Austro-Hungarian Empire Framework for Today

WORLD FOCUS: Second oldest profession
FRANK SHATZ
POSTED: August 26, 2010

While I was doing research for my recent column in the Lake Placid News and The Virginia Gazette about the Russian spy ring, whose members lived in “deep cover” across the United States, and were instructed to “embed themselves, in American society, and infiltrate U. S. policy making circles,” the name of Col. Alfred Redl repeatedly came up.


Redl was once one of the most powerful and ruthless counter-intelligence chiefs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the same time, he was himself Czarist Russia’s leading spy. Before World War I, he sold to the Russians, Plan III, the entire Austrian invasion plan for Serbia, its mobilization plans and the description of Austria’s fortifications. He also sold out to the Russians many Austrian agents, some of them within the Russian Imperial Staff.


He conducted his spy activities on behalf of Russia from 1903 to 1913. Even after having been rotated out from the post of counter-intelligence chief, and made Chief of Staff of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army stationed in the Czech lands, he continued to deliver secret messages to his paymasters in Russia.


On May 25, 1913, Col. Redl, was found shot to death in a Vienna hotel room, an apparent suicide. An elaborate effort was made by the government of Emperor Franz-Joseph to cover up the reason for the suicide. The cover-up may have succeeded, if not for the perseverance of a young reporter.


I learned about the details while interviewing Egon Ervin Kisch, by than a famous globe-trotting journalist whose reports have been published in newspapers across Europe.


Kisch recalled that while working as a young reporter for the Prager Loyd, the leading German language newspaper in Prague, he read the short official notice, announcing the death of Col. Redl, but paid scant attention to it.


All this changed, however, when he learned why the star player of his football team, who was a locksmiths by trade, didn’t show up at the Sunday afternoon game He justified his absence by explaining that he was summoned to the headquarters of the military counter-intelligence service, and pressed into service to open the locks in Col. Redl’s luxurious Prague apartment. “The officers conducting the search were astonished at what they found and talked about high treason,” the locksmith revealed. His curiosity spiked, Kisch sprung into action.


Not unlike Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal, Kisch also used confidential sources to gain information, and the “Redl Affair” slowly unraveled.


It was revealed that Czarist Russian agents caught Redl, a homosexual, in a compromising position. They blackmailed him and provided generous payments to finance his lavish lifestyle.


After he left the counter-intelligence service, Redl was not aware that a new system was put into place that checked suspicious mail. He received payments from the Russians through poste restante mail sent to the main post office, in Vienna.


When on May 25, 1913, Redl appeared at the post office to pick up the mail posted to a cover name, he was observed by two police detectives assigned to monitor the mail. Redl left in a taxi, and was shadowed. The driver of the taxi noticed that Redl opened the letter, stuffed with banknotes, with a pen-knife. The detectives found the knife, left inadvertently, on the upholstered seat.


In the lobby of hotel “Klomser,” one of the detectives approached Redl, holding the silver pen-knife, and asked whether he had lost it. Redl, readily admitted ownership. Then his face turned pale. As an experienced former intelligence chief, he realized immediately that he had made a fatal mistake.


According to Kisch, Redl’s interrogation was conducted in accordance with the rules of “chivalry” customary among officers of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army. He made a detailed confession, and was spared a humiliating public trial. He was escorted back to his hotel, was given a pistol and was allowed to commit suicide.


It is not clear what harm the members of the Russian spy ring would have caused if they would have not been unmasked. Redl, certainly did a lot of harm. Historians tend to consider him one of history’s greatest traitors. His actions were responsible for the death of half a million of his countrymen.



Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from The Virginia Gazette.Sphere: Related Content

Cover for Status Can Be Fun!

Busted Russian Spy Wants Old Life Back

By RICHARD BOUDREAUX | WSJ

MOSCOW—He operated under cover with a single false name on two continents for 34 years, through part of the Cold War and beyond. He served spymasters in Moscow who reward such steel-jawed endurance with quiet adulation.

In Peru he was Juan Lazaro the karate black belt, the news photographer, the guy who married the star TV reporter. After the couple moved to New York, he became Juan Lazaro Ph.D. and adjunct professor of political science. At home in suburban Yonkers, he was the doting father of Juan Lazaro Jr., a talented young pianist.

No one suspected until he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, unmasked as Mikhail Vasenkov and sent home in the much-publicized U.S.-Russia spy swap a month ago.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin feted the 10 deported agents, including femme fatale Anna Chapman, led them in patriotic Soviet songs and promised them decent jobs and a "bright life" in the motherland.

But the senior spy among them says no thanks. In a plot twist rare in the annals of espionage, he wants his Juan Lazaro fake identity back.

There's only one problem. The real Juan Lazaro died 63 years ago in Uruguay at age 3, a relative says. The spy used the dead toddler's birth certificate to build a persona.

From a Moscow apartment where Russia's government has him lodged out of public view, the veteran agent has sent word that he and his wife, deported together in the spy swap and separated from their 17-year-old son, want to use their Peruvian passports to return to Peru in the coming weeks and rebuild their lives as the Lazaros.

"He doesn't want to stay in Russia," says his American lawyer, Genesis Peduto, who talks to him on the phone.

"He says he's Juan Lazaro and he's not from Russia and doesn't speak Russian. He wants to be where his wife is going, to her native country, where it will be easier for Juan Jr. to visit" from New York. "His family comes first."

Ms. Peduto says she has no knowledge of the dead Juan Lazaro and won't comment. Her client declines to be interviewed. Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service refuses to comment on any of the 10 deported agents.

The spy ring puzzled Americans and tested U.S.-Russian relations. It was an odd group: They included four couples with children living suburban lives while secretly sending radiograms, exchanging bags of cash in "brush passes" and delivering messages in invisible ink.

They seemed to be looking in hidden places for data that were largely available on the Internet. Watched for a decade by the FBI, they managed to obtain no classified data, U.S. officials say.

The Juan Lazaro story is a peculiar footnote. The spy's early life remains a mystery. But his paper trail through Spain, Uruguay, Peru and New York offers a glimpse into the world of Moscow's "illegals," or deep-cover agents, and its Hispanic pipeline to America. In that realm of forgery, identity theft and deception within families, it remains unclear whether the spy's wife and collaborator, Vicky Pelaez, even knew of his other name.

Soviet and Russian deep-cover agents have spent years at a time in the U.S. since early in the Cold War, operating without diplomatic cover or immunity from prosecution. Many lived in Peru during the country's rule by Moscow-friendly military officers in the 1970s, building fake identities before infiltrating the U.S., former KGB officials say.

Successful illegals return to waiting families, Kremlin rewards and prior Russian identities.The Lazaro case appears to be that of a loyal but ineffectual agent who operated so long under cover that he became his fictional self—a make-believe Latino who went native.

"He ceased being Russian, it seems, and began thinking of himself as Juan Lazaro," says Boris Volodarsky, a former Soviet intelligence officer who works in London as an independent analyst.

The persona took shape on March 13, 1976, as a man with a droopy mustache flew from Madrid to Lima, Peru, on a Uruguayan passport in the name of Juan Jose Lazaro Fuentes.

He bore a letter on a Spanish tobacco company's stationery saying he had been hired for a market survey in Peru, according to a file kept by the Peruvian Interior Ministry on his citizenship application.

Two years later, he submitted copies of the passport and a 1943 Uruguayan birth certificate with a letter asking Peru's military dictator to make him a citizen of "the most humanist country" in Latin America. The letter, short on detail, said he lived in Uruguay until age 7, then left to study and work in Spain.

Mr. Lazaro spoke Spanish with a Slavic accent but "never talked about his past," recalls Delfina Prieto, a journalist who worked with him in Peru. After a cursory background check, Peru gave him citizenship in 1979.

In 1983, he married Ms. Pelaez. Two years later they moved to New York with her son from a previous relationship. She became a columnist for El Diario, New York's Spanish-language daily, got U.S. citizenship and gave birth to Juan Jr. At home they spoke Spanish. Juan Sr., a legal U.S. resident, earned a doctorate in political science at the New School.

"I didn't detect anything odd," says Thomas Halper, who hired him to teach at Baruch College, of the City University of New York. "His preoccupation was with his son. He seemed so dedicated to his son, so proud of him."

His story unraveled after the couple's June 27 arrest.

The FBI reported a bugged conversation in the Lazaros' Yonkers home in which Mr. Lazaro said his family moved to Siberia about the time he was born.

The FBI alleged that the couple traveled from New York to South America several times over the past decade to receive cash from Russian operatives and deliver messages, although it recorded Mr. Lazaro complaining, "They say my information is of no value."

He, his wife and the eight others pleaded guilty as part of the spy-swap deal. Defense lawyers say he gave the name Russian officials told him to give—Vasenkov—reading it in court from notes.

And who is Vasenkov? Former KGB officials say that name may be no more genuine than Lazaro is. A search of Russian directories and websites turns up no Vasenkov fitting the profile. "The guy may have had several names," says Oleg Kalugin, a former general who once ran KGB operations in the U.S.

Whatever his real name, the spy apparently forged that tobacco company assignment letter. Altadis SA, the company's current owner in Madrid, says it found no record of a Juan Lazaro in its files.

The spy left one trace of his Lazaro identity in Spain: a brief stay on a three-month visa in early 1976 on his way to Peru, according to stamps in his Uruguayan passport.

Peru is investigating whether he committed fraud to obtain citizenship. Uruguayan officials aiding the probe say anyone with knowledge of the real Juan Lazaro's identity could have appropriated his birth record.

That's apparently what happened in this case. In Uruguay, Elida Panizza Fuentes told the Journal that Juan Lazaro was her half-brother. She says he died of respiratory failure in 1947.

Eva Irene Fuentes is listed as the child's mother on the birth certificate used by the spy. A widow, she remarried and gave birth to Ms. Panizza in 1948. Before her death, the mother told Ms. Panizza the story of the sickly boy the family remembered as "Juancito."

"She couldn't help crying whenever she spoke of the child," Ms. Panizza says. She says it saddened her to learn a spy had taken his identity. "How could they do something like that?"

Ms. Pelaez asked her own pointed question. She confronted her husband in a holding cell as they awaited deportation and, according two lawyers present, demanded: "What's your name? Your real name."

Carlos Moreno, her lawyer, says her husband laughed and replied, "My name is Juan Lazaro." The lawyer said the two are standing by each other and the Lazaro name. He added: "My guess is she didn't know him as anyone else."

—Robert Kozak and Sophie Kevany in Lima, Peru; Santiago Perez in Madrid; Diego Fischer in Montevideo, Uruguay; and Jonnelle Marte in Yonkers, New York, contributed to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413600124475346.html?mod=WSJ_hps_InDepthCarousel_2#dummySphere: Related Content

Obama Justice Contaminates UK MoD

Britain's special forces are at the centre of a criminal investigation following allegations soldiers from a covert unit tortured and abused suspected insurgents in Iraq.

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM BST 07 Aug 2010

Hundreds of members of the SAS, military interrogators and agent handlers who served with Task Force Black, a counter terrorist organisation that operated in Iraq during the insurgency, are to be questioned as part of a major inquiry into alleged breaches of the Geneva Convention.

The investigation is examining claims that British soldiers used death threats, intimidation and physical violence, as well as sleep, food and water deprivation to obtain intelligence from suspects.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that at least six military interrogators who worked closely with members of the task force have already been interviewed under caution by the special investigation branch of the Royal Military Police.

However, senior defence sources have strongly criticised the inquiry, claiming that it is a "witch hunt" motivated by "political correctness". It is understood that the allegations include a soldier "hitting" a suspect on the arm with a rolled up piece of A4 paper.

Those questioned under caution include a captain, as well as senior and junior non-commissioned officers. All of the soldiers deny the charges.

Dozens more interrogators are expected to be interviewed in the coming months as investigators examine hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations.

The inquiry was launched following allegations that British troops systematically abused hundreds of Iraqis during the war. The probe is being led by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, which was established to investigate claims of abuse by soldiers. The inquiry has already cost £6 million.

One senior defence source, who has seen video recordings of interrogations supposedly revealing abuse by British interrogators, described the allegations as "laughable" and said they were "entirely without foundation".

The source said: "When I saw the videos of the alleged abuse – my reaction was 'you've got to be joking'. I was dumbfounded. The military police just looked embarrassed."

One interrogator is accused of using death threats when he tells a suspected killer of British soldiers: "If I had my way, you would be taken outside and shot."

Another soldier stands accused of mental torture after he reduced a prisoner to tears when he said: "If you don't co-operate with us, it will be years before you see your children."

The source added: "The interrogators were dealing with violent terrorists responsible for the deaths of British soldiers. They were trying to extract intelligence to save the lives of other soldiers. Those who were compliant were offered the chance of working as agents for the British. This is what interrogators do.

"If we are now going to question their actions then we shouldn't have interrogators. We were fighting a war, they have done nothing wrong. The situation is laughable. Whole sections of special forces are grinding to a halt because someone is accused of hitting a terrorist suspect with a piece of A4 paper."

The interrogators face trial by court martial and a possible prison sentence if the allegations against them are upheld.

Senior officers do not deny that some British troops committed war crimes in Iraq but deny that the abuse was systematic.

Military interrogators and agent handlers are recruited from all three services and are trained by the Defence Human Intelligence Unit.

The troops worked closely with the SAS, especially in Baghdad, where Task Force Black was praised by General David Petraeus for the impact the unit had.

The SAS were responsible for arresting and killing hundreds of insurgents, while working alongside their US equivalent Delta Force. Many of the soldiers now facing investigation took part in "hard knock" operations, where force is used to seize and subdue a suspect.

Senior defence sources now fear that the military police will begin to focus on the activity of troops operating in Afghanistan.

In a separate investigation, a soldier serving with the Special Forces Support Group in Afghanistan has been accused of assaulting a suspected Taliban gunmen believed to have been involved in an attack on a British base in Sangin.

In a follow-up operation, two Afghan men were seen behaving suspiciously and were ordered to stop.

One drew a weapon and was shot and injured while the other suspect was taken prisoner. He was allegedly punched to the ground when he tried to escape and later complained that he was beaten up by the soldier.

A report of the incident was passed to the Royal Military Police and the soldier was removed from operational duty in Helmand, where sources indicate he was a vital part of an intelligence gathering team. The soldier has effectively been placed on "gardening leave" until the investigation is complete but he is now understood to be considering his future in the Army.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: "An investigation is under way into allegations of detainee abuse. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/7931821/Special-forces-under-investigation-for-abuse-of-Iraqi-prisoners.htmlSphere: Related Content