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Post by TsarSamuil on Sept 7, 2011 14:28:50 GMT -5
Vid, rt.com/news/general-petraeus-heads-cia-967/General Petraeus the king of spin takes over at CIA. RT.com 7 September, 2011, 02:11 General David Petraeus, the man who headed up America's moves in Iraq and Afghanistan is now top dog at the CIA after President Obama's national security reshuffle. His predecessor Leon Panetta is now Defense Secretary. David Petraeus has spent 37 years as a soldier but now his career takes a slight detour, bringing him to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. “David Petraeus is a smooth operator, has a great reputation with the American media, he is popular and is seen as honest in Congress,” believes retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, activist and commentator, Karen Kwiatkowski – and that is exactly why he would be a great cover for the CIA’s current agenda. “He [Petraeus] has a way of making really bad things look good,” states Kwiatkowski, “he made his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan look successful even when it was not successful at all.” Petraeus’s talent is to take what Washington gives him and wrap it up in new wrapping which Washington then sells. “He’s almost like an advertising dream”, continues Kwiatkowski. Despite the CIA’s terrible reputation worldwide, David Petraeus will be able to spin the organization to media consumption as a ‘good CIA’. The organization will look good even though changing nothing fundamentally and continuing on the same tracks all along. If politicians in Washington like Petraeus, then American soldiers in Afghanistan do not – because they see the disaster that is going on there with their own eyes. “The DC establishment will love what he [Petraeus] does at the CIA,” predicts Karen Kwiatkowski. American tactics in Afghanistan are changing from a counter-insurgency war to a “kill-and- capture” strategy that puts Petraeus’s appointment to the CIA into a perfect framework for this change, says Hannah Gurman, assistant professor at New York University's Gallatin School. It is the CIA’s business to plan drone attacks and execute ground operations to eliminate warlords or capture terrorists – and such operations do not require ground troops on a large scale. In a sense, General Petraeus is not going to leave this war. He is simply changing his position on the battle map. “Petraeus is a hero according to most of the American public,” points out Hannah Gurman. “In the end, perhaps, Petraeus will not be a hero but, for now, many Americans are happy to hear that possibly fewer soldiers will be involved in these devastating conflicts.” “Petraeus will continue to try to give us the sense that we’ll get more transparency in the CIA,” Gurman says, “but I think it will be more of the same. The CIA has never been a transparent organization and it never will be one.” |
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Post by TsarSamuil on Sept 8, 2011 15:32:07 GMT -5
Bulgaria's intelligence chief warns of threats from western Balkans, terrorists.
SOFIA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Lieutenant General Kircho Kirov, Director of Bulgaria's National Intelligence Service, said Thursday that elements from western Balkans and terrorists may threaten the security of his country.
"The western Balkans region will continue to generate potential threats for Bulgaria because of the difficult transition of the respective states to democratic and ethnically balanced model of governance," Kirov told a plenary session of the 9th International Conference "Security in Southeast Europe: Crises, Challenges, Policies."
Among the key destabilizing factors, according to the Bulgaria's intelligence, were the territorial fragmentation, weak statehood, active local organized crime, the advance of radical Islamist ideas and still vague Euro-Atlantic perspective for most countries in the region.
"These factors directly or indirectly create problems on a regional level, and they are related to our national security," Kirov said.
Despite the general trend of gradual stabilization, the region remained a problematic area in terms of security in Europe, Kirov said.
It influenced and would continue to affect the prospects for the development of Bulgaria as well, Kirov added.
He also said terrorist structures "based to countries in crisis regions" threatened security in the Balkans.
"It can be expected that the tactic of the global Islamist terrorism to create multiple hardly detectable metastatic structures in the developed societies will deepen in the coming years, and in the future it is likely to affect the region of southeast Europe, including Bulgaria," Kirov said.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Oct 12, 2011 12:58:32 GMT -5
Enigma machine set to star in Gdansk WWII Museum.
TheNews.pl
12.10.2011 13:21
The Internal Security Agency (ABW), Poland's counter-intelligence department, has signed a contract for the permanent loan of a model of the famed Enigma cipher machine to the upcoming Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk.
“The Enigma machine will be one of the most important exhibits in the main exhibition of the museum,” enthused Dr Pawel Machcewicz, director of the forthcoming enterprise.
Ciphers decoding from German Enigma machines during World War II played a crucial role in the Allied victory.
Some historians contend that the success of the operation shortened the war by several years, saving millions of lives.
Work at decrypting the ciphers was focused at Bletchley Park, a manor in central England that had been been commandeered by British Intelligence for the war effort.
As is commemorated in a memorial at Bletchley, Polish cryptographers paved the way for the Allied breakthrough.
In July 1939, on the eve of war, the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau demonstrated to their British and French counterparts how to crack the Nazi communications system. The Poles had been the only ones to penetrate the network, and had been unravelling German codes since 1932.
Three mathematicians, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski were instrumental in the Polish operation.
Besides the Enigma machine model, Poland's Internal Security Agency will be contributing many more items to the museum.
The planned opening for the institution is 2014, and the state is contributing 358.4 million zloty (83 million euros). (nh/pg)
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Post by TsarSamuil on Oct 23, 2011 20:01:54 GMT -5
German police arrest couple suspected of spying for Russia.
RT.com
23 October, 2011, 01:52
The German Federal Police have arrested a married couple on suspicion of spying for Russia's foreign intelligence service for over two decades, according to reports in the German media.
The Federal Prosecutor’s Office says the two were arrested on Tuesday by the GSG-9 special operations team, an elite division of the German police.
The pair were arrested separately, with one being picked up in the city of Baligen in Baden-Wuerttemberg state in the south-west of the country, while the other was detained in Marburg in the state of Hesse, which is to the west of central Germany.
Police reportedly walked in on the woman while she was listening to encoded radio transmissions.
The German news weekly, Der Spiegel, said that according to the authorities the man and the woman – referred to only as Andreas A. and Heidrun A. – had been working in Germany as Russian spies since the days when the KGB, the Soviet Union's spy agency, was operating in the country during the Cold War.
According to documents the couple both hail from South America, the man from Argentina and the woman from Peru, although both had Austrian passports.
However, inquiries made by German authorities in South America confirmed that the passport data had been falsified.
The couple allegedly moved to West Germany in 1988. Apparently, Andreas A. and Heidrun A. have been working all across Europe, with Germany serving as their base. It is thought they could have been playing a linking role between other agents and Moscow, media reports suggest. Also, according to Der Spiegel, Andreas A. speaks with a Russian accent, though he claims he knows only German, English and Spanish. Both have denied all charges.
It is not known what the alleged spies' target was, Der Spiegel says.
It is the first time undercover foreign agents have been found in Germany since the county was reunified in 1990, Der Spiegel stresses.
Police began investigating the couple after a Russian spy ring was uncovered in the United States last year.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Oct 23, 2011 20:27:23 GMT -5
Russian soldier, mom convicted of spying for Georgia.
17:15 19/10/2011
ROSTOV-ON-DON, October 19 (RIA Novosti)
The North Caucasus District Military Court on Wednesday found a Russian serviceman and his mother guilty of spying for Georgia.
Sr. Lt. David Aliyev and his mother Irina Aliyeva were sentenced to ten and eight years in a high security prison, respectively.
Lt. Gen. Vladimir Milovanov, the military prosecutor of the Southern Military District, said the verdict was just.
“I believe that the court has passed a legitimate, well substantiated and just verdict with regard to the spies,” Milovanov said, adding that the convicts had been gathering information that fell under the definition of official secrets.
The suspected spies were arrested by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in January.
Aliyev, deployed to a military unit in Russia’s Southern Military District, was found to "have been collecting secret information on orders from Georgian intelligence services."
His mother was involved in conveying the information to Georgia.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Jan 20, 2012 17:39:07 GMT -5
UK admits spying on Russia with the help of a fake rock. RT.com 19 January, 2012, 09:51  The UK has admitted for the first time it was spying on Russia six years ago with the help of a fake rock. The adviser to the then British PM Tony Blair called the incident embarrassing. “They had us bang to rights,” Jonathan Powell told the BBC in an interview. He added that Russians must have known about the spying hardware for some time and exposed it at a politically opportune moment. In January 2006, a report on Russian television claimed there was proof that British spies were using electronic equipment hidden inside a fake rock to exchange information between agents and embassy staff. “Ever since I made that program six years ago – I’ve been haunted by everyone,” says Arkady Mamontov, a Russian TV journalist who made the film revealing details of the spy scandal. “I was called names, people laughed at me. Now I want to thank the man who admitted to the English special service’s operation. We were right after all!” According to the report, an agent would pass by the rock and download data from his portable computer, while a diplomat would later collect it in a similar way. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) have identified four Britons involved in the spy ring. “At first I had some doubts that the video was fake, or a game of some kind. So I double- and triple-checked through various sources, to be sure that it was real,” Mamontov adds. Christopher Pierce, the diplomat who was said to have installed the secret link, was also responsible for financing Russian non-governmental organizations with British grants, as was one of the other alleged spies, Mark Doe. “It was all about missile/rocket technologies. And the very same, the spy Doe was a cashier for several NGOs, including the Moscow Helsinki Group,” Mamontov says. The report implied that there may have been further links between the two sides of their jobs in Russia, and said the spy scandal “discredited the fine idea of NGOs.” Britain expressed “concern and surprise” over the allegations at the time. The “spy rock scandal” was taken with skepticism by many people, including Russians. They said it was either a scam or simply blown out of proportion in what was described as a Kremlin assault on NGOs. A month before the report was made public, Russia introduced a new law tightening up control over such organizations. Critics accused the Russian authorities of a “conspiracy mentality” in suspecting the infiltration of spies into human right groups and other NGOs. The FSB said it had chosen to leak information on the spy ring to journalists only after it had failed to settle the dispute with its British counterpart discreetly. It denied allegations that the disclosure was aimed at undermining NGOs operating in Russia. There have been a number of spy scandals between Britain and Russia. The latest saw a Russian woman winning her fight in London against extradition, after she was accused of being a honeytrap for a British MP. |
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Post by TsarSamuil on Feb 12, 2012 7:22:11 GMT -5
Russia Convicts Military Officer of Spying For CIA.
16:39 10/02/2012
MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti)
A Russian military district court sentenced on Friday an engineer at the Plesetsk Space Center in northern Russia to 13 years in prison on charges of state treason, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said.
Lt. Col. Vladimir Nesterets, a senior testing engineer at the center, has been convicted of selling secret data on tests of new Russian ballistic missiles.
“Nesterets has pleaded guilty on charges of selling information about testing of new Russian strategic missile systems to CIA officers in exchange for money,” the FSB said in a statement.
“He was sentenced to 13 years in a high security prison and stripped of his rank,” the statement said.
The details of the trial, which was held behind closed doors, are not available to the public because of national security reasons.
President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday that Russian counterintelligence exposed 199 foreign spies in 2011, including 41 professional intelligence officers and 158 agents in the pay of foreign spymasters.
Medvedev did not elaborate on the spies’ home countries, but said some of the agents were Russian nationals.
The Plesetsk Space Center is the only space launch facility on Russian territory. It is mainly used for launches of military satellites and tests of ballistic missiles.
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Post by TsarSamuil on May 18, 2012 13:55:49 GMT -5
Russian man gets eight years for espionage.
MOSCOW, May 18 (Xinhua) -- A Russian man was convicted of passing ballistic missile secrets to foreign intelligence services and got eight years in prison Friday.
Alexander Gniteyev, a former defense industry worker, was convicted of high treason and espionage by the Sverdlovsk district court in Yekaterinburg in central Russia.
He also faces a fine of 100,000 roubles (3,200 U.S. dollars) and is not allowed to change his residential place or leave the city without getting state permission, the court's press service said Friday, without providing further details.
The judgment has not come into force. A spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) local branch told reporters that Gniteyev used to work for the Academician N. A. Semikhatov Automatics Research and Production Association.
Investigators found that the man had collected secret information about Russian missile projects and pass it to foreign intelligence agencies.
Local media reported earlier the suspect had provided secrets on "managing system of the newest naval strategic missile Bulava" to a foreign secret service.
RSM-56 Bulava is a submarine launched ballistic missile and developed by Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology. As Russia's most advanced three-stage solid fuel missile, it could carry up to 10 hypersonic, individually guided, maneuverable warheads with a yield of 100-150 kt each.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Jun 2, 2012 2:03:03 GMT -5
Spy’s Maps Could be Used to Plot Cruise Missile Tasks - FSB.
13:37 01/06/2012
MOSCOW, June 1 (RIA Novosti)
Classified topographic maps stolen from Russia’s General Staff of the Armed Forces in 2008 and transferred to the U.S. Pentagon by a former serviceman, could be used in planning military campaigns in Russia, and for the development of the flight tasks for cruise missiles, an anonymous FSB official said in an interview with the Rossiya 1 TV channel published on Friday.
“The possession of the these topographic materials by the military bodies of the foreign states allow them to carry out military campaigns…and develop the flight tasks for cruise missiles,” the FSB official told the TV channel.
The former Russian serviceman, Vladimir Lazar was sentenced on Thursday to 12 years in jail, and was stripped of his military rank, for selling classified topographic maps of Russia to the U.S. Pentagon.
Lazar, while working in the Topographic Service of Russia’s General Staff of the Armed Forces, was noticed by the Federal Security Service in 2008 when he transferred over 7,500 classified maps to his former fellow student, Alexander Lesment, who was reported to have collaborated with U.S. intelligence since 1994.
Lazar was arrested in November 2010 when the security officials came to his place with the formal notice of espionage charges filed against him, Kommersant daily reported on Friday. The court found him guilty on Friday of treason and divulging state secrets, and sentenced Lazar to 12 years in jail.
It is however unclear whether Lazar was paid for his service, the TV channel said.
“There are two points of view. The first one is that he worked for money. The other one is that was offended with the government since his career went sour. He served until achieving a colonel’s rank, but his ambitions were bigger,” the anonymous FSB official told the Rossiya 1 TV channel.
According to the TV channel, Lazar told the FSB he had received $800 for the maps. The investigation however did not believe his words since the price of one map as the security service officials said is no less than $10.
Lazar confirmed that he had handed in the maps, but said he had not considered it to be a crime.
Magomed Magomedov, Lazar’s lawyer told the Kommersant daily that his client regretted his “too light-hearted” decision.
Magomedov also said they would appeal the verdict since there was a similar case in 2010 when a former serviceman, 59-year-old Gennady Sipachev, was sentenced to four-year high security imprisonment for a similar crime.
Sipachev, who was caught in 2008 when he sent the cartographic information from the Russian Armed Forces to the U.S. Defense Department over the Internet, received a moderately mild sentence after confessing his guilt and agreeing to cooperate with the investigation.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Jul 7, 2012 5:59:23 GMT -5
Russian Parliament Approves NGO ‘Foreign Agents’ Law.
17:43 06/07/2012
MOSCOW, July 6 (Marc Bennetts, RIA Novosti)
Russia’s lower house of parliament approved on Friday in its first reading a controversial bill that would force non-governmental organizations (NGOs) funded from abroad and engaged in political activity to declare themselves “foreign agents."
The draft law has met with fierce opposition from critics who say the term “foreign agent” is a near synonym for “spy’ in Russian and would lead to the discreditation of human rights groups.
NGOs would also have to publish a biannual report of their activities and carry out an annual financial audit. Failure to comply with the law could result in four-year jail sentences and/or fines of up to 300,000 rubles ($9,200) for members.
A Kremlin source told RIA Novosti earlier this week that the law could be approved by both houses of parliament this month and enter into force this fall.
The country’s oldest rights organization, the Moscow Helsinki Group, has said it will close down its offices rather than comply with the law. Russia’s Public Chamber also said on Thursday that it would not support the bill - which has also been criticized by the Kremlin’s own rights council - in its current form.
President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year that the United States was pumping millions of dollars into NGOs to try to influence the results of elections in Russia.
The bill was proposed by United Russia lawmaker Alexander Sidyakin, the author of recent legislation that sharply increased fines for violations of regulations governing protests.
“There is an entire network of NGOs whose financing is suspicious from the point of view of its provider,” Sidyakin said in a statement on the United Russia website this week.
But Sidyakin rejected allegations that the term “foreign agent” was associated by most Russians with espionage in an exclusive interview with RIA Novosti on Thursday.
“I think the idea that ‘foreign agent’ means ‘spy’ is more of a hangover from the Soviet period in which our parents grew up,” he said. “I don’t think younger generations see the expression this way. We should try to get over Cold War terminology. I believe there is nothing insulting in this term.”
Sidyakin singled out the independent election monitor Golos as an example of what he said were attempts by the United States to “affect Russian politics,” citing at a parliamentary committee hearing on Wednesday the “$2 million given to the organization in 2011 to dirty the Russian authorities.”
Golos, which monitors alleged election violations in Russia, freely admits to receiving funding from abroad and members have said Russian businessmen are afraid to donate for fear of repercussions.
Veteran human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov, of the For Human Rights organization, told RIA earlier this week the proposed law was an attack on the entire Russian civil liberties movement.
“This is a liquidation of the human rights movement in Russia.” Ponomaryov said. “We will not obey this law if it is adopted. We will not register as foreign agents.”
Moscow Helsinki head, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, said this week she would appeal to the U.S. Congress and the European parliament to add the authors of the bill to a visa blacklist drawn up in connection with the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow pre-trial detention center in 2009.
The move saw United Russia deputies sign up en masse to become co-authors of the bill.
"We decided to join him as co-authors," United Russia parliamentary faction chief Andrei Vorobyov told journalists.
U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly discussed the law with members of Russian NGOs while on a visit to St. Petersburg last week.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Oct 6, 2012 6:14:16 GMT -5
Accused Russian Agent Appears in US Court.
02:18 05/10/2012
WASHINGTON, October 5 (RIA Novosti)
A naturalized US citizen, accused of being a Russian agent, and six others charged in an alleged plot to ship high-tech microelectronics to the Russian military and intelligence agencies, appeared in a Houston federal courtroom on Thursday to hear the charges against them.
“Those are fairly dramatic allegations that we will certainly take a hard look at to see if there is any evidence to support them. We are going to take the charges very seriously and examine the charges very critically,” said Eric Reed, the attorney for the alleged ringleader Alexander Fishenko.
The defendants did not enter pleas and US Magistrate Judge Mary Millioy ordered them to be held pending further developments in the case, the Houston Chronicle reported.
More information that the government says it has about the defendants could become public during bond hearings scheduled for Friday.
Fishenko, who owns Texas-based Arc Electronics and other companies linked to the charges, along with ten others, were accused of being members of a “Russian military procurement network operating in the United States and Russia,” according to an indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
Eight suspects were arrested in Houston and three suspects are still at-large and believed to be outside the US. The charges include illegally exporting technology, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Fishenko, who was born in the former Soviet Union in what is now Kazakhstan and became a US citizen in 2003, is also charged with being an unregistered foreign agent of the Russian government.
The alleged smuggling operation supposedly shipped $50 million worth of microelectronics commonly used in a wide-range of military systems to Russia.
Authorities say that when he applied to live in the US, Fishenko claimed to have no military service, but has since said he served in a Soviet intelligence unit in the 1980s, the Houston Chronicle reported.
The indictment charges that the technology exported should have been “subject to strict government controls due to their potential use in a wide range of military systems, including radar and surveillance systems, weapons guidance systems and detonation triggers.”
US prosecutors argue that the 46-year-old Fishenko and his co-conspirators went to great lengths to cover up their illegal activity by saying Arc Electronics was a manufacturer of traffic lights.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the defendants are not connected to Russian intelligence services and noted they had not been charged with espionage.
If convicted, the defendants could face up to 65 years in a US federal prison. Fishenko faces an additional 30 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering while acting as an unregistered agent for the Russian government.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Mar 17, 2013 15:18:07 GMT -5
Vid, rt.com/news/mi6-spain-agent-litvinenko-982/Litvinenko worked for 'MI6 and gave Spain intel on Russian Mafia' – widow's lawyer. RT.com 13 December, 2012, 21:19 Former FSB officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, who died in London of polonium poisoning in 2006, worked for the British foreign intelligence service as well aiding Spain in their fight against the Russian mafia, the UK inquest revealed Thursday. “At the time of his death Litvinenko had been for a number of years a regular and paid agent and employee of MI6 with a dedicated handler whose pseudonym was Martin,” Ben Emmerson QC, representing Marina Litvinenko, told the coroner. Emmerson said that MI6 “tasked” Litvinenko to connect with Spanish intelligence whom he provided with information on “organized crime and Russian Mafia activity in Spain and more broadly.” The information went directly to Spanish prosecutors. The agent was paid by both the British and Spanish secret services into a joint bank account he held with his wife, the hearing at Camden Town Hall, in London, was told. Litvinenko allegedly met “Martin” on October 31, 2006 – less than a month before his death, Emmerson revealed. The handler is expected to testify in the inquest, an investigation thats looking to find the reasons behind his death but not rule on anyone’s guilt. The QC and Litvinenko’s family stressed that such deep involvement of the agent with the British intelligence put even more responsibility on the UK government to protect him Litvinenko, who was aged 43 at the time of his death, died of polonium-210 poisoning after allegedly drinking tea with his two former colleagues at a central London hotel. He was a critic of Vladimir Putin and had sought to expose what he called wrongdoing within the FSB security service. Litvinenko had worked both for the FSB and its predecessor the KGB before he fled Russia in 2000. On his deathbed, Litvinenko blamed Putin for his demise. The death sparked massive alarm that such a highly toxic material could be brought into the UK without being traced. The case came to be branded as “nuclear terrorism.” The two Russians, who met with Litvinenko, were former KGB contacts Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun. UK prosecutors have named the two as prime suspects in his death. Both deny involvement, while Russia refused to extradite them saying such an extradition would contradict its constitution. Lugovoy, now a Russian MP, maintains that Litvinenko had acquired the polonium and ended up either poisoning himself or was killed by the MI6. A lie detector test in April also showed Lugovoy did not contribute to the incident. On Thursday, Hugh Davies, counsel to the inquest, concluded that the material released by the British government for the inquest “does establish a prima facie case as to the culpability of the Russian state in the death,” as quoted by British newspaper, The Mirror. Davies ruled out evidence against Boris Berezovsky, a Russian tycoon in self-exile who was accused of Litvinenko’s death by the agent’s father. He also dropped other suspects who have been named in conspiracy theories including the Spanish mafia, Chechen groups and several others. Russia says it would like to become an interested party in the inquest and have the chance to make submissions and cross examine witnesses. |
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Post by TsarSamuil on Mar 17, 2013 15:18:32 GMT -5
Britain’s MI6 Paid $136,000 to Poisoned Ex-Russian Spy.
MOSCOW, March 17 (RIA Novosti) – Britain's secret intelligence service MI6 paid at least 90,000 pounds ($136,000) to former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died after being poisoned in London in 2006, The Sunday Times has reported.
The disclosure, the latest twist in the Litvinenko affair, provides “new insight into the extent of Litvinenko’s links with MI6 and the suggestion that he was killed by a Russian spy,” the report said.
Litvinenko, a 43-year-old former FSB officer, turned critic of the Kremlin and moved from Russia to Britain in 2000 where he claimed asylum. He was poisoned with the toxic radioactive isotope Polonium-210 in London in 2006, shortly after he was granted UK citizenship.
The newspaper said citing Marina Litvinenko, the widow of former KGB agent, that payments from British intelligence began in late 2003 or early 2004 when 18,000 pounds ($27,000) were deposited in the couple’s bank account.
MI6 also gave Litvinenko a fake passport, the newspaper said citing the transcripts of the widow’s statements to British detectives in November 2006, which were made public only now.
From 2004 onwards Litvinenko received a retainer of around 2,000 pounds ($3,000) a month from MI6. The report said “the payments continued until March 2007, four months after his death from poisoning by polonium-210.”
Britain's long-awaited inquest into the death of Litvinenko has been delayed by five months until October.
Earlier this week, Andrei Lugovoi, a former officer of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) suspected by the British authorities of poisoning Litvinenko said that he will pull out of the inquest into the killing, blaming political pressure from London.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Apr 3, 2013 16:26:59 GMT -5
Duma Committee OKs Bill on FSB Agent Stationing Abroad.
MOSCOW, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s parliamentary committee on security urged the parliament Wednesday to pass in a first reading a presidential bill that would allow the Federal Security Service (FSB) to dispatch its officers abroad on a permanent basis.
The bill enabling the FSB to send its advisors and specialists to foreign states for long-term assignments, subject to approval from the host nation, was submitted to the State Duma by President Vladimir Putin on March 2.
The FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has signed cooperation agreements with the security services and law enforcement agencies in Kyrgyzstan, according to a memo to the bill posted on the Russian presidential website kremlin.ru. It has also signed agreements with the disputed territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which most world governments consider to be part of Georgia’s territory but whose independence Russia recognized after a brief war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008.
FSB officers are currently dispatched abroad for up to six months to provide assistance to security services in other states. The frequent rotation of personnel is not conducive to an effective struggle against “international crimes,” the memo says.
The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, will consider the bill on April 10.
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Post by TsarSamuil on May 15, 2013 11:52:53 GMT -5
rt.com/news/fsb-detain-cia-agent-253/Cloak, dagger and a blond wig? FSB says CIA agent nabbed in Moscow (VIDEO, PHOTOS) RT.com May 14, 2013 10:41 Promises of millions, a new face and detailed instructions on a double-agent conspiracy in Moscow. Bearing the hallmarks of a Cold War spy thriller, Russia’s counterintelligence agency says it caught a CIA officer trying to flip a Russian operative. The Federal Security Service (FSB) Public Relations Center announced that detained individual was Ryan Christopher Fogle, a career diplomat working as the third secretary of the Political Section of the American embassy in Moscow. The agency stressed that Christopher had “special technical equipment” in his possession, including an additional wig, a microphone, multiple pairs of dark sunglasses and a lot of cash in euro – along with a Moscow atlas, a compass, two knives, and an American Bic lighter. The detainee, who was sporting a blond wig at the time of his interception, was delivered to the FSB receiving office for questioning. Following all of the necessary procedures, he was handed over to representatives of the US embassy in Moscow. he one-page letter to “a dear friend” found in Christopher’s possession was to be clandestinely delivered to the would-be recruit. The correspondence proposed a US$100,000 payment for an interview with the prospective double agent, as well as $1 million per annum if the candidate chose to accept the mission and supply the American side with information. Proving its technological prowess in the digital era, the alleged spy further offered step-by-step instructions on how to create a new Gmail account to be used for future contacts. Ever-so-savvy, the document stressed the importance of not divulging any real contact information like phone numbers, email or home addresses when creating an email account for the purposes of spying on one’s own country. It further discouraged the use of personal handheld mobile devices and laptops when registering the account, proposing a more anonymous setting like an internet café would be more judicious. If that didn’t pan out, the prospective recruit was told to buy a new mobile device or computer with the express purpose to be used for the express purpose of establishing contact. The new device was to be paid for in cash, and all expenses would be reimbursed. Once a new Gmail account was created, the recruit was told to write a letter to unbacggdA@gmail.com and wait one week for a reply. “Thank you for reading this. We look forward to working with you in the nearest future. Your friends,” the missive concludes. On Tuesday, The Russian government announced that Fogle had been branded a “persona non grata,” demanding his immediate expulsion from Russia. “At a time when the presidents of our countries have reaffirmed their readiness to broaden our bilateral relations, including special service [cooperation] in the battle with international terrorism, such provocative actions in the spirit of the “Cold War” do not facilitate a strengthening of mutual trust,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement. US Ambassador to the Russian Federation Michael McFaul refused to comment on the detention of his subordinate or his alleged part in the cloak and dagger plot. On his Twitter account the ambassador simply wrote ‘no’ when questioned about Ryan Fogle. McFaul has a date with the Russian Foreign Ministry, however, where he has been summoned to give an explanation for the not-so-undercover incident. Former assistant secretary of state Jon Alterman told RT the timing of the incident was “strange” in light of the upcoming international conference on Syria spearheaded by Moscow and Washington. “It clearly will have an effect on the talks. I don’t think it tells us anything new about US-Russian relations. What is strange is the timing, because when it comes to catching spies – if this even was a spy – you get to choose when you take action. And the decision to act immediately before the summit seems to me calculated to affect the summit,” he argued. The website of the American embassy in Russia says that its Political Section is engaged in “bringing to the attention of the Russian government the US position on the issues of foreign policy and security.” The section’s other task is to “inform Washington about the main provisions of the foreign and defense policy of Russia,” as well as Russian domestic political life.
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