world
altitude record for sustained horizontal flight at 85,069 feet.
The United States will not negotiate with China about future U.S.
surveillance flights but will discuss how to prevent further incidents
like
the collision between the EP-3E reconnaissance plane and Chinese F-8 jet
fighter on April 1, a senior administration official said last night.
“We don’t view them as
negotiations on that point,” the
official said, speaking on the
condition of anonymity.
Asked if the frequency or duration of future EP-3 flights would be
affected
by the incident, the official said: “We don’t envision doing any of that.”
“We’re going to talk about the causes of the accident, we’re going to talk
about measures to try and avoid them in the future,” the official said.
The official said “lots of discussions” can take place on such matters as
how close U.S. and Chinese aircraft should fly and what procedures to
follow
to avoid a collision.
Such talks, however, “don’t go to the underlying issue of whether
reconnaissance flights are OK,” the official said.
The two sides have not reached an agreement on the forum for the talks
scheduled to be held Wednesday. They may take place through a military
maritime commission set up in 1998 between the U.S. and Chinese
militaries.
The talks also could be held through the State Department and the Chinese
Foreign Ministry.
China’s release yesterday of the 24 detained U.S. crew members is part of
a
deal requiring talks between the Chinese military and the Pentagon for the
return of the EP-3E surveillance plane and discussion of future U.S. spy
flights in the region.
Bush administration officials said yesterday the United States expects
China
will follow through with a “prompt” return of the aircraft, as outlined in
a
letter approved by President Bush resolving the dispute.
“Issues relating to the release of the EP-3 aircraft are still being
discussed,” said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The senior official said the state of the U.S. aircraft left behind on
Hainan Island is not known.
“We want it back. There are questions . . . how valuable is it from an
intelligence standpoint and another question is how flyable is it,” the
official said. State Department spokesman Phillip Reeker said “the
diplomacy
continues, the discussions will continue.”
“The letter outlines an agenda which will include discussion of the causes
of the incident, possible recommendations whereby such collisions could be
avoided in the future, and development of a plan for the prompt return of
our aircraft, and other related issues,” Mr. Reeker said. “That’s the
stated
agenda of that meeting, but we need to let the diplomacy continue as we
evolve with the details of that.”
The military flights by EP-3E Aries II electronic intelligence aircraft as
well as Navy ocean surveillance ships are being carried out under the
direction of the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center-Pacific,
known as JICPAC, located in Hawaii.
The intelligence-gathering program has increased in the past several years
because of China’s military buildup, especially its deployment of missiles
opposite Taiwan, defense officials said.
China over the past several years deployed more than 250 short-range
missiles within range of Taiwan, a buildup the Pentagon views as
destabilizing to the region’s peace and security.
The U.S. government letter from Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher that
led
to the release of the 24 crew members said Wednesday’s meeting will
include
discussions raised by Beijing on “U.S. reconnaissance missions near
China.”
A Pentagon official said the United States has no intention of agreeing to
limits on the flights, which are legal under international law.
“We may explain to the Chinese why these flights are legal
 but that’s the limit of the discussion,” said the official.
In the background of the talks will be Chinese demands that the United
States stop all U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. Mr. Bush has until April 23 to
decide what weapons his administration will sell to the island, which this
year is requesting four Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyers.
Mr. Reeker told reporters U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are “completely
separate” from the upcoming talks. “That is not an aspect of the April
18th
meeting,” Mr. Reeker said.
Administration officials yesterday would not release details of the
diplomatic efforts over the past 11 days that led to the return of the
crew.
It is not known whether any secret side agreements or “understandings”
between the United States and China were included in the diplomatic
efforts
to resolve the dispute.
Mr. Reeker said that at the meeting next week U.S. negotiators “will be
developing a plan for the prompt return of the aircraft.”
“We have discussed the return of our aircraft since the beginning of this
incident,” Mr. Reeker said. “That’s still important to us. Right now,
today,
the priority is the return of our people.”
China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued at the time of the air
crew’s release yesterday evening that “responsibility for this incident
entirely lies with the U.S. side.”
.
BEIJING was last night accused of “diplomatic hypocrisy” in its unwavering
demand for an apology from the United States for last week’s collision
between an American surveillance aircraft and a Chinese jet fighter.
Australian intelligence sources claim that China operates the biggest
electronic spying network in the Asia-Pacific region, eavesdropping on
Russia, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and India as well as a host of smaller
countries.
A senior intelligence officer said: “It’s a pots-and-kettles crisis. The
Chinese can hardly expect to be taken seriously as the injured party when
they’re doing much the same themselves. At the very least, it’s diplomatic
hypocrisy on a grand scale.”
There are two key signals’ monitoring centres, the equivalent of Britain’s
GCHQ complex, on Hainan island, where the 24 American crew of the damaged
EP-3 “Flying Pig” are being detained along with their aircraft.
One monitors naval signals traffic in the South China Sea and the
other
deciphers communications transmitted via Russian and US satellites
above the Pacific.
Both are supplemented by warships and aircraft equipped with long-range
sensors operating out of mainland bases around Zhanjiang, headquarters of
China’s south sea fleet.
Between two and three dozen ground stations spread throughout China act as
a
vast electronic basket, plucking military and commercial secrets out of
the
ether. Information is then sifted through computer banks at control
centres
in north-west Beijing and at Lake Kinghathu in the far north-east.
There are several stations along the Russian and Mongolian borders, a
large
centre covering India, the world’s latest nuclear power, at Chengdu, and a
complex at Kunming monitoring Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia.
The coastal hinterland facing Taiwan in Fujian and Gunangdong military
districts are packed with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment.
The Chinese forces have also adapted a number of Ilyushin bombers to be
the
equivalent of the US “Flying Pigs” for airborne intelligence-gathering
missions. Some of Beijing’s maritime surveillance radars are believed to
be
British.
Despite the US-led embargo on advanced military hardware, China has
managed
to obtain civilian computer systems and adapt them for its forces.
Part of its current snooping system is, ironically, a legacy of American
expedience at the height of the cold war. From the mid-1980s, the CIA and
China’s Technical Department, the intelligence gathering arm of its
external
security service, ran two clandestine joint monitoring stations in
Xinjiang
to keep tabs on Soviet missile tests and space launches.
The US intelligence community believes the current stand-off with Beijing
will not be resolved until Chinese scientists and engineers have completed
an analysis of the captured EP-3 aircraft and its surviving sensors.
The crew had 40 minutes between the collision and the emergency landing on
Hainan to erase computer records using powerful magnets, trigger
auto-destruct systems for hard drives, shred printouts, and possibly
jettison sensitive items into the sea.
Before each mission, the US crews practice drills for denying captors
access
to the aircraft’s technology. The aircraft itself is equipped with special
bins in which items can be destroyed with mini-hand grenades.
But the wing-mounted pods and other external arrays and antennae are
likely
to have survived and been taken intact.
A plane-load of leading technicians and scientists was sent south from
Beijing within hours of the incident and have since remained at the Hainan
base.
As the crisis dragged into its 10th day yesterday, the detained Americans
were granted extra privileges, including freedom to exercise, and had a
fifth visit from US diplomats.
Politically, however, the crisis showed no signs of resolving. China
welcomed US secretary of state Colin Powell’s weekend statement that
Washington was sorry for the fate of the Chinese fighter pilot missing
since
its collision with the US spy plane, but repeated its insistence on a
formal
apology for the incident.
Meanwhile, the State Department turned down an offer by the Rev Jesse
Jackson, a civil rights activist, to lead a delegation to China to work
for
the release of the crew.
Glasgow Herald -April 12
.
8. Echelon satellites can eavesdrop on your telephone calls, faxes and e-mail.
Tempest looks through walls to see what is on your TV and PC.
BY JIM WILSON, Illustration by Paul DiMare
The secret is out. Two powerful intelligence gathering tools that
the
United States created to eavesdrop on Soviet leaders and to track
KGB spies are now being used to monitor Americans. One system,
known as Echelon, intercepts and analyzes telephone calls, faxes
and
e-mail sent to and from the United States. The other system,
Tempest,
can secretly read the displays on personal computers, cash
registers
and automatic teller machines, from as far as a half mile away.
Although the inner workings of both systems remain classified,
fueling
exaggerated claims about their capabilities on Internet sites,
credible
detail has at last begun to emerge. It comes chiefly from foreign
governments that began investigating American surveillance
activities
after discovering that the Echelon system had been used to spy on
their defense contractors. From those documents it is possible to
obtain the first accurate view of the threats high-tech spying
poses to
our right to privacy. We think you will agree it also creates a
real and
present threat to our freedom.
No Such Agency
Echelon is perhaps the
best known and least
understood spy tool.
Although it is run by the
U.S. National Security
Agency (NSA), and paid
for almost entirely by
American taxpayers, it is a
multinational spying effort
that involves the United
Kingdom, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand
and, to a lesser degree, Italy and Turkey. It wasn’t until 1957,
five
years after NSA was created, that the federal government would
admit
that it even existed.
Simply put, the agency’s job is to eavesdrop and share its notes.
On a
day-to-day basis, this means intercepting radio signals,
unscrambling
encrypted messages, and distributing the resulting information to
a
host of espionage organizations. Its chief “customer” is the
Central
Intelligence Agency.
The intelligence gathering network that
captures
the electronic signals that NSA needs to do
its
work is popularly called Echelon. NSA does not
use this term, and it is generally believed
the
word Echelon is part of a two-word code name
for the space-based part of the system.
Whatever the terminology, Echelon, like NSA
itself, is the outgrowth of a World War II
British-American intelligence sharing agreement. During the Cold
War the United States and its allies began to eavesdrop on
overseas
phone calls in an effort to catch Soviet spies. This was done by
intercepting the signals from the microwave relay stations that
formed
the backbone of long-distance telephone systems.
When the telecommunications satellite industry took off, NSA
followed
it into space by building ground-based and orbiting listening
posts,
hence the need for participation by Australia, New Zealand, Italy
and
Turkey. Based on what isknown about the location of Echelon bases
and satellites, it is estimated that there is a 90 percent chance
that
NSA is listening when you pick up the phone to place or answer an
overseas call. In theory, but obviously not in practice,
Echelon’s
supercomputers are so fast, they can identify Saddam Hussein by
the
sound of his voice the moment he begins speaking on the phone.
The power to eavesdrop on specific individuals nearly proved to
be
NSA’s undoing. A commission organized by President Gerald Ford
discovered that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were unable to
resist the temptation of using NSA to amass files on more than
7000
U.S. citizens and 1000 organizations, mostly those opposed to the
Vietnam War. In 1975, Congress decided it had had enough, and
created the Select Intelligence Committee to keep watch over NSA
activities.
With the Cold War over, and fearful of being embarrassed by
revelations about Echelon’s espionage excesses, high-ranking
officials in Australia and New Zealand began going public with
details.
How Echelon Works
Slowly the pieces of the Echelon puzzle began to fall into place.
The
operation proved to be more extensive than anyone had thought.
From foreign governments, Americans learned that NSA not only had
listening posts in West Virginia, Colorado and the state of
Washington, but that its headquarters in Fort George Meade, Md.,
was that state’s largest employer. NSA won’t say how many people
it
currently employs, but hints that if it were an industrial
company
it
would be on the Fortune 500 list.
The electronic signals that Echelon satellites and listening
posts
capture are separated into two streams, depending upon whether
the
communications are sent with or without encryption. Scrambled
signals are converted into their original language, and then,
along
with
selected “clear” messages, are checked by a piece of software
called
Dictionary. There are actually several localized “dictionaries.”
The
U.K. version, for example, is packed with names and slang used by
the Irish Republican
Army. Messages with
trigger words are
dispatched to their
respective agencies.
Tempest
As leaks about Echelon
began to spout like
water around the little
Dutch boy, the
European Parliament
started a high-profile
investigation. It found
the U.S. government
had used Echelon to
spy on two European
companies, Airbus
Industrie and
Thomson-CSF. The
U.S. State Department,
a longtime NSA
“customer,” threw in the
towel. Last year, it
authorized Washington
lawyer and former CIA
director James
Woolsey to answer
reporters’ questions
about the charges.
Woolsey acknowledged
the episodes, explaining
they were aimed at
discouraging bribery. A week later, in an opinion page article in
The
Wall Street Journal, he at long last identified Echelon by name.
In the past, the acknowledgement of an intelligence asset has
usually
meant it had become obsolete. Security experts tell POPULAR
MECHANICS that the unanticipated growth of Internet traffic may
be
more than Echelon can handle. And, NSA has in fact confirmed its
computers were shut down for three days last year.
Some believe the recent candor is because NSA is shifting to a
new,
more tightly focused espionage strategy, using a ground-based
technology code-named Tempest. The underlying theory is that
electronic circuits create “compromising emanations.” Not to be
confused with interference, these are subtle but measurable
changes
in surrounding systems—comparable to the dip in line voltage that
occurs when the light in your refrigerator goes on as you open
the
door.
NSA is said to have perfected Tempest to the point at which it
can
reconstruct the images that appear on a video display or TV
screen.
We have posted the declassified NSA report on Tempest at
www.popularmechanics.com//popmech/sci/0104STMIBP.html. Take
care when you read it. You never know who might be looking over
your shoulder, from a half mile away.
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only.
2. Spies Out in the Cold. Beset by corruption and bitterness, the national intelligence agency is at a low ebb. That's bad news for
the country's security
By John Larkin/SEOUL
Issue cover-dated February 21, 2002
SOUTH KOREA'S national spy agency is at its lowest ebb in 40 years and it
couldn't have come at a worse time. The shadowy network, set up to blunt
the
North Korean espionage threat, has been wracked by corruption scandals
that
threaten its ability to counter external threats and have made it a
political liability for President Kim Dae Jung.
The scandals, seen as a reaction to Kim's two-year-old policy of detente
with Pyongyang and his reform of the National Intelligence Service, come
amid renewed tension on the Korean peninsula. North Korea has intensified
its war-mongering rhetoric in response to United States President George
W.
Bush's branding it part of an "evil axis" with Iran and Iraq. If a
security
crisis ensues, a shortfall in the intelligence-gathering skills of the
agency could have serious implications.
Scandals that have helped to sap public support for the government include
the arrest last December of the agency's deputy chief, Kim Eun Sung, for
allegedly taking bribes to protect a corrupt businessman from prosecution
for embezzlement. In January, he was sentenced to two years in jail.
Two other senior intelligence officers have been handed jail terms on
bribery charges in the past three months. Others have been implicated in a
scheme to help a shady entrepreneur recover sunken treasure. The agency is
also battling allegations that some of its operatives conspired to cover
up
a murder in 1987.
Officials at other government agencies have been ensnared too, but the NIS
is at or near the centre of all of these scandals. On one level it's
simple
corruption. Look deeper and you find vendettas at work. Beyond that, this
once all-powerful agency's troubles pose questions over how well-equipped
it
is to fight the intelligence war against North Korea.
Not very well, say conservatives who oppose President Kim's dialogue with
North Korea. But even they welcome reforms he forced on the agency, which
for decades exploited its power by suppressing dissent against
authoritarian
regimes. However, there is a growing sense that the old vice of political
interference has been replaced by a new one which takes key officials even
further away from their main mission of finding spies and remaining alert
to
espionage threats.
Corruption among the intelligence elite raises the question of how sharp
the
agency's focus has been on this task. The NIS denies any connection. "The
scandals have nothing to do with how we do our job," says a spokesman.
Warming ties with South Korea may have reduced the North Korean espionage
threat, but few Koreans believe it has disappeared. "In my time I caught a
lot of North Korean spies and put them in jail," a former top intelligence
official tells the REVIEW. "But I believe it's even more dangerous now.
Before, intelligence officials had a security background. Now there's all
sorts of trouble because many of them have no experience. National
security
is not the first priority."
A scholar in espionage studies was told by Japanese agents that they don't
trust the NIS enough to hand over sensitive information about North Korea.
"They intimate that whatever they gave us might go over to the other
side."
He adds: "Our lack of human intelligence will be shown up soon and when it
does there'll be hell to pay. NIS agents are asking themselves why they're
being paid to spy on North Korea when the government is telling them it's
not our enemy any more."
Shady dealings are nothing new to the NIS, but it was usually confined to
politics. For years it played the enforcer for authoritarian regimes. It
intimidated political opponents by smearing them as communist
sympathizers.
Kim Dae Jung, once a favourite target of these tactics, jailed the
agency's
director, Kwon Young Hae, and purged its hardline old guard when he won
office in 1997. Kim could not have pursued his dream of peacefully
engaging
North Korea without doing so. "He had no choice but to reform the NIS,"
says
Kim Dhang, a journalist and expert on the agency.
The president's reforms put an end to the NIS's practice of exploiting the
North Korean threat to maximize the electoral chances of the sitting
government. But they created bitterness among the surviving old guard, who
claim many of their colleagues were replaced by Kim Dae Jung loyalists
with
little or no intelligence experience.
Intelligence sources say the veterans retaliated over the past year by
leaking examples of corruption, which had been hushed up, to discredit the
man they say has weakened the South's defences against the old enemy. As a
result the agency has become a huge political liability for President Kim.
In January the NIS apologized for its role in the corruption scandals,
after
purging 14 senior officials the previous month. But neither step is
expected
to provide a significant lift to the agency's reputation.
The backlash against Kim's reforms might have been expected. But he may
have
avoided the scandals by ensuring his disciples were subject to the kind of
checks and balances that kept a lid on the NIS's past abuses of power.
"With DJ in power most of the top jobs go to people from his [home
province
of] Cholla," says Kim Dhang. A former senior NIS official says: "The
agency
still has specialists but they complain they can't do their jobs. There is
no internal inspection system, no accountability."
Whether this is the cause or not, it's clear some of the NIS's top brass
have found it difficult to resist corruption. Senior officials have been
implicated with a businessman-later arrested on graft charges-in a failed
scheme hatched two years ago to recover treasure from a shipwreck off the
southern coast, and allegedly profit from the resulting boost to the share
price of the businessman's company.
The most bizarre case involves the 1987 death of a South Korean woman in
Hong Kong. Her husband, Yoon Tae Shik, had claimed Kim Ok Boon was killed
by
North Korean spies who tried to kidnap him with her connivance. Last
November he admitted to killing her during a quarrel over money. It has
since emerged that he concocted the story with the NIS. The idea was to
throw the blame onto North Korea, thereby boosting support for
conservative
parties at home.
The NIS remains a magnet for anyone wanting access to the ruling elite,
despite losing some of its power under Kim Dae Jung and his predecessor,
Kim
Young Sam. When founded to support those behind a 1961 military coup, it
controlled every key ministry, even appointing friendly MPs.
"It retains its power mostly because of the memories Koreans have of its
old
power," says Park Won Soon, a lawyer and activist who opposed the agency
at
the height of its power in the 1970s. "No other ministry can resist it."
The big question is whether the NIS can clean up its act. A presidential
election in December pits Kim's party against a conservative opposition
containing hardliners who would love to see the NIS take a tougher stance
toward North Korea. "The election will be a turning point," says Kim
Dhang,
adding that further reform and transparency will depend on who wins.
Reforms have ensured the NIS can't go back to the bad old days. The next
president could finish the job by cleansing it of remaining graft and
bias.
That means changing not just personnel, but an entire culture. It won't be
easy. Warns lawyer Park Won Soon: "For many people the NIS still holds
centre stage. That kind of mentality doesn't disappear overnight."
.
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer
Moscow Times Friday, Feb. 15, 2002.
Businessman Viktor Kalyadin is serving a 14-year prison term on charges of
passing classified weapons documentation to a U.S. intelligence agent. And
even his lawyers aren't out to prove he's innocent. At least not yet.What
they do want to show is that the Moscow regional court that convicted
Kalyadin in October failed to prove his guilt. Instead of summoning two
key
witnesses to give testimony, lawyers say, the court based its ruling on an
unnotarized piece of paper "left" by one witness at FSB offices and on
videotaped testimony by the other, who said only that he had offered --
not
given -- documents to Kalyadin.Furthermore, Kalyadin's lawyers find it
baffling that the U.S. citizen who claimed to have purchased the documents
was questioned by Russian officials but never detained. The two men who
admitted stealing the paperwork were sentenced to less than two years
each,
and two middlemen, who also pleaded guilty, got suspended sentences.In a
last-ditch attempt to force a retrial, Kalyadin's attorneys have joined
forces with lawyers for jailed military journalist Grigory Pasko and
challenged a secret Defense Ministry order on classified data, which was
the
basis for both men's convictions.This week the Supreme Court's military
arm
annulled the document, known as Order No. 055. The ruling was hailed by
human rights advocates as a major breakthrough and legal experts said it
could change the tide in espionage-cum-treason cases like those of
Kalyadin,
Pasko and researcher Igor Sutyagin.From 1992 until his arrest in December
1998, Kalyadin headed a Moscow-based company called Elers-Electron Ltd.
that
traded in dual-purpose technologies. His lawyers say the company dealt in
such items as infrared devices and microwave-powered lamps, although they
acknowledged not knowing the full array of the company's offerings. The
Federal Security Service, or FSB, accused Kalyadin of commissioning the
theft of technical documentation on the high-tech Arena tank defense
system-- which falls under Order No. 055 -- and passing the stolen data to
a
U.S. citizen representing a Michigan-based company that designs and
manufactures combat systems for the U.S. military. According to
investigators, the trail leading from the Kolomna-based design bureau that
developed the Arena to the U.S. agent who allegedly purchased the
documentation included seven people: two thieves, two Russian
intermediaries, one Yugoslav middleman, Kalyadin and the American buyer,
identified by the FSB as Farid Rafi. However, Kalyadin's main lawyer,
Lyudmila Trunova, pointed out that neither of the two men accused of
coming
into direct contact with her client were present at the trial and the
testimony submitted on their behalf raised more questions than it
answered.In a recent interview, Trunova said the FSB had claimed Kalyadin
received the documents from a Yugoslav business associate, Alexander
Georgievic.Georgievic was questioned by the FSB in Novy Sad, Yugoslavia,
Trunova said, and a videotape of the conversation was given to the court
as
evidence. On the tape, Georgievic admitted offering the documentation to
Kalyadin but did not say he handed over the papers. "This recording was
not
sanctioned by prosecutors," Trunova added. "Submitting such a tape as
evidence violates legal regulations."While Kalyadin has admitted receiving
the offer from Georgievic, he contends that he never received any
documents
and that he assumed the papers in question covered a version of the Arena
approved for export, Trunova said.She complained that the court's refusal
to
summon Georgievic and Rafi for questioning violated her client's
rights.Rafi, whom the FSB has called an agent for U.S. military
intelligence, submitted two separate statements to investigators in Moscow
in the summer of 2000 and said Kalyadin had given him the Arena documents
at
an arms show in Paris nearly two years earlier, Trunova said. Nonetheless,
on both occasions, he had been allowed to leave the country. The FSB has
stuck by its case."We insist that Kalyadin has committed a crime by
obtaining and divulging secret information and we support the verdict
handed
down by the court in October," an FSB spokesman said in a telephone
interview Wednesday. He declined to give more detailed comments.According
to
Trunova, the Arena documents were stolen in 1998 by two employees of the
KMB
Engineering and Design Bureau in Kolomna, including one man who was
responsible for the security of secret documents. After covering up stamps
indicating the papers were classified, the pair made copies and sold the
documentation to two middlemen, Pyotr and Alexander Ivanov. Kalyadin's
other
lawyer, Leonid Matveyev, said the men were detained in December 1998 when,
according to the FSB, one of the KMB employees was caught giving the
Ivanovs
documents on the Iskander missile complex, also designed by the Kolomna
bureau.All four men pleaded guilty in court. The KMB employees were
sentenced to less than two years apiece and were soon amnestied, while the
Ivanovs received suspended sentences.In the summer of 2000, Matveyev said,
FSB officials opened an espionage case into Rafi, whom they identified as
a
representative of Michigan-based General Dynamics Land Systems, or GDLS,
which produces the Abrams tank. GDLS spokesman Pete Keating said Tuesday
that he was "not aware" of any employee by the name of Farid Rafi. Keating
also said his company had not had any "official contacts" with any of the
men involved in the Kalyadin case. At the same time, he said: "I don't
know
that they didn't walk up to one of our representatives at some event, such
as an arms show, and hand him a business card. However, if there was such
a
spontaneous interaction ... we have never followed up on it
officially."For
the past two years or so, Keating said, GDLS has been involved in talks
about buying the Arena system with the Defense Ministry and its official
arms export agency, now called Rosoboronexport. He said all talks have
been
only with authorized Russian officials.He said no deal has been clinched
because Russia has insisted that GDLS buy a larger consignment of Arenas,
some 50 to 100, in order to ensure that the U.S. company does not simply
buy
one Arena and use it to copy the technology."They [the Russian side] would
prefer a purchase of something like 100 Arenas as a good faith measure ...
which I think is perfectly understandable," Keating said. "We don't want
to
enter into a business agreement that is not satisfactory to both us and
them," he said.Konstantin Makiyenko, an arms expert with the Moscow-based
Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said a declassified
export version of the Arena exists but has never been sold abroad. "Arena
is
very a complex high-tech system; it costs about 20 percent of the total
price of a tank, which run some $2 million to $3 million," he said. "The
secret components of the Arena are not included in the system's export
version and they are not described in export documentation," said a source
at one of Moscow's arms enterprises, on condition of anonymity. However,
even under these circumstances, Kalyadin's right to trade in
export-approved
documentation would remain questionable."Under a 2000 presidential decree
... aside from Rosoboronexport, there are only six companies eligible to
sell arms abroad, and Elers-Electron is not among them," the source
said.For
now, Kalyadin's lawyers have a lot of work ahead of them. While they await
the Supreme Court's decision on their appeal request, they will work
together with Pasko's lawyers to make the annulment of Order No. 055
retroactive, which would force the FSB and prosecutors to launch a new
investigation.Valentin Gefter of the Human Rights Institute said
Kalyadin's
lawyers had not challenged Order No. 055 to prove the data allegedly
divulged by their client were not classified but to fight for a proper
trial. "They wanted to prove there were lots of violations of legal
procedure during the investigation ... and at the trial, and that the
investigators had used illegitimate legal documents," he said. Gefter
added
that Kalyadin's 14-year sentence, especially when compared to those of his
alleged accomplices, suggests the possibility of an effort to push him out
of business.
Each time a new batch of declassifies Enigma decrypts is released to
public
archives a history of the Second World War should be rewritten. Historians
agree that breaking German machine cyphers was the greatest achievement of
the Allied intelligence services. Insight into the most secret German
correspondence shortened war and saved life of many allied soldiers.
However, authors differ when describing how Enigma codes were broken and
by
whom. There are various mythical stories which were published in millions
copies, mainly in the 70-ties, and now they are sipping through into
history. In order to put records straight, SPYBOOKS publishes its 'Enigma
File' a collection of reports, notes and comments prepared by Marian
Rejewski and other cryptoanalysts of the BS4 - Section 4 of the Polish
General Staff Cypher Bureau. There are the only prime source materials
available as all pre-war documents related to BS-4 and its Enigma work,
were
destroyed in September 1939 in order to keep codebreaking successes
secret.
Most of documents published in the 'Enigma File' were collected by Col.
Wladyslaw Kozaczuk, an author who in 1967 revealed that Enigma was no
secret
for Allied intelligence services.
Factfile
Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki, Henryk Zygalski and other cryptoanalysts
from BS4, broke into Kriegsmarine code in November 1932.
By the end of December 1932 Reichswehr Enigma code was partly broken by
Marian Rejewski
Fully decrypted Enigma texts were read by BS4 since mid January 1933.
During Roehm's Putsch in June 1934 Enigma messages were read within
minutes
from their interception.
During two weeks long cryptographic exercises organised at BS4 in January
1938 up to 75 percent of secret German communication was decrypted within
hours from interception.
Wehrmacht correspondence was decrypted as efficiently up to November 1938
and Sicherheitsdienst up to 1st July 1939. Once Chi-Dienst upgraded German
Enigmas BS4 lost its possibilities and between November 1938 and Summer
1939
only one in ten Wehrmacht despatch was read.
In July 1939 BS4 shared its secrets with GC&CS and cypher section of the
French SR.
In October 1939 evacuated from Poland BS4 codebreakers resumed their work
in
France as Equipe Z
On 17th January 1940 Equipe Z as the first Allied codebreaking team broke
wartime Enigma daily key and immediately passed its findings to Bletchley
Park. Bletchley Park began its mass codebreaking work.
Equipe Z was active until November 1942 when Wehrmacht occupied Vichy and
German RDF vehicles were spotted near its premise.
In total Poles decrypted Enigma cypher for ten years from December 1932
until November 1942.
By Sydney Masamvu Political Editor
2/14/02 4:18:50 AM (GMT +2)
Financial Gazette Zimbabwe
A CRACK unit of the government’s spy
Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) has been established to trail
election observers from European countries who are in the country for the
March 9 and 10 presidential election, it was established this week.
Official sources said the CIO agents were working with officials from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs to monitor the activities and movements of the
international observers for the critical two-day poll. According to the
sources, the CIO officers were instructed to particularly monitor European
Union and Commonwealth observers and report on their meetings with the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civic society and
non-governmental organisations perceived to be working against President
Robert Mugabe’s re-election bid. Many of the international election
observers have indicated that they want to meet and talk to Zimbabweans
across the political divide and visit as many areas as possible to assess
the impact of increasing violence and intimidation during the election
campaign period. "There is a plan to monitor the conduct of especially the
European observers and state agents are working on that," a Foreign
Affairs
ministry official told the Financial Gazette. He said a code of conduct
for
the foreign observers was also being drawn up. The sources said the CIO
spies had now heavily infiltrated most of the top hotels where the
observers
will be staying. Other CIO agents were actually handling the accreditation
of the election observers. The governing ZANU PF party has accused some
European countries, especially Britain, of funding the MDC whose leader
Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to topple Mugabe should a free and fair
election be held. Britain denies funding or supporting the MDC. The
15-nation European Union (EU) and the Commonwealth are set to deploy more
than 300 election observers but the government has so far refused to
invite
or accredit nationals of countries such as the Netherlands, Germany,
Denmark
and Sweden, who are also members of the EU. For its part, the EU has
threatened to slap selective smart sanctions on Mugabe and his close
allies
if its observers are hindered in their operations and the poll is deemed
neither free nor fair. Meanwhile, Zimbabwean authorities have hired more
than 50 posh vehicles to ferry observer missions from favoured
organisations
such as the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), of which
Zimbabwe
is a member. ZANU PF, in its bid to have the elections endorsed by the
SADC,
has also lined up tour plans for the regional observer team that will
include attending Mugabe’s main rallies and visits to selected resettled
farmers to project an image of a peaceful nation. The MDC says more than
100
of its supporters have been killed in violence led by ZANU PF followers in
the past two years. ZANU PF says nearly 10 of its supporters have also
been
murder in the violence that is surging ahead of the March election. The
opposition party also complains that its leaders are being constantly
harassed, intimidated and detained by the CIO and the police, the latest
being the brief detention at Harare Airport of Tsvangirai on Tuesday. The
MDC leader was held over a claim that he was travelling on a false
passport.
He was released when he showed that his travel document was indeed valid.
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only.
1. Russian spooks clear the paddy fields
FSB training in Ireland
The Russia Journal 14/2/01
DUBLIN - Nine members of Russia's Federal Security
Service are undergoing a three-week course in ordnance disposal with the
Irish Army. The Russians are following the standard bomb-disposal course
undergone by members of the army's Ordnance Corps, which involves two
weeks's theory, followed by a week of practical work. /Oreanda/
.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES February 15, 2001
U.S. spy satellites have located the exact
position of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in the Baltic enclave of
Kaliningrad, contradicting Moscow's contention that it had
not transferred the battlefield arms.
Satellite photographs first
revealed the transfers June 3 when
the weapons were spotted aboard
a Russian military train at a seaport
near St. Petersburg, according to
U.S. intelligence officials.
A second intelligence
breakthrough took place June 6
when spy satellites detected the
arrival of the nuclear arms in
Kaliningrad, said officials familiar
with intelligence reports who
spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
The weapons were moved by ship from the Russian
port to a special nuclear storage bunker near a military airfield in
Kaliningrad, a small Russian enclave between Poland andLithuania on the
Baltic Sea.
The satellite photographs have refuted Russian
government denials about the transfer or deployment of
nuclear arms in Kaliningrad. The transfers were first reported
by The Washington Times on Jan. 3. "The Russians are denying it, but we know
better," said one defense official. Debate within the U.S. government has
ceased on the nuclear transfers.
The disclosure of the tactical nuclear arms
transfers prompted statements of concern by the governments ofPoland,
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Moscow has refusedinspections of all military
facilities in Kaliningrad by those governments. Polish Defense Minister
Bronislaw Komorowski called forinspections of Kaliningrad to determine
whether the nuclear arms were deployed there. The State Department did not
support the call for inspections, even though Poland is now a member of the
NATO alliance.
Under an informal agreement reached between the
UnitedStates and Russia in 1992, Moscow was to remove all tactical nuclear
weapons from forward-deployed areas and said they had done so.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month dismissed reports of the nuclear
arms in Kaliningrad as "rubbish." U.S. intelligence is still trying to
determine the exact type of the nuclear arms. They were described in reports
as either nuclear naval, ground forces or air-delivered weapons.
The weapons in Kaliningrad are based in what the
Pentagon calls a nuclear storage site, a special facility used to house
nuclear arms. The intelligence photographs, gathered by the Pentagon's
array of reconnaissance satellites, confirmed suspicions dating back to 1998
about the deployment of tactical nuclear arms
in Kaliningrad, the officials said.
Russia has between 4,000 and 15,000 tactical
nuclear weapons, none of which is covered by formal U.S.-Russian
arms control agreements. They include short-range missile
warheads, nuclear-armed torpedoes and air-dropped nuclear bombs. A Pentagon
spokesman told The Washington Times last month that the deployment of
tactical nuclear arms to Kaliningrad violates Moscow's pledge to keep the
Baltic region a "nuclear-free" zone. The nuclear transfers were not
reported in formal Pentagon intelligence reports until December, fueling
speculation among some officials that the information was withheld from U.S.
government policy-makers for diplomatic reasons. Intelligence officials
denied the information was
withheld.
After the disclosures last month, the State
Department sent a formal diplomatic note to the Russians asking for an
explanation of the deployment. The Russian government replied by repeating
Moscow's public denials insisting that there were no nuclear arms in
Kaliningrad, U.S. officials said.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser during the Carter
administration, said the nuclear arms in Kaliningrad are a political problem
more than a serious strategic worry. "It tells us something about the dogged
attitudes of the Russian military and political leaders," Mr. Brzezinski
said in an interview. "It's conduct you would not expect from a responsible
government that generally wants to be part of the partnership of the
European community, as Putin has indicated," Mr. Brzezinski said. "No one
likes to be sitting next to nuclear weapons, stored or unstored," he said.
But efforts by Polish and Baltic-nation
governments to seek nuclear inspections will be difficult because there are
no formal agreements allowing such reviews, Mr. Brzezinski said.
As for Russian government denials, Mr. Brzezinski
said:"The fact that the Russian government denies it . . . is
probably an affirmation that it is true." Richard Perle, a senior defense
official in the Reagan administration, said the movement of the weapons
would be a concern if it is part of a Russian strategy against NATO.
Moscow said in 1998 that it would deploy nuclear
weapons into forward areas of Europe in response to the expansion of the
NATO alliance. The 1999 expansion brought in Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have expressed an interest in
joining the alliance.
As for the weapons themselves, Mr. Perle said,
they are "not a deep concern." "The movement of nuclear weapons from one
location to another might have troubled me in the Cold War, but not now,"
said Mr. Perle, an adviser to George W. Bush during the presidential
campaign.
3. Success for Security Service
Suspected Islamic terrorists arrested
Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins
Guardian Wednesday February 14, 2001
Four suspected Islamic terrorists were arrested in London yesterday after
a two-month police and MI5 investigation which allegedly uncovered plans to
launch attacks in Europe, including Britain.
Three Algerians and a Jordanian were
taken by unarmed anti-terrorist branch officers from addresses in north and
west London during raids at 6.30am.
Six homes and one business were
searched, though it is understood no weapons or bombs were found. The men
were being held last night at a police station in central London under
section 14 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which gives the police powers
to arrest suspects believed to be "commissioning, instigating, or preparing
acts of terrorism".
A fifth man was arrested and detained in
connection with immigration offences. Scotland Yard refused to give further
details about the men arrested on suspicion of terrorism. It is known that
the four suspects are aged 31, 33, 38 and 40. Whitehall sources, however,
said the two-month investigation had not been able to identify specific
targets.
But sources confirmed the men were
allegedly planning attacks in Europe rather than Algeria or the Middle East.
The four are not connected with Osama bin Laden, the Islamic
militant extremist based in Afghanistan, or any other known group, including
Algeria's Armed Islamic Group suspected of carrying out terrorist attacks in
France and Algeria, according to the sources.
They allegedly took up jihad - holy war
- independently and were not part of any "structured group". A spokesman
for the Met added: "Armed officers were not used in the operation and it is
not linked to Irish terrorism and any unsolved terrorism acts. "We are not
prepared to discuss whether the arrests are in connection with any ongoing
or previous operations."
Posted at 1:59 p.m. PST Thursday, Feb. 7, 2002
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
The director of the Pentagon's top secret National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Thursday expressed concern at problems with
new
spy satellites being developed by Lockheed Martin Corp.
Peter Teets told reporters that potential cost overruns and delays in the
planned six-satellite array were sparked in part by poor management by
both
the Air Force and Lockheed Martin.
``It has generated a very significant problem,'' he said of the
``Space-based Infrared System (SBIRS) High'' of high-orbit satellites. The
first satellite is scheduled for launch in 2007.
The Defense Department has asked Congress to approve $814.9 million in
development funds next year, nearly double the $438.7 million currently
being spent on the secret program. But some lawmakers have expressed
concern
over cost and other problems, which Teets declined to discuss in detail.
The new satellites would take over the enemy launch-warning job of a
constellation of older U.S. satellites as well as collecting ``technical
intelligence.''
``I can assure you that this problem has the attention of Lockheed Martin
and its highest management, and we will see what that looks like over the
course of the next couple of months,'' Teets said.
``Fundamentally ... there was plenty of blame to spread around with
respect
to poor program management and direction over the last year or two,''
added
Teets, whose agency analyzes top-secret data gathered from its own
separate
array of spy satellites.
PROGRAM COULD BE RESTRUCTURED
Teets, who is also undersecretary of the Air Force and has been named by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to coordinate closer cooperation between
military and other national security space programs, said the government
might restructure the SBIRS High program.
He did not make clear what any restructuring would mean for Lockheed
Martin.
``We (the government and Lockheed Martin) are currently very actively
engaged in a parallel path that will culminate about the end of April,''
said Teets.
``We are asking the SBIRS High program director to take a hard look at
restructuring of the program,'' he said, adding that the NRO would also
look
at other options to see how early-warning requirements might be met.
``These are vital requirements. These are requirements that can't really
be
traded away,'' Teets said.
``We will be asking the NRO for creative options ... If we're not
satisfied
with corrective actions and the restructured SBIRS High program, we will
have options to go in another direction.''
In the latest rankings released by the Pentagon this week, Lockheed Martin
was classed as the No. 1 U.S. defense contractor for the seventh straight
year. The firm received $14.7 billion in fiscal 2001 contracts, the most
recent year tabulated by the Defense Department.
The firm, which builds the F-22 and F-16 fighters as well as satellites
and
launch rockets, has been ranked at the top of the contractor list since
fiscal 1995.
Offer to sell entire customer database for $20,000
With concern over industrial espionage growing in the US, BBC News
Online's
Jane Wakefield reports on the British salesman who joined forces with the
FBI in a sting operation.
When British citizen Andy Parsons set out for Georgia in the US to head up
software developers Vector Networks' sales team, he did have adventure on
his mind.
But the idea that the information technology salesman would end up in a
hotel room as part of an FBI sting was not high on his list of things to
do.
"I watched a lot of movies but I never thought I'd get involved," he
admits.
Yet that is exactly what happened. Back in January, an employee of a rival
company phoned Mr Parsons and offered him the firm's entire customer
database for $20,000.
With true Brit grit and honesty, he immediately informed the rival firm's
chief executive.
Hotel sting
The company, fed up with employee disloyalty and with a criminal case
already pending in Florida, decided enough was enough and contacted the
FBI.
Mr Parsons was drafted in to a sting operation as an undercover agent.
With
a wiretap on his phone and a wish list of questions to ask the offender,
he
set up a meeting with the man.
"The FBI rented and paid for two hotel rooms. The one they were in was
full
of monitors and recording equipment and there were about 12 FBI agents all
around the hotel," says Mr Parsons.
"I never really felt scared and the FBI made me feel very secure. I was
just
concentrating on making sure I didn't blow it," he says.
"After we checked the disk on the laptop I got them to talk about the
files
until the FBI agent with me gave the code words - 'I'm satisfied'.
"As the door closed the FBI agent jumped out of the chair and the door
came
open. I thought the guy was coming back to shoot us."
Growing problem
But the culprit was firmly in the arms of the law and is now on bail
awaiting trial.
In the US, employees stealing data and information is a serious problem.
Typically the motive is money, says Tom Waters of the Phoenix Consulting
Group, but not always.
"Often people are driven by revenge," he says.
Dissatisfaction with promotion opportunities, working conditions and
conflict with managers are just some of the reasons that could drive a
seemingly loyal employee to betray their company.
The fact that computers are networked together with central databases of
information makes industrial espionage a whole lot easier, says Mr Waters.
"It is far simpler and to a great extent is anonymous," he says.
A survey conducted by the US Computer Security Institute and the FBI found
that 85% of US firms had experienced computer intrusions, with 64% serious
enough to cause financial losses.
The price of sharing secrets is estimated to cost firms in the US around
$378m a year.
Mr Parsons is pleased to have played a small role in helping eliminate
such
expensive betrayals.
"The FBI told me that this kind of thing is becoming increasingly
prevalent
but that firms aren't normally keen to get involved," he said.
"I believe you have to stand up to this sort of thing and if fewer people
turned away we could have a much better society."
.
A diplomat chosen to be Britain's new ambassador to Iran has been rejected
by the authorities in Tehran.
David Reddaway, who has served in Iran twice before, was turned down after
conservative Iranian newspapers called him a Jewish M16 spy.
Mr Reddaway, 48, who speaks Farsi and has an Iranian wife, is not Jewish.
The Foreign Office insists that he is a genuine diplomat and is not an
intelligence officer using diplomatic cover.
A spokesman said: "The Iranian authorities have told us they are not
willing
to accept our nomination of David Reddaway as the new ambassador."
The Tehran Government has given no official explanation for its refusal an
d
the Foreign Office says there are no plans at present to put forward a
replacement.
Tony Blair discussed the issue in a telephone conversation with Iran's
modernising President Khatami last month but was unable to bring about a
change of heart.
Mr Reddaway, who first in Tehran in 1977-78, and again in 1990, has also
worked in Madrid, Buenos Aires and New Delhi. He was nominated to succeed
Nick Browne, who left the post late last year.
The British Embassy in Tehran will now be run by the second most senior
diplomat, the charge d'affaires.
The spy trials of a former intelligence officer and prostitute will
proceed
separately later this year.
Justice Malcolm Gray in the ACT Supreme Court fixed June 3 for the trial
of
Sherryll Dowling - immediately after the trial of Simon Lappas, which is
listed to start on May 13.
A joint trial was aborted late last year.
The two trials are likely to proceed under similar tight security
restrictions applied to the joint trial when the judge imposed stringent
limits on who had access to secret documents at the centre of the case.
Lappas, 26, is a former intelligence analyst with the Defence Intelligence
Organisation. He faces a single count of supplying a top secret document,
directly or indirectly useful to a foreign power, with intent to prejudice
the safety or defence of Australia, to Dowling on July 11, 2000.
Dowling, 26, is a former prostitute. She faces three charges: two of
receiving secret documents from Lappas on July 11 and 12, 2000, which she
was not authorised to receive; and one of receiving a document from Lappas
on July 11 for a purpose intended to be prejudicial to Australia's defence
and which was intended to be useful to a foreign power.
She did not supply them to another country.
5. Peru's ex-spy chief refuses to talk, says mistreated
LIMA, Peru, Feb. 7
Former Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos,
saying
his rights were being trampled, refused to testify on Thursday in the
corruption trial of an ex-lawmaker to whom he was seen handing $15,000 in
a
video that sparked the country's worst political scandal.
''I refuse to testify because ... there are no guarantees (of
fairness) in my case,'' Montesinos, standing ramrod straight and rocking
on
his feet with his hands clasped behind his back, told the three-judge
panel
overseeing the trial of Alberto Kouri.
Speaking in an auditorium at the Lima navy base where he is being
held in a top-security cell, Montesinos, the power behind the 1990 to 2000
presidency of Alberto Fujimori, said he was prohibited from meeting his
lawyers and from even talking to fellow inmates.
The ex-spy chief's rare public appearance marked the first time
since
a huge corruption scandal broke in September 2000 that he faced the man
who
helped bring his 10-year behind-the-scenes reign to an end.
Judge Julian Garagay called Montesinos' refusal to cooperate a
''flagrant crime'' and then adjourned the trial.
Montesinos, who ran Peru's intelligence service, himself faces
multiple charges of hiding away millions of dollars, being linked to
arms-running and ordering human rights abuses.
Kouri, who watched Montesinos with a faint smile at the trial, had
been secretly taped receiving $15,000 from Montesinos -- sparking a
scandal
that toppled Fujimori within weeks.
''Kouri admits that he received (a total of) $32,500 from Vladimiro
Montesinos in exchange for joining (Fujimori's) Peru 2000 congressional
bloc,'' said Kouri's lawyer, Cesar Nagasaki.
''The only thing he's asking for is that he be treated according to
the law,'' he said, adding that Montesinos' silence would not affect his
client's case.
Kouri, who is charged with illegal enrichment and accepting a bribe
as a public official, has insisted the money was a loan he used to help
the
poor.
ALL EYES ON MONTESINOS
The rare public glimpse of Montesinos was eagerly awaited in Peru,
which was shaken by the scandal that has landed scores of formerly
untouchable politicians, businessmen and top military officials in jail,
pending corruption trials. Montesinos fled Peru at the height of the
scandal, but was arrested last June in Venezuela.
Some lawmakers have alleged Montesinos still wields power from
inside
his cell, where he is jailed alongside leftist rebel leaders he helped
lock
away.
''Montesinos continues to do what he feels like. He has the right
to
refuse to testify and evidently this is his strategy,'' prosecutor Ronald
Gamarra said.
In closed sessions with a panel of six anti-corruption judges,
Montesinos -- himself a trained lawyer -- has cited the names of others he
says were involved in his corruption web.
The government of President Alejandro Toledo is trying to return
Fujimori, who fled to Japan, to Lima on corruption and human rights abuse
charges.
Japan has refused to send back Fujimori, who has dual
Peruvian-Japanese citizenship.
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited.
The Guardian Friday February 8, 2002 3:00 AM
MOSCOW (AP)
Russia angrily denounced a CIA report that questions the
Kremlin's willingness and ability to prevent the spread of dangerous
technology, a sign of renewed tension following a sharp improvement in
relations in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The Foreign Ministry, in a harshly worded statement, on Thursday demanded
an
official explanation from Washington. The unclassified CIA report on
weapons
of mass destruction has caused ``not only extreme surprise but also
serious
concern'' in Russia, it said.
``This is the first time in recent years that an official American
document
makes an attempt to question the devotion, willingness and ability of the
Russian government to prevent the leakage of sensitive products and
technology abroad,'' the Foreign Ministry said. ``Russia strictly meets
its
international obligations to control the export of sensitive trade and
technology.''
CIA Director George Tenet told Congress on Wednesday that Russia is one of
the leading suppliers of nuclear technology and missiles to countries
hostile to the United States and remains ``the first choice of nations
seeking nuclear technology and training.''
The CIA report to Congress, which covers the first half of 2001 but was
released last week, said the Russian government's ``commitment,
willingness,
and ability to curb proliferation-related transfers remain uncertain.''
``Despite improvements in Russia's economy, the state-run defense,
biotechnology, and nuclear industries remain strapped for funds, even as
Moscow looks to them for badly needed foreign exchange through exports,''
it
said. ``We remain very concerned about the proliferation implications of
such sales in several areas.''
President Vladimir Putin has lent strong support for the U.S.-led campaign
in Afghanistan, saying Russia long ago recognized the worldwide threat of
terrorism. But President Bush's denunciation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea
as part of an ``axis of evil'' that must stop pursuing weapons of mass
destruction or face consequences presented a challenge to Russia, which
has
friendly ties with all three.
In Moscow, Iran's ambassador warned of unpredictable consequences if the
United States uses force against Iran, saying ``we will react as any
country
would,'' but Gholam Reza Shafei expressed hope that U.S. leaders ``will
come
to their senses and will not allow this to happen.'' He did not elaborate
on
Iran's possible response.
Shafei dismissed as ``baseless'' allegations by top U.S. officials linking
Iran to terrorist organizations and that it was in pursuit of nuclear
technologies.
Russia is engaged in a $800 million deal to build a nuclear power plant in
Iran, assistance the CIA report said ``enhances Iran's ability to support
a
nuclear weapons development effort.''
Russia is eager for the removal of U.N. sanctions against Iraq, which have
stalled oil projects and the repayment of billion in Iraqi debt to Moscow.
Thursday's harsh words follow recent bickering over renewed U.S. criticism
of Russian actions in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Russia says its
war in Chechnya is a battle against international terrorism, and has
accused
the international community of applying double standards.
Despite disagreements, Putin has continued to pursue closer ties with the
United States, and relations are warmer than in years. Both countries say
they hope to reach agreement on cuts in long-range nuclear weapons
stockpiles in time for a planned summit in Russia in May.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States expects
the cuts to be legally binding - as the Kremlin, with its cash-strapped
military, has repeatedly stressed it would prefer over an informal deal
Bush
had said he wanted.
Russia and the United States ``are building up cooperation in tackling
those
problems that the international community is facing in the 21st century,''
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Thursday after a meeting with
former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, according to Interfax news agency.
Ivanov told Interfax that differences remain between the former Cold War
foes, particularly over the Bush administration's decision to pull out of
the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Russians have called the move
a
mistake and a threat to global security.
7. A Former C.I.A. Cowboy and His Disillusioning Ride
NY Times February 7, 2002
By JAMES BAMFORD
Alling in love, in C.I.A.-speak, means that employees have been overseas
too long and are beginning to identify too closely with the locals.
Washington becomes a distant, alien land populated by evil bureaucrats
throwing roadblocks in the employees' way, preventing them from saving
humanity as only they know how. The State Department calls the syndrome
"going native."
The terms seem to apply to Robert Baer, author of "See No Evil: The True
Story of a Ground Soldier in the C.I.A.'s War on Terrorism." A former ski
bum with a degree from Georgetown, Mr. Baer joined the Central
Intelligence
Agency as a prank, spent two decades in operations, largely overseas, and
fell desperately in love with life far removed from the dark intrigues and
dangerous machinations of Washington. Viewed from his perspective, a
principal cause of the C.I.A.'s failure to detect the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks was that "the C.I.A. was systematically destroyed by political
correctness," by too many touchy-feely classes. His book is an
autobiography
of his agency career and a diatribe on the sorry state of the C.I.A.
When Mr. Baer looks into the mirror he sees Harrison Ford. He describes
himself as a maverick cowboy in an agency of gray, faceless suits and
techno-geeks who waste their time poring over satellite pictures and
reading
electronic intercepts — wimps. "If the big eye in the sky didn't see it,"
he
says sarcastically, "it didn't happen." Real spying, he frequently
indicates, should be left to the operations officers in the field, the
ones
with the dirty fingernails who sleep under mosquito nets in dangerous,
unpronounceable hellholes. It's a romantic notion but simplistic and far
from reality.
Contrary to popular perception, most C.I.A. operations officers do not
spend
their days risking their lives sneaking into foreign government offices to
rifle safes. They wear suits, work in embassies, live in comfortable
homes,
have servants and persuade local people to risk their lives sneaking into
foreign government offices. While the hired agent may face the narrow end
of
a Kalashnikov if caught, the worst that can happen to the operations
officer, protected by diplomatic immunity, is a one-way ticket back to
Washington.
Mr. Baer, in his early 20's on his first assignment, was sent to Madras,
India. He describes arriving at his agency-supplied house. "It was a
white,
two-story stone and stucco house with a huge banyan tree and a pergola of
jasmine that arched over the entire length of the driveway. Lined up under
the veranda were my servants — all seven of them."
Mr. Baer uses up a great deal of printer's ink accusing C.I.A.
headquarters
of not taking his many ideas seriously. But in retrospect, it is to the
agency's credit.
One idea he apparently considered involved using car bombs and 1,000
pounds
of Semtex plastic explosives to destroy a two-story religious school
outside
Beirut. He believed a suspected terrorist might visit. The idea of blowing
up the school came from a terrorist he calls Isam who had once set off 11
car bombs simultaneously.
Mr. Baer ultimately took a pass on the plan and sent his informer back to
get more information. "I would never see Isam again," he writes. "Do I
regret it now? Sure."
No sooner had Mr. Baer been assigned back to headquarters than he managed
to
stumble into the Clinton campaign finance scandal, eventually causing an
official on the National Security Council to accuse him of trying to scare
her. Mr. Baer was ordered to take a psychological exam. "Clearly," he
writes, "my employer was trying to send a message: I needed to shut my
mouth
or risk going to the loony bin."
To Mr. Baer, who was never promoted beyond the agency's middle grades,
headquarters was filled with pasty-faced reports officers; young,
jackbooted
counterintelligence officers; and desk jockeys. No director of operations
in
the last decade was up to his standards. President Bill Clinton was no
good,
and Ronald Reagan and George Bush "were not much better." But Mr. Baer is
at
least modest: "I take no pleasure whatsoever in having been right."
He could see the writing on the wall. "The new, politically correct
C.I.A.,"
he writes, "was neither up to nor interested in the challenge." Thus, he
climbed seven flights to the office of the deputy director of operations
and
told his assistant, "This cowboy is hanging up his spurs."
Many of Mr. Baer's criticisms of the agency, like its lack of linguistic
capabilities in critical areas of the world, are valid and have been made
many times. But Mr. Baer's central premise, that everything would be fine
if
technical intelligence were abandoned and instead hundreds of new case
officers were hired, is far too simplistic an answer. Traditionally, the
quality of information picked up by case officers is questionable at best.
Mr. Baer himself provides the perfect example.
After leaving the agency he was hired as a consultant by the CBS News
program "60 Minutes." His job was to determine the credibility of an
Iranian
defector who claimed to be a high-ranking Iranian intelligence officer.
The
man said he had documentary evidence that Iran was behind the 1988 bombing
of a Pan Am jetliner over Scotland and the 1996 attack on a United States
military housing complex in Saudi Arabia. Using his field experience and
his
much-ballyhooed sources, Mr. Baer concluded that the defector was who he
said he was. But C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials later concluded that the man
was an impostor.
Rather than hire more case officers to move into plush housing, sit at
embassy desks and become glorified investigative reporters, the C.I.A.
needs
to begin training actual officers to infiltrate terrorist organizations,
something the agency has claimed for years is virtually impossible. Yet
had
someone given up government housing, grown a beard and wandered around the
Middle East for a few years studying the Koran, he might have been able to
walk into Al Qaeda. After all, John Walker Lindh, a high school graduate
from California, did it and ended up discovering part of the Sept. 11 plot
without even trying.
James Bamford, the author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret
National Security Agency," is a visiting professor at the Goldman School
of
Public Policy of the University of California, Berkeley.
8. CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD UNIVERSITY in association with THE BLETCHLEY PARK TRUST are presenting a unique conference, ENIGMA AND THE
INTELLIGENCE WAR
A five day residential conference to explore the pivotal role of
British
intelligence in World War II, and its impact on the Cold War and beyond.
As
well as a private visit to Bletchley Park delegates will hear contemporary
historians and speakers with first-hand experience of intelligence during
World War II
Sunday 1st September 2002 - Friday 6th September 2002 at Christ Church,
Oxford
Details from Trevor Rowley -- enigma@chch.ox.ac.uk
.
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
non-profit research and educational purposes only.
1. Ex-Air Force Analyst Pleads Not Guilty in Spy Case
BY SUE PLEMING
Posted: 09:38 PM EDT Friday, February 15, 2002.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters)
A former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst
pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he offered highly classified
information to China, Libya and Iraq in exchange for millions of dollars.
Brian Regan, who worked at the agency that runs the nation's spy
satellites,
was accused of writing to Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi and Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein offering top secret material in return for $13
million.
A gaunt and pale Regan, wearing green overalls with the word ``prisoner''
stenciled on the back, did not speak during the five-minute hearing in the
U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.
His attorney, Nina Ginsberg, entered her client's plea of not guilty on
three charges of attempted espionage and one of mishandling classified
information. Ginsberg also requested a jury trial.
On his arrest in August, Regan, 40, was indicted on one charge of
attempted
spying but U.S. officials on Thursday added two more charges of attempted
espionage and gathering national defense information. Two of the charges
may
carry the death penalty.
Outside the courtroom, Ginsberg told reporters her client was ``very
distressed'' by the latest charges. ``We are intending to vigorously
defend
these charges,'' she said.
Prosecutor Randy Bellows asked the judge to cancel the original trial
date,
which had been set for March 4, saying his team needed more time to
prepare
because it was a potential death penalty case. The next hearing was set
for
Feb. 25
FATHER OF FOUR
Regan, a father of four children aged between 2 and 15, was arrested on
Aug.
23 by FBI agents as he tried to board a flight to Switzerland via
Frankfurt.
His arrest came just six months after former FBI counterintelligence
agent,
Robert Hanssen, was arrested for spying for Russia in one of the most
damaging espionage cases in U.S. history.
Hanssen changed his plea to guilty in exchange, among other terms, for an
agreement by prosecutors not to seek the death penalty. He is due to be
sentenced later this year.
Ginsberg said Regan had not ruled out reaching a plea bargain with
prosecutors, who she conceded gained ``additional leverage'' with the new
charges. ``But for the moment we are intending to go to trial,'' she said.
Regan was charged with attempted spying because there was no evidence that
he actually handed over classified information or sent the letters in
question to the Iraqi and Libyan leaders, Justice Department officials
said.
A 20-year veteran of the Air Force, Regan retired in August 2000 after
working in the headquarters of the National Reconnaissance Office.
According to the indictment, Regan drafted a letter to Iraqi agents
instructing them to deliver a sealed envelope to Saddam Hussein.
In the letter to the Iraqi leader, Regan wrote, ``I am willing to commit
esposinage (sic) against the United States by providing your country with
highly classified information,'' according to the indictment.
Saying he faced the risk of execution or life in prison if caught, Regan
demanded a minimum payment of $13 million. ''Thirteen million is a small
price to pay for what you will receive,'' he wrote, according to the
indictment.
He also allegedly offered Iraq a sampling of the classified materials for
$1
million.
At the time of his arrest, Regan was employed by TRW Inc. and was serving
as
a contract employee to the National Reconnaissance Office.
Xinhuanet 2002-02-16 16:58:28
CAIRO, February 16 (Xinhuanet)
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
on Saturday met with U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief
George Tenet at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt's
official MENA news agency reported.
"Tenet's visit to Egypt falls within the framework of his
current Mideast tour for talks over the latest developments in the
region," MENA said, without elaborating.
Last June, Tenet visited the Mideast region and brokered a
ceasefire plan between the Palestinians and Israelis, but the plan
has never been implemented. Enditem
.
3. Jordan questions ex-spy chief in bank loan case
AMMAN, Feb. 15
Jordanian prosecutors are to question a former spy chief
and senior bankers over a bad loan case that has rocked the political
establishment and damaged business confidence, officials and major
newspapers said on Friday.
The Jordan Times, a majority-state owned daily, quoting unnamed
official sources, said the ex-spy chief -- retired Lieutenant General
Samih
Batikhi, once a close confidant of King Abdullah -- was among those to be
questioned in the case. Proceedings began on Thursday.
Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Ragheb announced late on Thursday he had
invoked extended powers to order legal action against Majd Shamayleh, 31,
a
prime suspect at the centre of the bad loan affair.
At issue is whether Shamayleh used business partners as guarantors
to
obtain millions of dinars in credit from several banks, bypassing
stringent
Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) rules limiting a bank's lending to a single
client.
Officials said Shamayleh had left the country. They said the
premises
of his Amman-based firm, which sells computer hardware and security
systems,
was under court seal.
Bankers say that at least three of the country's 21 private banks
face over 60 million dinars ($85 million) in exposure from extending
commercial credit to Shamayleh's firm Global Business, which sold
high-tech
security systems to the General Intelligence Department (GID).
COMPLEX WEB OF ACCOUNTS
Bankers say Shamayleh, whose associates are sons of prominent
public
figures and businessmen, had dealings with several banks in a complex web
of
hidden accounts over at least five years.
Bankers say the affair came to a head as rumours circulated in
Jordan's close-knit business circles on the authenticity of documents
extended by the GID to Shamayleh in multi-million-dinar high-tech
equipment
contracts.
Officials who declined to be identified confirmed to Reuters that,
along with Batikhi, GID's anti-corruption squad would question other
businessmen, including two bank chairmen.
Former agriculture minister Zuhair Zanouneh, who headed expansion
of
GID investments operations during Batikhi's nearly five years as
department
chief, is among those being questioned, the mass-circulation
government-owned daily Al-Rai reported.
Security sources said three GID officers had been referred to a
special tribunal over the scandal.
Abu al-Ragheb said the legal move against Shamayleh had been
directly
ordered by King Abdullah, who has personally spearheaded a campaign to
attract foreign capital, after investigations by the GID and Central Bank
of
Jordan.
KING ''INFURIATED''
General Batikhi personally guided King Abdullah's smooth transition
to the throne in 1999 after the death of his father, King Hussein.
Senior officials told Reuters the monarch has been infuriated by an
affair that could hurt the morale and reputation of the GID, which
international security experts say is among the most professionally run in
the region.
The GID's U.S.-trained top brass received high marks from the CIA
after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities for their ''invaluable
role''
in the covert war against Saudi militant Osama bin Laden's Qaeda group, a
security source told Reuters.
Businessmen say the government's tough moves, following denials and
efforts to play down the affair, showed its concern to minimise any ripple
effect amid warnings that a cover-up would severely hit Jordan's
investment
climate.
''They are serious about containing the potential fallout from this
episode and not allowing it to snowball,'' said a prominent investment
banker who declined to be identified.
Earlier in the week, Abu al-Ragheb pledged to guarantee bank
deposits
in the strongest commitment yet to a nervous public, prompted by concern
over growing deposit withdrawals from some banks that have been
implicated.
Officials remain tight-lipped about the scale of the scandal,
raising
investor scepticism. Bankers say the picture may become clearer on
February
28 when several credit facilities expire.
A CBJ source told Reuters the bank's auditors were tracking down a
web of accounts, cash collateral and letters of guarantee used by
Shamayleh.
LEVON SEVUNTS
Montreal Gazette
Thursday, February 14, 2002
A Montreal consulting firm headed by a former Israeli
military-intelligence
agent is in the centre of a political controversy spanning three
continents
after alleging that a key Zimbabwean opposition figure approached the firm
last year to arrange the assassination of President Robert Mugabe.
Ari Ben-Menashe, president of Dickens & Madson, a shadowy consulting firm
operating out of a Westmount mansion, said yesterday he planted hidden
cameras in his office and taped a meeting with Morgan Tsvangirai, the head
of Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe's main opposition party, who
asked to arrange Mugabe's assassination, followed by a coup d'état.
The incident came to light yesterday when Australian television network
SBS
broadcast excerpts of the meeting on its program Dateline.
While Tsvangirai, who is considered the greatest challenge to Mugabe's
22-year rule in next month's presidential election, doesn't deny that the
meeting took place on Dec. 4, he has vehemently denied the charges,
calling
them a "crude smear campaign."
Ben-Menashe said that in the summer of 2001, his company was approached by
the MDC through an intermediary, a mysterious former Zimbabwean man.
Ben-Menashe said he had two meetings with Tsvangirai and his associates in
London, followed by the last meeting in Montreal.
"During this meeting, Mr. Tsvangirai repeated his demands for the
elimination of President Mugabe and discussed in detail his political
opinions, sources of MDC funding and involvement with conservative whites
in
the United Kingdom, South Africa and Zimbabwe," a statement issued by
Ben-Menashe said.
The eight-minute tape that aired on Dateline shows an overhead view of
four
men sitting around a boardroom table. However, the black-and-white picture
is grainy and the faces of the men - including the one named as
Tsvangirai -
were largely obscured.
"The MDC, represented by the top man who's sitting here right now, commits
to ... the coup d'état or the elimination of the president,'' Ben-Menashe
said on the tape.
During the meeting, the man identified as Tsvangirai voiced concern the
military might take over if Mugabe is "eliminated." But he also expressed
hope "the MDC on the one hand and the army on the other can work together
to
ensure smooth transition toward democracy through the electoral process,
even if it means delaying the election.''
Relationship With Mugabe
What Tsvangirai didn't know was that Dickens & Madson had a longstanding
working relationship with the Mugabe government and Mugabe himself,
Ben-Menashe said.
Ben-Menashe refused to discuss his business dealings with the Mugabe
government, saying only that he lobbied for them in different
institutions.
MDC chairman Welshman Ncube, who said he was present during the first
meeting in London, said it was Ben-Menashe who approached them.
"They approached us, requesting that we appoint them our public-relations
consultants in the United States in order to raise the profile of the MDC
so
that it can be viewed as a government in waiting and our voice could be
listened to in the Americas," Ncube said.
"It's an attempt to present the MDC as a party engaged in plotting
assassinations, which is absolute garbage. By the time everything is
through
here, it will be plain to everybody that this is a ZANU-PF (the ruling
party) scam."
'Total Nonsense'
Ben-Menashe denied this. "That's total nonsense. I never approached them.
My
advice to them is that if you are in a hole, don't dig it deeper."
Ncube said the MDC didn't do background checks on Dickens & Madson.
"Obviously, we didn't do what we should have done," he said. "We didn't
know
they were working for ZANU-PF until 48 hours ago."
Had the MDC done a simple Internet search, it would have found Ben-Menashe
and his associate Alexander Legault are no strangers to controversy.
U.S. authorities say Legault masterminded a multimillion-dollar securities
fraud in Florida, for which Loren (Ray) Reynolds, also indicted in the
case,
is serving a 22-year sentence.
Legault has other legal woes. Carlington Sales, a Montreal company he owns
with Ben-Menashe, is named in a series of civil lawsuits alleging
breach-of-contract or fraudulent dealings.
Ben-Menashe refused to comment on the accusations against his associate.
- Levon Sevunts's E-mail address is lsevunts@thegazette.southam.ca.
(c) Copyright 2002 Montreal Gazette
.
5. Cold War warrior who put a shadowy CIA past behind him and became an effective envoy to the UN
Vernon Walters
The Times - February 15, 2002
One of the last of America's old-style Cold War warriors, who served his
country both covertly in CIA posts and overtly as an ambassador, Vernon
Walters never wavered in his conviction of the rectitude of his right-wing
views as they applied to foreign affairs. The early part of his career had
much that was shadowy about it. He was thought to have been involved in
the
CIA coup which reinstalled the Shah in Iran in 1953; he was mysteriously
knowledgeable about the military coup which overthrew the reforming
Government of Brazil in 1964; and he was alleged to have had a hand in the
downfall of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. His fanatical dislike of
communism went hand in hand with an unashamed tendency to court South
American dictators.
But he performed valuable service in keeping open the lines of
communication
between the US and North Vietnam, when he smuggled Henry Kissinger into
France for secret negotiations with the North's representatives. And,
although hawkish to a degree, he surprised many with his urbane demeanour
as
Ambassador to the UN in the late 1980s, while maintaining his stance as a
stout guardian of US interests. In his final post as Ambassador in Bonn
from
1989, he was, from the outset of his tenure, encouragingly positive to
West
German ministers about the prospects for German reunification.
Vernon Walters's father was a British-born insurance executive, who
decided
to return with his family to Europe in 1923. The young Vernon had the
first
part of his education in France, at a Paris lycée, and the second in
England, at Stonyhurst. He had a precocious talent for languages, and
before
the family returned to the US in 1934, he was fluent in French, Italian,
Spanish and German. Ultimately, he was to master seven languages.
But his education came to a sudden halt. The family insurance business had
been hard hit by the Depression, and he was compelled to leave school to
join his father as a claims adjuster. Walters hated it. In May 1941, even
before America was brought into the Second World War, he enlisted as a
private in the US Army. "Adolf Hitler did at least one good deed in his
life," he wrote in his memoirs, Silent Missions (1978), "He got me out of
my
father's insurance company."
The US Army soon set Walters on the path of his true vocation. Recognising
his linguistic skills, his superiors granted him a commission and sent him
to serve in an intelligence unit in Morocco. In those war years, showing
an
astute judgment of those who were likely to rise to power, Walters began
to
construct his international network of contacts. Soon he was serving as
aide-de-camp to General Mark Clark, who commanded the US forces in Italy.
Clark, in turn, introduced him to General George C. Marshall, who took
Walters with him to Europe for the Marshall Plan negotiations.
Marshall recommended Walters to President Truman, who used him as an
interpreter at several postwar summit meetings. Walters was taking the
notes
at the meeting during the Korean War at which Truman memorably fired his
Commander-in-Chief, General Douglas MacArthur. This contact gave Walters
the
access to the White House which he was to preserve thereafter. During the
early 1950s Walters accompanied Averell Harriman on diplomatic missions to
Korea, Iran, where the CIA helped to bring back the Shah after his flight,
and Yugoslavia. From 1956 to 1960 he was staff assistant to President
Eisenhower.
In 1958, when he was acting as interpreter for Vice-President Richard
Nixon
on a "goodwill" tour of South America, their official car was stoned by an
angry mob in the streets of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. The two men
escaped unharmed, and thereafter celebrated the event together on May 13
every year.
Four years later Walters was posted to Brazil, where he had served briefly
as military attaché after the Second World War. It was a time when the
Brazilian Armed Forces were growing increasingly dissatisfied with the
reformist regime of President João Goulart. Walters forecast the ensuing
coup so accurately, down to the very date it would begin, that some
suspected him of engineering it. This suspicion intensified when his old
wartime friend, General Castelo Branco, seized power.
Walters vehemently denied all such suggestions, and no evidence was ever
found to prove them.
During the Vietnam War, Walters was assigned as senior military attaché at
the American Embassy in Paris. In what he later called one of the major
achievements of his life, he managed to smuggle Henry Kissinger into
France
15 times to conduct secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese.
In 1972 Walters was appointed deputy director of the CIA by his old friend
Richard Nixon. He almost immediately found himself in the middle of the
Watergate scandal, but emerged unscathed after some 20 appearances before
investigative committees. The CIA gave him a medal for resisting external
pressure on the agency; Nixon's chief domestic policy adviser John
Ehrlichman (who was to be convicted of obstructing justice, conspiracy and
perjury) accused him of "selective recollection" of his role in Watergate.
Much of Walters's work with the CIA involved liaison with foreign
intelligence agencies. Notable among these was DINA, the notorious the
Chilean secret police, which was one of Augusto Pinochet's principal
instruments of repression after the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.
In 1976, when two agents of DINA assassinated the former Allende Defence
Minister, Orlando Letelier, in Washington, Walters's name was found on
their
visa applications as a referee. He denied all knowledge of the men; once
again investigations unearthed no evidence to incriminate him.
With the election of Jimmy Carter as President, both the political climate
and the attitude towards intelligence operations changed abruptly. Walters
left the CIA and retired from the Army with the rank of
lieutenant-general.
He moved to Florida to become a consultant to an American arms company. He
also worked for an international oil cartel which had interests in
Guatemala, where he had friends in the Armed Forces.
The next President, Ronald Reagan, was more to Walters's taste. He
returned
to US Government service in 1981 to become an ambassador-at-large,
visiting
108 countries over the next four years. Much of his effort in this period
was devoted to smoothing the feathers of various Latin American dictators,
which had been badly ruffled by the Carter Administration's emphasis on
human rights. In May 1981 he recommended the resumption of US aid to
Guatemala, then one of the most oppressive regimes in the western
hemisphere. In 1985 Walters was nominated to succeed Jeane Kirkpatrick as
the US Permanent Representative to the UN. Despite the objections of Third
World countries, and his past association with the darker side of
diplomacy,
he sailed through the confirmation hearings. Only the US Secretary of
State,
George Shultz, who saw him as a potential rival, came close to derailing
the
nomination.
Within the UN, where Walters declared his first priority was "to stop the
lynching of the United States by resolution," his methods proved
surprisingly subtle and effective. He used his social skills behind the
scenes to win over many hostile delegations, once explaining: "I wanna
kill
'em with kindness."
In 1989, with the Berlin Wall about to crumble and German reunification in
the air, Walters was the natural choice of President Bush to become
Ambassador to the Bonn government.
In retirement after 1991 he devoted himself to a further volume of
memoirs.
The Mighty and the Meek: Dispatches from the Front Line of Diplomacy was
published last year.
Vernon Walters never married.
Vernon Walters, CIA officer and diplomat, was born in New York on January
3,
1917. He died in West Palm Beach, Florida, on February 10, 2002, aged 85.
*** NB: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material, forming part of Security & Intelligence
Newsletter, is distributed without payment or profit to those who have
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