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James Bond Caught; ...in Moscow
Topic Started: Jan 24 2006, 10:22 AM (222 Views)
AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
From: The Moscow Tmes Tuesday, January 24, 2006.


FSB: 4 British Spies Uncovered

By Simon Saradzhyan and Kevin O'Flynn
Staff Writers

Rossia / AP


The Federal Security Service said Monday that it had uncovered four British spies working under diplomatic cover in Moscow and that one had authorized grants for Russian nongovernmental organizations.

The four -- all staff members at the British Embassy -- downloaded information from transmitters concealed inside rocks, Sergei Ignatchenko, the chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, or FSB, said at a news conference for select Russian journalists.

A Russian national recruited by British intelligence left the information, Ignatchenko said.

He hinted that the four would be expelled because "their activities were incompatible with their diplomatic status" -- a standard euphemism used by government agencies to accuse foreigners of espionage.

"The situation will be resolved at the political level," Ignatchenko said.

He said the Russian national had been arrested and admitted to spying for British intelligence.

The British Embassy declined to comment, and none of the four staff members responded to questions sent to their e-mail accounts at the British Embassy. It was unclear whether they were still in Moscow.

The Foreign Office in London said it was "concerned and surprised" at the FSB allegations.

"We reject any allegation of improper conduct in our dealings with Russian NGOs," the Foreign Office said in a statement.

"It is well known that the U.K. government has financially supported projects implemented by Russian NGOs in the field of human rights and civil society," it said. "All our assistance is given openly and aims to support the development of a healthy civil society in Russia."

A Foreign Office spokesman declined to comment further, saying it was Foreign Office policy not to discuss intelligence matters.

Prime Minster Tony Blair also declined to comment at a London news conference, saying he had only heard about the claims from media reports.

Rossia, the state television channel, first reported the allegations on its investigative show "Special Correspondent" on Sunday night. The channel showed footage of four men as they walked by what it said was a transmitter hidden in a hollow rock on a Moscow street. One man was shown purportedly trying to establish a connection with the transmitter using a hand-held computer.

Rossia identified the four as Marc Doe, Chris Peart, Andrew Fleming and Paul Crompton. Crompton was referred to as the assistant to the embassy's intelligence service representative, Doe as second secretary of the political section, and Pear and Fleming as archivists.

Rossia said the FSB cracked the espionage operation at the end of last year. It appeared that the videotape was filmed in early fall.

Rossia showed one rock that it said Doe had used for espionage. Ignatchenko said the FSB was aware of two rocks and had seized one.

Rossia also said Doe had authorized transfers of grants from the Foreign Office's Global Opportunities Fund to Russian NGOs, including the Moscow Helsinki Group and the New Eurasia Foundation.

The FSB has repeatedly accused foreign intelligence services of using NGOs as cover for espionage, and the latest allegations served as another warning to Russian recipients of foreign funds.

A Rossia journalist concluded Sunday's report by saying that oversight over civil society "should be exercised by incorruptible people who care about the interests of their homeland and not an alien country."

Ignatchenko said a total of 12 Russian NGOs had received payments authorized by Doe. He said they included the Committee Against Torture, the Center for Development of Democracy and Protection of Human Rights and International Criminal Reform, in addition to the Helsinki group and Eurasia.

Representatives of the NGO community reacted with anger.

"It is a horrible TV program," said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a veteran human rights campaigner and head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, who had read a transcript of the Sunday night show.

"It's a special campaign against NGOs that has been going on for a long time," Alexeyeva said.

Citing recent controversial cases against scientists accused of spying, she said FSB officials had proved themselves inept in capturing alleged spies before and she was not convinced of the veracity of the charges this time, either.

"It sounds very ridiculous," said Dmitry Surnin, the head of the media development department at the New Eurasia Foundation, which received funding to develop small-town newspapers from the Global Opportunities Fund.

"It's clearly a provocation, another PR activity to support current attempts to tighten the grip on NGOs or eliminate them altogether," he said. "It also seems a way to answer pressure from the West."

"I think that the 'patriots' who say human rights activists are not patriots now have a new way to make their argument," said Igor Kalyarpin, the head of the Committee Against Torture, a Nizhny Novgorod-based NGO. "We don't have an easy time, and this is like a knife to the back."

The FSB might have planned the leak to Rossia as a way of preparing a defense for the new law that will place NGOs under stricter state control, said Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow branch of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. He said the leak might have been planned as early as November, when the State Duma first started considering the legislation and criticism was mounting among Russian NGOs and in the West.

President Vladimir Putin signed the NGO law this month, and it goes into force in April.

Intelligence officers are often told not to assume certain cover identities. Safranchuk noted that the KGB was told not to send spies under the cover of the Pravda newspaper to avoid discrediting the main Soviet propaganda vehicle in case they were caught.

General Nikolai Leonov, former deputy head of the KGB's foreign intelligence department, said Monday that the Rossia report had dented his opinion of British intelligence.

"What I saw really disappointed me," said Leonov, a Duma deputy from the nationalist Rodina party. He derided the stone as not quite "super technology."

If Russia does expel the four, Britain will almost certainly be forced to respond tit-for-tat by expelling diplomats from the Russian Embassy in London.

Moscow and London have a history of expelling scores of alleged spies. The record was set in 1971, when Britain declared 105 Soviet diplomats personae non grata.

In 1994, Britain expelled a Russian diplomat in response to the expulsion of a man whom Russian counter-intelligence described as the chief British spy in Russia.

Two years later, Russia arrested Platon Obukhov on charges of passing secrets to British agents while working at the Russian Foreign Ministry. That year, Russia also expelled nine British diplomats for allegedly running a spy ring. Britain responded by ordering four Russians to leave.

In 2000, the FSB announced that it had arrested a Russian on charges of working as a spy for Britain. Former intelligence officer Valery Ojamae was convicted of high treason by a Moscow court in 2001.
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Mark
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HOLY CARP!!!
See: http://s10.invisionfree.com/The_New_Coffee...?showtopic=6917

for a related thread.
___.___
(_]===*
o 0
When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
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AlbertaCrude
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:lol:
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big al
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What's your take on this, AC? Actual espionage or an attempt to chill Russian NGO's contacts with foreign nationals?

Big Al
Location: Western PA

"jesu, der simcha fun der man's farlangen."
-bachophile
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
Mark
Jan 24 2006, 01:34 PM

:D

Any resemblance to any other well known British/American duo is entirely coincidental.

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What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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AlbertaCrude
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posted by Big Al
 
What's your take on this, AC?  Actual espionage or an attempt to chill Russian NGO's contacts with foreign nationals?

Big Al


Al, the issue of NGO's has been pretty big in Russia lately. The government wants and has passed a law to prohibit foreign funding of NGO's. Part of this is response to the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in which foreign money went into funding political activism to bring about regime change that was less than subservient or nuetral to Moscow.

Putin of course enjoys immense popular support inside Russia- probably in excess of 65 or 70%. After the free for all of the late Gorbachev peroid and the Yelstin era, Putin has brought a sense of stability to the country. To accomplish this he has had to introduce an element of real autocratic power back into the presidential office. Most Russians view this as benign and perfectly in keeping with traditional Russian political culture. They see Russia as being very different and unique from the rest of Europe and the West ( a bit like some conservatives in the US who hold the view that the USA has exclusivity among nations) and are correspondingly content with a deliberately slow approach to democratization. While urban centres in Russia- like Moscow and St. Peterburg and a few others- may seem open to foreign influences, the country outside of these remain deeply suspicious of all things foreign. Curtailing NGO's is one way of managing the internal divisions within the country. On the other hand, to Russian liberals such as Grigorii Yavlinsky and Mikhail Kasianov as well as the West, centralizing tendencies curtailing unfettered NGO activity is seen as a return to a one party system or autocracy.

My own view is that this incident is Moscow's way of gently reminding the West that it will go about managing it own affairs as it sees fit. The British are easy targets. To the Russian public Britain has granted exile to a wanted Chechen terrorist Ahmed Zakhayev, who has in past received funds from Boris Berezovsky the famed Russia oligarch of the Yelstin era who owns Chelsea Football club and also has a residence in London. Russia has repeatedly sought extradition of both. This whole incident could therefore be viewed as come uppance. The Russians know very well that the British government will complain, PNG a couple of Russian diplomats and then back off. BP is heavily leveraged in the Western Siberian oil industry with a number of Russian companies particularly Tyumen Oil Company (Dick Cheney's Russian pet when he was with Halliburton). So are other British multinationals in a number of Russian resource industries. So while Britain will take it on the PR nose over this, there will be no actions of consequence. It serves as a reminder to all Western democracies that although commercial investment and mutually beneficial trade is welcome, kindly leave Russia alone politically and let it work through its 40 years in the desert on its own terms.
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