PDA

View Full Version : The New American: FBI Busts Russian Espionage Network




FrankRep
06-29-2010, 09:25 AM
In what sounded like a news headline taken from the height of the Cold War in 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday, June 28, that 11 individuals had been charged for espionage and conspiracy on behalf of the Russian government. by Christian Gomez


FBI Busts Russian Espionage Network (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/3893-fbi-busts-russian-espionage-network)


Christian Gomez | The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
Tuesday, 29 June 2010


In what sounded like a news headline taken from the height of the Cold War in 1950s, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday, June 28, that 11 individuals had been charged for espionage and conspiracy on behalf of the Russian government.

Ten out of the 11 conspirators have been arrested and detained; the other still remains at large. The Russian conspirators have been identified as Anna Chapman, Mikail Semenko, Christopher R. Metsos, Richard Murphy, Cynthia Murphy, Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Michael Zottoli, Patricia Mills, Juan Lazaro, and Vicky Pelaez.

The charges against these 11 individuals were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, located in Brooklyn.

Amit Kachhia-Patel and Maria L. Ricci, both FBI special agents currently assigned to the Counterintelligence Division within the FBI’s New York Field Office, brought up the charges to the Court.

According to the documented charges, the FBI has been conducting a multi-year investigation on a network of U.S.-based covert Russian operatives working for the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency and a successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB.

Working undercover and through the use of other lawful authorized surveillance, the FBI has ascertained a great deal of information from the Russian agents, all of whom reside in various metropolitan cities throughout the United States.

According to FBI investigations, the Russian agents’ stated goal, from the SVR, was to “become sufficiently ‘Americanized’ such that they can gather information about the United States for Russia, and can successfully recruit sources who are in, or are able to infiltrate, the United States policy-making circles.”

The FBI decrypted the SVR orders sent by Moscow Center (MC), which subsequently read as follows: “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels [intelligence reports] to C[enter].”

The FBI court documents also stated that to “further the aims of the conspiracy, Moscow Center has arranged for the defendants clandestinely to communicate with the Russian Federation.” The conspiratorial methods of communication included the use of ad-hoc wireless networks, between two or more laptop computers; radiograms, through short-wave radio transmissions; and steganography, a process by which images, found on public Internet websites, are imbedded with encrypted messages that can only be spotted and decrypted by a specially made SVR-provided software, which is unavailable to the general public.

In the case of SVR conspirators Vicky Pelaez and Christopher Metsos, they occasionally met with officials from the Russian government, based out of either the Permanents Russian Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, Washington D.C., or an undisclosed “South American country.” Pelaez and Metsos would then, at such place and time, receive further instructions and large payments of money to be distributed to the other SVR conspirators in order to pay them and help cover their expenses.

Shockingly, one SVR conspirator, Donald Howard Heathfield, who operated out of Boston in 2004, reportedly met with a unidentified U.S. government employee with regard to nuclear weapons.

On September 23, 2005, Heathfield informed MC that he had “established contact” with a “former high-ranking United States Government national security official,” according to the FBI document.

Scarily reminiscent of the infamous 1950s Rosenberg KGB spies, another conspirator, operating out of Boston, perhaps Heathfield, reported in an encrypted message to MC, dated December 3, 2004, that he had made contact with an individual in the U.S. government who works on strategic operations of nuclear weapon deployment. The conspirator informed his superiors that his conversations with this government individual were in regards to research on “small yield high penetration nuclear weapons recently authorized by US Congress (nuclear ‘bunker-buster’ warheads).”

In a decrypted message, dated April 2006, the conspirators operating out of Boston, at the request of MC, were tasked to gather information on U.S. policies in regards to online anti-terrorist cyber-security, Central Asia, military problems, and “western estimation of [Russian] foreign policy.”

The Boston-based SVR conspirators relayed information back to MC with regard to the change in administrative leadership in the CIA following the election of President Obama, which they described as having learned and “received in private conversation with [name omitted], former legislative counsel for US Congress, specialist in [information omitted], member faculty of economics of [information omitted]. Has contacts within Congress and policymakers in Washington.”

Also requested by MC, prior to President Obama’s visit to Russia in 2009, was information on “the U.S. position with respects to a new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, Afghanistan, and Iran’s nuclear program.” MC asked its operatives to “try to outline their [the United States’] views and most important Obama’s goals which he expects to achieve during [the] summit in July.”

It would be interesting to know with which members of Congress, Washington policymakers, and former high-ranking national security officials that the SVR operatives were or are in contact with and the content of what information they were able to transmit back to Russia; unfortunately the documents do not state any specific names, if in fact the FBI even knows who in particular the conspirators were in contact with.

Art Thompson, CEO of The John Birch Society, told The New American: “The SVR is no different than the KGB. We, The John Birch Society, have been saying for years that Russia continues to remain a problem whether they call it communism or something else. Just as the KGB took on a new name, Russian communism did the same, and too many Americans have fallen for the false idea that Russian communism is dead simply because our media told them so.”

It should be noted that former President, now the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in East Germany in the 1980s, later promoted to head of the FSB (the main successor to the KGB) in 1998.

Putin has filled his Cabinet with many former and current FSB and SVR agents. Although the Russian Communist Party might not be in power anymore, the former guardians of Soviet communism are now running the country from the inner sanctums of the Kremlin.

The news of this Russian espionage conspiracy came just a few days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev paid a visit to Silicon Valley, California, to improve U.S.-Russo relations and announce a new cooperative partnership in the field of computer technology.

This news also comes around the same time as Chinese Communists have been accused of attempting to infiltrate the Canadian government; just days after Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the Canadian capital in Ottawa.

The 10 individuals under custody have yet to be found guilty of any federal or espionage crimes, as these claims still remain mere allegations.


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/3893-fbi-busts-russian-espionage-network

FrankRep
06-29-2010, 08:36 PM
The U.N.: Russia's den of spies (http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/29/the_un_russias_den_of_spies)


Foreign Policy, Washington Post
June 29, 2010


At the center of the Russian spy ring rounded up this week by federal agents were two Russian handlers from Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the successor to the KGB, who managed a network of sleeper agents out of their upper East Side Manhattan offices at the Russian mission to the United Nations.

Described in court documents simply as Russian Government Official #2 and Russian Government Official #3, the two intelligence agents, posing as low level-Russian diplomats, passed on hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and maintained secret communications with Russian "illegals" -- spies operating outside the protection of official cover -- sent to America to influence U.S. policymakers and send intelligence reports back to headquarters.

The federal investigation into the Russian spy network, which was detailed in more than 50 pages of court documents, opened a window into a highly secretive effort by President Dmitry Medvedev's government to gain access to influential political and business figures in the United States. But in some ways, Russia's decision to use Turtle Bay as a base for espionage is an old story.

The Russian mission to the United Nations has been at the center of Moscow's sprawling intelligence gathering operations in the United States for decades, providing Soviet and Russian operatives with ideal circumstances to infiltrate U.S. diplomatic missions, businesses, and circles of political elites. Some of the most important Soviets to defect were also based at the United Nations, including Arkady Schevchenko, a former top-ranking U.N. official who defected to the U.S. in 1978, and Sergei Tretyakov, one of the top spymasters posted at the Russian mission from 1995 to 2000.

During the Cold War, the U.S. limited Soviet officials' freedom to travel to a 25-mile radius around the U.N. headquarters building. The Soviets used it to great effect, erecting a massive listening station in its U.N. mission, and purchasing an apartment complex for Russian diplomats in the Bronx and a beach mansion on Long Island for visitors and vacationing Russian diplomats. "The rooftops at Glen Cove, the apartment building in Riverdale and the mission all bristled with antennas for listening to American conversations," Schevchenko wrote in his book Breaking with Moscow.

Russia is by no means the only country that spies at the United Nations. The United States and Britain have long collected information on the positions of U.N. members. At the founding U.N. conference in San Francisco in 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius routinely reviewed the secret diplomatic cables sent by his colleagues to foreign capitals. The U.S. Army Signal Security Agency, the forerunner of the National Security Agency, forced commercial telegraph companies to hand over hundreds of pages of secret diplomatic messages, according to Stephen C. Schlesinger in his book The Act of Creation.

In the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. and allied intelligence infiltrated the U.N.'s weapons inspection agency in Iraq, planting listening devices that that picked up microwave stations transmitted communications from Saddam Hussein's security detail. Charles Duelfer, the top American official on the U.N. inspection team, held daily conversations with the CIA. Before the war, a British translator provided the Observer newspaper with a National Security Agency memo requesting a "surge" in eavesdropping on Security Council members during a debate on authorizing the use of force against Iraq.

The extent of Soviet spying came to light at the height of the Cold War, in the mid 1970s, when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller headed up a commission looking into spying abuses by the CIA on American soil. The study turned up troubling evidence of Soviet surveillance. "We believe these countries can monitor and record thousands of private telephone conversations," the Rockefeller Commission wrote in its report. "Americans have a right to be uneasy if not seriously disturbed at the very real possibility that their personal and business activities, which they discuss freely over the telephone, could be recorded or analyzed by agents of a foreign power."

Two Soviet officials, Nikolai Fochine and Arkady Schevchenko, dealing with U.N. political matters in the mid-1970s, "seemed to be in a 24 hour a day competition to be first to relay the output of my office to the Soviet delegation," wrote Brian Urquhart, former under secretary-general of the U.N., in his memoir, A Life in War and Peace. Urquhart didn't know it at the time, but Schevchenko had been spying for the CIA as well. Moscow's espionage was so pervasive that top Soviet officials were routinely barred from access to highly sensitive information. Urquhart, who had once served himself as British intelligence officer during World War II, informed Fochine that he knew he "would have to report to the Soviet Mission and that he would sometimes therefore have to withhold information from him. Fochine accepted this without demure," wrote Urquhart's successor Marrack Goulding, in his book Peacemonger.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as U.S. President Gerald Ford's ambassador to the United Nations from 1975 to 1976, wrote in his book A Dangerous Place that Russian intercepts and wiretaps constituted "the most massive illegal invasion of Fourth Amendment rights in American history."

"In 1975, when I was named permanent representative to the United Nations, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller summoned me to his office in the Old Executive Building," Moynihan wrote a decade later in a Popular Mechanics article entitled "How The Soviets Are Bugging America."

"There was something urgent he had to tell me. The first thing I must know about the United Nations, he said, is that the Soviets would be listening to every telephone call I made from our mission and from the ambassadors suite in the Waldorf Towers."

For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has run a massive counterintelligence operation out of Manhattan, which monitors foreign spying operations by U.N.-based agents from Russia and many other countries. Periodically, the bureau expels some. In October 1986, the United States asked 55 Soviet diplomats to leave the country, including "operatives for intercepting communications," the New York Times reported.

But the sleuthing persisted well beyond the demise of the Soviet Union. Former President Boris Yeltsin's government continued to aggressively spy on American targets in New York. Tretyakov's efforts to expand Russia's intelligence gathering capacity were documented in the book Comrade J., written together with former Washington Post reporter Peter Earley.

"The SVR was not interested in anything that concerned U.N. politics, U.N. resolutions, or other political U.N. bullshit," Tretyakov recounted. "Instead, Sergei and his men were ordered to penetrate intelligence targets and recruit spies who could steal political, economic, technical, counterintelligence, and military secrets."

[B]Russian intelligence masters in Moscow outlined a list of nine targets, starting with the No. 1 priority: "Penetrating the U.S. mission." Other influential diplomatic missions, including Britain, China, France, Germany, and Japan were also on the list. But the Russian spies were also charged with snooping on New York political elites, particularly congressional figures, and key think tanks, including the Council on Foreign Relations. They also targeted Wall Street bigwigs, Manhattan banks, and scholars and foreign journalists, particularly those covering the United Nations.

In the latest case, federal investigator monitored the Russian operation over several years. In 2004, Russian Government Official #2 was filmed by federal agents at the Forest Hills Train station in the Queens section of New York as he handed off a package filled with cash to Christopher R. Metsos, one of 10 sleeper agents arrested this week, according to court documents. The videotape showed the Russian handler, a second secretary at the Russian mission to the U.N., and Metsos carrying identical orange bags as they approached the train stairway, where they made the switch. "I believe that Russian Government Official #2's orange bag contained a large sum of money," a federal agent said, according to court documents.

Metsos, who claims to be a Canadian citizen, was detained in Cyprus after trying to catch a plane to Budapest, Hungary. He has been released on bail but has been asked to remain in Cyprus pending a U.S. request for extradition.

The Queens "brush-pass" was only one of several incidents involving the Russian handlers, who met with their secret operatives at a series of New York City landmarks, parks, train stations, and restaurants. Last summer, Russian Government Official #3, a third secretary at the Russian mission to the United Nations, was filmed at a Harlem train station passing as much as $300,000 and a computer memory drive to Richard Murphy, another alleged sleeper agent identified by federal agents. The money was then collected was shared among a large group of Russian agents, who collected their cut in Central Park, a restaurant in Sunny Side, Queens, and Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. A portion was buried in a field in upstate New York for two years, before being dug up and passed on to other Russian agents.

It remains unclear whether the ring collected any valuable intelligence. Court documents accuse them not of engaging in espionage but of simply violating U.S. laws that require agents of a foreign power to register with the U.S. government.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement denouncing the U.S. arrests. "These actions are unfounded and pursue unseemly goals," according to the statement. "We don't understand the reasons which prompted the United States Department of Justice to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War spy stories."


SOURCE:
http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/29/the_un_russias_den_of_spies

FrankRep
06-29-2010, 08:40 PM
Flashback:


The Russian KGB Alive and Well; the Case of Mole Robert Hanssen



Two decades after the supposed collapse of communism, the Russian FSB and SVR continue the same deadly program of of the old KGB, as evidenced by the case of mole Robert Hanssen. By William F. Jasper


KGB/FSB: The “Game” Remains the Same (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/crime/1872-kgbfsb-the-game-remains-the-same)


William F. Jasper | The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
18 September 2009


As the Ford Taurus slowly approached the signal site, hidden FBI agents readied for a possible arrest. For weeks they had been staking out a path in Foxstone Park in Vienna, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C. Their elusive quarry was a Soviet mole in the FBI, codenamed “Ramon Garcia.”

Over the course of more than two decades, “Ramon” had done incalculable damage to the United States’ security, selling Top Secret information to the Soviet GRU (military intelligence) and KGB, and to the KGB’s Russian successor agency, the FSB, and its foreign arm, the SVR.

Would “Ramon” stop this time? More than a month earlier he had placed a piece of adhesive tape on the park’s signpost. He had been passing by the post frequently — often several times on the same day — to check for a response from the Russians. On January 23, 2001, an FBI agent had reported, “Target drove past Foxstone Park signal site shortly before six p.m. Came virtually to a stop, then drove away.” Three days later the agent reported that “Ramon” had driven by the post three times, about an hour apart, at 5:37 p.m., 6:42 p.m., and 7:44 p.m.

He was early today — almost two hours ahead of the time he had arranged with his Russian contacts. But this appeared to be the real thing. “Ramon” parked the Taurus and got out. He walked down the trail a couple hundred yards through the woods to a footbridge, one of his “dead drops.” He looked nervously about and then taped a package under the corner of the bridge. He was nearly back to his car when the command over a bullhorn brought him to a halt: “Freeze! Freeze exactly where you are! Do not move!”

Half a dozen FBI agents sprang from behind a blind and surrounded him. Two days after the arrest, at a February 20, 2001 press conference, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh announced that Soviet-Russian spy “Ramon” was actually one of the FBI’s top counterintelligence specialists, Robert Philip Hanssen.

According to Director Freeh, “Hanssen provided to the former Soviet Union and subsequently to Russia substantial volumes of highly classified information that he acquired during the course of his job responsibilities in counterintelligence. In return, he received large sums of money and other remuneration. The complaint alleges that he received over $600,000.” Freeh noted the “full extent of the damage done is yet unknown,” but characterized it as “exceptionally grave.”

Hanssen, charged the federal grand jury indictment, “did knowingly and unlawfully combine, confederate, and agree with other persons … including officers of the KGB/SVR, to knowingly and unlawfully communicate, deliver, and transmit to foreign governments, specifically the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its successor, the Russian Federation … documents and information relating to the national defense of the United States,” with the knowledge that the same “would be used to the injury of the United States.”

“The information he is alleged to have provided,” said Freeh, “compromised numerous human sources, technical operations, counterintelligence techniques, sources and methods, and investigations.” There was blood on Hanssen’s hands. He had, said Freeh, “disclosed the identity of two KGB officials who … had been recruited by the U.S. Government.” Both of these agents, Freeh noted, were arrested, tried, and executed after they had returned to Russia. Subsequent reports indicate Hanssen may have been responsible for the deaths of two additional defectors.

Hanssen, Putin, and 9/11

The sensational capture of the top-level Soviet/Russian mole in one of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence posts, however, was largely forgotten a few months later when the far more sensational September 11 terrorist attacks captivated world attention. This was both ironic and tragic since the 9/11 attacks should have been viewed (and should be viewed now) in the context of — and in connection with — the enormous national security compromises revealed in the Hanssen espionage fiasco. All of the context and connections of the Hanssen-Russia-al-Qaeda-9/11 nexus are still not known, but the evidence and information available thus far indicates that the much-lamented intelligence failures that left America vulnerable on September 11, 2001 have been vastly compounded by even greater misdirection of our intelligence in the “War on Terror” ever since. We are referring specifically to the misdirection of our intelligence away from consideration of evidence that the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks were a strategic operation sponsored by our new “ally,” Russia.

The policy “experts” who dominate our governing institutions, think tanks, universities, and major media were virtually unanimous in singing paeans of praise to Russian President Vladimir Putin for being the first world leader to express condolences and support during our tragedy. Even today, after several years of steady marching toward a renewed form of Stalinist-style, Soviet governance, the Putin-Medvedev regime in Moscow is viewed by much of our so-called intelligentsia as the indispensable partner in a global battle against radical Islam.

Dr. Michael A. McFaul of the Carnegie Endowment (and a frequent media go-to expert on Russia) is typical of the dominant mindset. He writes, on the Carnegie website:



On September 11th, Putin did not hesitate to call his new friend, George W. Bush, to communicate his full support for the United States and the American people. Putin did not let a decade of unfulfilled expectations in U.S.-Russian relations color his rhetorical response. While some leaders and people around the world believe that the United States “got what it deserved” on September 11th, Putin expressed sympathy as a leader of a country that also has suffered from acts of terrorism against civilians in the capital.

The following Monday, September 24th, Putin announced a five-point plan to support the American war against terrorism.


“The potential to build a new foundation for Russian-American relations is great,” McFaul says, and we must not allow this “window of opportunity” to be wasted. “Leaders in both countries must lead,” he insists. “They must act boldly, abandon business as usual, take chances, and use this moment to map the path to a new future.” (Dr. McFaul is now senior director for Russia on the Obama administration’s National Security Council.)

Notwithstanding the Kremlin’s increasingly tyrannical rule, many of our policy elites continue to share Dr. McFaul’s deadly illusions vis-à-vis Russia and the threat of global terrorism. More sober-minded realists would have viewed Putin’s 9/11 condolences and offers of support in much the same vein as they would the Mafia godfather who sends flowers to the funeral of the rival he’s just rubbed out and cries crocodile tears as he expresses condolences to the victim’s widow and children, assuring them that he will spare no effort to find who did the foul deed.

The PROMIS Connection

One of the important early bits of information that leaked out to link Hanssen, Putin, and 9/11 concerned references to Hanssen’s alleged delivery of copies of the FBI’s enhanced version of the controversial PROMIS computer software to the KGB/FSB. The Russians then, reportedly, provided a copy of the software to Osama bin Laden, thus facilitating al-Qaeda’s money laundering and other activities, as well as enabling al-Qaeda to monitor and evade U.S. law enforcement, intelligence, and military efforts to kill or capture them.

Developed in the 1980s by Inslaw, Inc. as a powerful case-management, people-tracking program for the U.S. Justice Department, the PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information Systems) software has been the source of ongoing litigation and investigation. In 1985, Inslaw launched a suit against Justice, claiming that the Justice Department had defrauded it of millions of dollars in licensing and service fees. Inslaw charged, moreover, that the government had illegally converted PROMIS into a covert intelligence tool, which it sold to other governments, with a Trojan horse trap door, in order to spy on those governments.

In 2001, a number of stories — in the Washington Times, Washington Post, and Fox News — reported that PROMIS-derivative software provided to the Soviets by Hanssen had found its way to bin Laden. An October 16 Fox News report, for instance, provided this exchange between anchor Brit Hume and correspondent Carl Cameron:



HUME: There’s now a disturbing indication that Robert Hanssen, the FBI man accused of spying for the Russians in what officials said at the time of his arrest was a massive security breach, ended up helping Osama bin Laden.

As correspondent Carl Cameron reports, Hanssen sold the Russians an extremely sensitive piece of U.S. technology, and the indications are that they, in turn, sold it to bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network. Carl.

CAMERON: Fox News has learned that government officials suspect Osama bin Laden may have highly sophisticated U.S. government software, that has been used by several governments, including the United States, for classified intelligence and law enforcement information.

Bin Laden allegedly purchased it from Russian sources, after Russia got it from convicted spy and former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who was nabbed earlier this year....

The software program is called PROMIS. Sources tell Fox that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have used and constantly modified PROMIS software to manage caseloads, track and store classified information, and keep it secure for decades.

But the concern is that bin Laden or al-Qaeda could get online and use it to monitor the worldwide criminal investigation and hide themselves, to monitor the worldwide financial investigation and hide their money, or monitor government operations of the governments that use the software.

As a senior agent in the FBI’s counterterrorism bureau, sources say Hanssen was tasked with helping allies like Germany and England with the installation and use of their versions of the PROMIS program. Numerous countries now, however, are tightening their cyber security. Germany stopped using PROMIS software just last week. Great Britain began closing it down just a few months ago. Canada has actually investigated potential tampering with its PROMIS programs, and Israel has used it on and off for years, too.


In its case against Hanssen, the U.S. government did not mention PROMIS directly, but government sources say PROMIS-derived software programs were at the heart of the case. The lengthy FBI affidavit supporting the criminal complaint notes that Hanssen made extensive unauthorized use of the FBI’s Automated Case Support (ACS) system, reportedly a PROMIS derivative, to obtain information for the KGB/SVR and to monitor the FBI’s search for the Soviet mole (Hanssen) within the bureau. The affidavit does not explicitly say that Hanssen gave a copy of the ACS software to his Soviet/Russian co-conspirators, but it does say he gave them 26 computer diskettes and more than 6,000 pages of documents in the 27 letters and 33 packages he delivered to them over the years.

ComPROMISed Intelligence

Among the highly sensitive software programs that may have been included in those deliveries are the FBI’s Field Office Information Management Systems (FOIMS) and the Community On-Line Intelligence Systems (COINS), both, reportedly, PROMIS derivatives. In the aforementioned FBI affidavit, the government goes as far as saying Hanssen gave the KGB/SVR “an official technical document describing COINS-II,” which was, said the document, “the then-current version of the United States Intelligence Community’s ‘Community On-Line Intelligence System,’ which constituted a classified Community-wide intranet.”

It is not likely the government will confirm or refute the Hanssen-PROMIS-Russia-bin Laden thesis (or provide documents to publicly settle the matter) any time soon. However, quite apart from that important issue, the Hanssen case exposes the dangerous schizophrenia that exemplifies our relations with Russia, most especially as it relates to national security and terrorism.

The federal indictment of Robert Hanssen charges that the 25-year FBI veteran “did knowingly and unlawfully combine, confederate, and agree with other persons … including officers of the KGB/SVR, to knowingly and unlawfully communicate, deliver, and transmit to foreign governments, specifically the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its successor, the Russian Federation … documents and information relating to the national defense of the United States,” with the knowledge that the same “would be used to the injury of the United States.”

“It was further a part of the conspiracy,” claims the indictment, “that the defendant HANSSEN’s espionage relationship with the USSR was converted into an espionage relationship with the Russian Federation after the USSR dissolved and the Russian Federation came into existence.”

Robert Hanssen began his betrayal of the United States by providing crucial American secrets to the Soviet GRU and KGB, which Vladimir Putin and much of the current crop of Russian leaders then worked for. Hanssen ended his treasonous career conspiring with the Russian FSB/SVR, which Putin and company now run and oversee. There is virtually no difference — other than cosmetic changes in labels and uniforms — between the KGB and FSB/SVR or between the Soviet and Russian leadership. There is continuity — of personnel, methods, and objectives — from one to the other.

The Hanssen case is far from being the only example of this KGB-to-FSB continuity. In 1996, five years before Hanssen’s arrest, FBI special agent Earl Edwin Pitts was arrested for selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia. In 1994, CIA counterintelligence agent Aldrich Hazen Ames was arrested for his ongoing espionage for the KGB and FSB/SVR. Ames’ nine-year career of betrayal resulted in devastating intelligence and national security losses for the United States. In June 2001, less than three months before 9/11, U.S. Army Colonel George Trofimoff, a military intelligence analyst, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia over a 25-year period. These cases and others more than vindicate former CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton and Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who argued that overwhelming evidence indicated there were high-level moles within our intelligence community. They and their warnings were disparaged, discounted, and dismissed — with disastrous consequences for our nation. Unfortunately, Robert Hanssen was not the last mole; we can be virtually certain there are others.

Blindness and Betrayal

The KGB-FSB continuity does not extend merely to espionage; it also includes all of the traditional KGB activities: active measures, disinformation, propaganda, assassination — and terrorism. As The New American has demonstrated in a series of articles, the modern terrorism phenomenon, which was launched by the Soviet KGB in the 1960s and ’70s, is continuing today under the auspices of the Russian FSB (available soon at www.exposingterrorism.com). The main difference today is that the Kremlin strategists have determined that it will be far more effective — for many reasons — for them to run their terror operations as deniable assets under the banner of Islam.

There is another major difference; while Putin and the Russian Politburo continue to use terrorism as a form of asymmetric warfare against us, our leaders insist on pretending it isn’t happening. In fact, they insist Putin & Co. are our trusted “allies” against terrorism. The Obama administration is continuing the course set by George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In a “Joint Declaration on a New Relationship Between the United States and Russia,” Presidents Bush and Putin said on May 24, 2002, that our countries had “embarked upon the path of new relations for the twenty-first century,” and are “committed to developing a relationship based on friendship, cooperation, common values, trust, openness, and predictability.”

They further declared:



We are achieving a new strategic relationship. The era in which the United States and Russia saw each other as an enemy or strategic threat has ended. We are partners and we will cooperate to advance stability, security, and economic integration, and to jointly counter global challenges and to help resolve regional conflicts.


Pardon me for puncturing the balloon, but it must be noted that we’ve been treated to this spectacle before. Few may recall that several years before he was faced with the unpleasant task of announcing traitor Robert Hannsen’s “exceptionally grave” betrayals to the KGB/FSB, Bill Clinton’s FBI Director Louis Freeh was singing the praises of the KGB/FSB claque running Russia. On July 4, 1994, Freeh was in Moscow opening the FBI’s first legal attaché office in Russia and joining Russian Interior Minister Viktor Yerin in signing a protocol for close cooperation between the FBI and FSB. “We can honestly say that our two nations have more in common than ever before.... We are united in purpose and in spirit,” declared Freeh. FSB boss Sergei Stepashin was even more jubilant. “Together, we’re invincible,” he effused. Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke was only slightly less giddy about the new relationship . “We are in a new phase of foreign policy,” he declared. “The FBI is moving to the forefront of this new foreign policy.” Mr. Holbrooke, a director and leading light at the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, is now a key adviser to the Obama administration and its point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan.


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/crime/1872-kgbfsb-the-game-remains-the-same

FrankRep
07-01-2010, 04:59 PM
Russia's Security Service Could Gain Powers Formerly Associated With Soviet KGB (http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Russias-Security-Service-Could-Gain-Powers-Formerly-Associated-With-Soviet-KGB-95682939.html)


VOA News
05 June 2010


Russia's parliament is considering a new law that would extend the powers of the country's secret security agency, the FSB. If the bill is passed, it would restore practices once associated with the infamous KGB. Russia's security services have steadily regained power and influence under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB officer. Human rights advocates are concerned that the new measures could further curtail the rights of government critics and the independent media.

The KGB was one of the most feared instruments of the Kremlin during the Soviet Union and viewed by many as the world's most effective information gathering organization. It's successor organization, the FSB is engaged mostly in domestic affairs and its powers have been steadily growing. The current government-backed legislation would allow FSB officers to summon individuals for informal talks and issue written warnings about forbidden participation in anti-government activities such as protest rallies - even if they have not violated the law.

"The draft, as I currently understand it, we have very serious human rights concerns about it," said Allison Gill, the director of Moscow's office of Human Rights Watch. "It allows law enforcement agencies to literally question anyone about anything and to punish people through arrest or forced interrogation or deprivation of liberty for what would otherwise be a protected activity. Civil peaceful forms of dissent are protected by Russian law and they are protected by international human rights standards."

"Combatting extremism"

The Russian government says the proposed new measures are an effort to combat extremism.

In 2006, the Russian parliament passed anti-extremism legislation that expanded the definition of extremism to include the slandering of a public official, hindering the work of authorities and involvement in hooliganism or vandalism for ideological, religious or ethnic reasons.

Alexander Verkhovsky is director of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis in Moscow, an organization dedicated to researching nationalism and xenophobia in Russia.

He says government claims that expanding the power of the FSB would stop extremism is ironic because he continues to be the victim of extremists, such as skinheads, because of the work he does. Furthermore, Verkhovsky says that law enforcement officials, including the FSB, have done absolutely nothing to help protect him and his family.

"Some Neo-Nazi groups, they sent us death threats by email or by phone," said Verkhovsky. "Some even came to my house. They even sent me a video. It explained that I am an enemy of the Russian people, that I support terrorists. My house was exposed, my address, my photo. Officially, I was never called to the police station. They never called me on the phone. They are not interested in this type of investigation and really are not involved."

Controls on journalists, media rights

The proposed bill also appears to tighten controls on journalists. It was submitted after Moscow's subway system was hit by dual suicide bombers at the end of March, killing at least 40 people.

Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, sharply criticized two major Russian newspapers for their coverage of the event. Gryzlov implied that the journalists had taken the side of the terrorists by claiming that the Kremlin's policies, in the Northern Caucuses region, may have contributed to a rise in the violence in the region, and may have accounted for the subway bombings.

Allison Gill, with Human Rights Watch in Moscow, says the proposed law would have grave consequences for press freedom.

"This could present serious obstacles to journalists. It's in the public's interest for journalists to be able to report freely and independently they have to be able to write without fear of legal sanctions," said Gill. "It would limit journalists on what they are allowed to write or it would require cooperation between journalists and law enforcement authorities. That would have a chilling effect on what stories journalists are allowed to report that are supposed to be in the public's interest."

Human rights lawyer Lidia Yusupova has done a lot of work in both war ravaged Chechnya and in Moscow. She says the FSB already has too much access to the average person. Yusupova voiced her concerns and the video was also posted on the internet website, YouTube.

She says the best way is to tap phones; the secret service does not have to work hard for information. She says she feels safer in Chechnya than she does in Moscow.

Medvedev defends FSB

On the other hand, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has defended the FSB and commented on how important the organization is to the average Russian.

He recently gave a speech to the agency's board. Mr. Medvedev says ensuring the security of Russia is one of the top priorities. He says most important is the fight against terrorism and extremism. Last year the FSB succeeded in preventing more than 80 terrorist attacks and neutralized more than 500 leaders and members of criminal groups.

It is unclear when the bill will come up for a vote in Russia's lower house of parliament, otherwise known as the Duma. It could be amended in the meantime or even scuttled.


SOURCE:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Russias-Security-Service-Could-Gain-Powers-Formerly-Associated-With-Soviet-KGB-95682939.html