Russians Penetrate Czech Generals' Offices

Russian Spy Reaches Czech Generals' Offices - Report
PRAGUE | Tue Jul 27, 2010 4:46pm IST

(Reuters) - Three Czech generals, including a presidential staff member and a NATO representative, were forced to leave the army in 2009 after a Russian spy's contact with their offices, a Czech newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Czech military and counter-intelligence agents have increasingly highlighted Russian agents' presence in the central European NATO and European Union member, and this has been the biggest reported case of infiltration into the military.

Citing an unnamed source, daily Mlada Fronta Dnes said the Russian agent, a Czech state-employed psychologist known as Robert R., befriended a female army major, who had also studied psychology and worked successively as head of staff for the three army generals.

The generals, respectively, worked as head of President Vaclav Klaus's Military Office, the Czechs' NATO representative in Europe, and a deputy general for the Chief of Staff.

The newspaper said it was not clear whether the army major worked for the Russian agent knowingly, nor what information was passed on and if it posed a security threat. Military intelligence agents followed the two for at least five years.

The agent fled to Russia and the major finished in the army.

Josef Sedlak, the general who lost his position as NATO representative, told Mlada Fronta Dnes he felt he had been unfairly treated.

"If some information existed showing one of my colleagues was connected to a spy, then the agency should have told me to protect me. And not follow me like some villain," he was quoted as saying.

The newspaper said another of the generals quit over a disagreement about changes being made in the military, while the third general could not be reached by the newspaper.

The Defence Ministry and counter-intelligence agency BIS declined to comment.

BIS reported last month that Russian spies were increasingly active in the Czech Republic and turning their attention to the energy sector.

BIS said the presence of Russian intelligence operatives among academics and students posed a potential problem for the former Soviet satellite state.

The Czechs are also wary of their dependence on their Cold War master Russia in the energy sector. Russia's Atomstroyexport is among three bidders to enlarge the country's largest nuclear power plant in Temelin.

Last year, the Czech Republic expelled two Russian diplomats, including a deputy to the military attache, on suspicions of spying.Sphere: Related Content

Germany commemorates failed anti-Hitler plot - The Local

Germany on Tuesday marked the 66th anniversary of a failed attempt by army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in his "Wolf's Lair" military headquarters in a daring bid to end World War II.

Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who had a relative with links to the resistance, led a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial in his ministry's Bendlerblock courtyard, where some of the conspirators were executed.

Later Tuesday, he and Chancellor Angela Merkel were to observe the swearing-in in front of the Reichstag parliament building of about 420 recruits to the military, which has carefully tended the memory of the July 20 plotters.

"The women and men of the resistance set ethical standards with their actions and became role models," Mayor Klaus Wowereit said at the Bendlerblock ceremony.

The July 20 plot, as it has come to be known, was led by an aristocratic army officer called Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who wore a patch to cover an eye lost in battle.

Stauffenberg placed a bomb under a table in Hitler's eastern headquarters in East Prussia, in modern-day Poland. But the Nazi leader escaped with slight injuries because the briefcase carrying the explosives was moved by chance behind a sturdy oak leg of the table.

Confusion reigned 700 kilometres (435 miles) away in Berlin, with conflicting information about whether Hitler had survived the attack, but it soon became clear that the plot had failed.

Co-conspirator Philipp von Boeselager was meant to return from the Eastern Front with 1,200 men and overthrow the clique at the head of the Third Reich, which had unleashed the catastrophic war and the Holocaust.

Stauffenberg and several others were executed the same evening in the Bendlerblock courtyard, part of a complex of buildings where the plot was hatched.

The episode was turned into a recent movie called "Valkyrie" with Tom Cruise playing the part of Stauffenberg.

Historian Fritz Stern said at the Bendlerblock ceremony Tuesday the assassination attempt had been unique in German history.

"Never before had there been such an uprising for liberation, justice and human dignity in Germany," he said.

That the plot failed is seen as one of the tragedies of World War II as millions more people were killed on the battlefield and in the gas chambers before Hitler was defeated in 1945.

Germany commemorates failed anti-Hitler plot - The LocalSphere: Related Content

American Leftist Spies Won't Enjoy Castro Treatment

A sympathetic treatment from the Washington Post of a story of treason by delusional American Leftist traitors. It's a shame they won't be jailed under the same conditions the Castro brothers have held their enemies since '59.

U.S. Analyst Spying for Cuba Gets Life in Prison; Wife Gets More Than 6 Years

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post
Friday, July 16, 2010; 12:27 PM

A retired State Department intelligence analyst was sentenced to life in prison and his wife got more than six years on Friday for spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years in a screenplay-ready tale of romance and espionage.

Walter Kendall Myers, 73, and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 72, agreed to forfeit $1.7 million in cash and property, including all of Kendall Myers's federal salary over the years. He did not have to give up 38-foot sailboat he once said they might use in retirement to sail to the communist country.

"If someone despises the American government to the extent that appears to be the case, you can pack your bags and leave," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said, "and it doesn't seem to me you continue to bear the benefits this country manages to provide and seek to undermine it."

It was a grim ending to the Myerses' idealistic embrace of the Cuban revolution, with one slight comfort. Handing down punishment for Walter Myers's guilty plea in November to conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud, Walton endorsed the couple's request to be incarcerated near each other with easier access to their siblings, children and grandchildren.

The judge's sentence for Gwen Myers fell halfway between the 72 months to 90 months she had agreed to in her deal with prosecutors, for gathering and transmitting national defense information. Her lawyers cited her age, failing health -- including a heart attack since her June 2009 arrest -- and secondary role in the scheme. The couple, wearing blue jumpsuits over long-sleeved white shirts, held hands while the sentence was read.

"We did not act out of anger toward the United States or from any thought of anti-Americanism," Myers said in at 10-minute statement in seeking leniency for his wife. "We did not intend to hurt any individual American. Our only objective was to help the Cuban people defend their revolution. We only hoped to forestall conflict" between the countries.

The sentencing continues Washington's summer of serial spy intrigues. Barely a week after the United States and Russia completed the exchange of 14 agents allegedly planted in each other's country in a diplomatic maneuver reminiscent of the Cold War, the Washington couple's sentencing cast a reminder of unresolved tensions across the 90-mile-wide Straits of Florida.

Myers, an Ivy League-educated Europe specialist who made his home in Northwest Washington's diplomat-friendly precincts, began working for the State Department as a contract instructor in 1977 before joining full time in 1985 and becoming a senior analyst with a top-secret clearance in the department's sensitive bureau of intelligence and research.

Starting in 1978, however, the recently divorced Myers visited Cuba for two weeks and was soon recruited by a Cuban intelligence agent. When Myers spent a two-year-long sabbatical in South Dakota, where he was living with then-Gwendolyn Trebilcock, a former aide to senator James Abourezk, the agent met Myers again, an he agreed to become a spy.

Over the next three decades, the couple would communicate with their Cuban handlers via shortwave radio, exchanging shopping carts in a grocery store and sending encrypted e-mails from Internet cafes. Traveling overseas, they met clandestine Cuban operatives in Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica, Italy and Cuba via Mexico.

Myers, code-named "202," and his wife -- "123" -- never accepted money but would pass along secret information that he later said earned him several medals and a trip to meet Fidel Castro himself in 1995.

"Everything I hear about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and charismatic leader," Myers wrote in his journal in his 1978 Cuba visit, where he also rued the "systematic and regular murdering of revolutionary leaders" by the United States. His enthusiasm seemed undimmed 31 years later, when he confided to an FBI agent posing a Cuban contact, "Fidel is wonderful, just wonderful."

Tipped off to the presence of a Cuban spy in 2006, U.S. investigators by April 2009 tracked down Myers outside Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, where he was a part-time faculty member. It was Myers's 72nd birthday, and an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence emissary gave him a cigar. The gift led to a string of recorded meetings, revelations and the couple's ultimate confession and sentencing Friday, which happened to fall on Gwen Myers's 72nd birthday.

The State Department and intelligence community officials have not publicly assessed the damage done by Myers to the U.S. government, but experts said he would have had years of access to intelligence reports from the U.S. and its allies, as well as to databases with information from the CIA, the National Security Agency, the military and U.S. embassies. In the last 15 months before his retirement in 2007, Myers amassed more than 200 sensitive or classified intelligence reports in his computer.

After the couple's arrest, Castro was quoted in a Cuban media report stating his admiration for "their disinterested and courageous conduct."

The FBI said that although Myers generally was cooperative in more than 100 debriefing sessions, he at times gave inconsistent answers or withheld information, adding that the "limited value of defendants' cooperation" did not warrant lighter sentencing of Gwen Myers.

"For nearly 30 years, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers committed one of the worst crimes a citizen can perpetrate against his or her own country -- espionage on behalf of a long-standing foreign adversary," Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. attorney for the District, said in a brief urging the judge against leniency.

The Myerses felt no remorse, motivated by communist sympathies and a "rose-colored picture" of Cuba, Machen said.

"Kendall Myers was born into this world with every conceivable advantage," Machen wrote, describing the son of a heart surgeon, grandson of the National Geographic Society's head and great-grandson of inventor Alexander Graham Bell as a child of privilege. Machen added, "Kendall Myers could have been anything he wanted to be. He chose to be a Cuban spy."

In their behalf, the Myers presented statements from relatives, colleagues and friends describing them as kind and deeply idealistic.

Myers's offense, his lawyers wrote, "was born not of hatred, greed, vengeance or desire for power, but of compassion for a struggling people desperately seeking to throw off the legacy of a brutal and corrupt dictatorship and chart an independent path to social justice."

His lawyers asked that Myers be allowed to teach inmates and continue his writings, including a biography of former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. Whether misunderstood or misguided, Myers told the undercover FBI agent in 2009 that the couple missed their spying days. "You, speaking collectively, have been a really important part of our lives, and we have felt incomplete," Myers said, according to the government. "I mean, we really love your country."Sphere: Related Content

With Russia, Little Ever Really Changes

US Charges 11 in Russian Spy Case

By EVAN PEREZ

The Wall Street Journal -- JUNE 28, 2010, 4:47 P.M. ET

WASHINGTON—U.S. authorities charged 11 people Monday with being part of a Russian spy program to plant long-term undercover agents inside the U.S.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation alleged the Russian intelligence service known as the SVR provided extensive training, including in foreign languages and the use of codes and ciphers, to the alleged agents before dispatching them to the U.S. over the past decade.

Once inside the U.S., the alleged agents took on aliases and "deep cover" assignments to become Americanized in order to gather information about the U.S., and possibly recruit sources inside American "policy-making circles," an FBI affidavit filed in New York federal court alleged.

U.S. authorities arrested 10 of the 11 people in New York, Boston and northern Virginia in recent days.

The case grew from a years-long FBI investigation focused on Russian espionage capabilities in the U.S. since the breakup of the formidable spying operation of the former Soviet Union.

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

Sphere: Related Content

Espionage or Globalism?

Agents of Influence

The Ottawa Citizen -- June 24, 2010

Canadians are shocked to hear that some of their elected representatives are acting as agents of foreign governments, but no one should be shocked that foreign governments are after Canadian secrets in the first place.

Canada is not much of a military power, so foreign governments are likely not snooping for blueprints of futuristic weapons. Canada is, however, an economic power, a major exporter and manufacturer. It is trade secrets that our global competitors desire. The Cold War may be over but espionage -- economic espionage -- is still very much a growth industry.

Richard Fadden, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, revealed this week that a number of Canadian public officials are suspected to be working on behalf of foreign interests. At least two of the suspected "agents of influence" hold cabinet posts at the provincial level.

It's a sensational claim, to be sure. But as many security experts quickly noted, the source is impeccable: Richard Fadden himself. Fadden is an accomplished and respected public servant. His willingness to come out from the shadows, so to speak, and talk about foreign penetration of the political class, on the eve of Canada's hosting the G8 and G20 summits, suggests just how real a threat the security establishment deems this to be.

Fadden wasn't reckless. He didn't name names or identify the countries that have been poking around in our business. He didn't have to. China openly specializes in economic espionage, as Canadian companies such as aerospace giant Bombardier have discovered. There have been recent reports of Chinese technicians stealing secrets at one of Bombardier's Montreal plants, and of Bombardier negotiators being spied upon during trips to China.

While Fadden didn't name names, he did suggest that the problem of foreign influence is particularly conspicuous in British Columbia. The province is part of the Pacific Rim and is the Canadian epicentre of Asian immigration. As the University of Victoria political scientist Norman Ruff told the Canadian Press, "There are influences on public policy in British Columbia both on the local and provincial level which aren't solely in the interests of British Columbians."

Although communist China tops Canada's list of countries targeting us for economic espionage, democratic countries and even allies will spy on each other. In the 1990s, some business travellers stopped flying on Air France following reports French intelligence officers were bugging airline seats. Japan has been accused of recruiting technology workers to penetrate U.S.-based tech firms.

It might even be that, in some quarters, economic espionage is viewed simply as a form of government assistance to domestic businesses. In one reported case, a French and American firm were competing for a billion-dollar contract with the Indian government. The French government surreptitiously obtained information about the American bid and passed it on to the French firm, which then won the contract.

The danger of Fadden's warning is that it might be used, not by CSIS but others, as an argument against multiculturalism and immigration. That would be a mistake. Canada's diversity is a source of national strength, and has produced far more benefits, economic and otherwise, than costs.

Canada is right to welcome talent wherever it can be found. The integration of new and recent Canadians into the highest ranks of economic and political life is what makes us a successful country. Unfortunately, in a few instances, that integration might not be as thorough as was hoped.

Agents of influenceSphere: Related Content

Forgotten Heroes of Military Intelligence

Military Intelligence Fatalities Twice CIA's

They have no somber wall to represent personnel who have died on secret missions.

But military intelligence personnel are taking far greater -- and far less recognized -- casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan than the CIA, whose latest dead were honored in a headquarters ceremony last week.

In all, 22 CIA personnel have been killed in action since Sept. 11, 2001, not all of them in terrorism-related incidents, according to an agency official. Twelve stars, seven of them representing officers and contractors killed by a double-agent suicide bomber in Khost, Afghanistan, on Dec. 30, were added to the CIA's memorial wall last week.

Meanwhile, 41 military spy-handlers and other MI personnel have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to figures supplied by the U.S. Army Intelligence Command at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

Five of them were women.

In addition, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has deployed analysts and other personnel to the war zones, has suffered 45 wounded from mortar attacks and other causes since March 2003, the bulk of them in Iraq.

The DIA has recorded no fatalities in the war zones, but it lost seven civilian personnel in one fell swoop on Sept. 11, 2001, when one of the hijacked airliners crashed into the Pentagon. Eight more DIA personnel, all but one civilians, were wounded, a spokesman said. A Patriot’s Memorial wall at Bolling Air Force Base honors the DIA's 21 fallen, by name, going back to 1970.

Presumably, the main reason MI casualties are so far greater than the CIA's is that military intelligence personnel are far more numerous in the war zones (although the agency had roughly 500 personnel assigned to Baghdad alone by 2005).

But the large number of MI casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan also suggests the conflicts are far more dangerous for military spies and support personnel than the last major counterinsurgency war, in Vietnam, where some never saw a bullet fired in anger.

In Afghanistan especially, there are no front lines. Nor are there safe havens in cities and towns, as was largely the case in South Vietnam, where many a military agent in slacks and Hawaiian shirts could dine in a local restaurant, go out for a drink and sleep on clean sheets.

In sharp contrast, MI personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan rarely stray far from their bases or units, and never unarmed. And like their uniformed brethren, they are mostly dying in Humvees from roadside bombs.

Such was the case of Cari A. Gasiewicz, 28, an Army counterintelligence agent and Arabic interpreter who died when two roadside bombs detonated near her convoy in Baqubah, Iraq, on Dec. 4, 2004.

“She was in the final weeks of her year-long deployment and the convoy was headed to Kuwait to prepare for redeployment in January,” according to Fort Huachuca.

In 2005, the 202nd MI Battalion at Fort Gordon, Ga., dedicated its headquarters building in her honor. Three years later, the Defense Language Institute also memorialized a building in her name.

Likewise in 2006, the Military Intelligence Library at Fort Huachuca was memorialized in honor of Warrant Officer Christopher G. Nason, a voice intercept technician and Arabic linguist who died in a vehicular accident near Mosul in November 2003.

Nason, 39, was the first MI soldier from the fort to die in Iraq.

Specialist Farid Elazzouzi, an MI interpreter-translator born in Morocco, who was killed by a roadside bomb in Kirkuk only two years after obtaining a U.S. visa in 2005, has no building named for him, but he was was posthumously awarded American citizenship.

The first MI agent to die in Afghanistan was Staff Sgt. Brian “Cody” Prosser, a 10-year veteran of military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Jordon, Kuwait, Kosovo, and "throughout Southwest Asia," according to Fort Huachuca.

Assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Prosser was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, 150 miles behind enemy lines, in December 2001.

The citation for Prosser’s Bronze Star for valor stated that “his actions leading up to the battle on the night of 3 December were key in allowing the advance team to move to and destroy an enemy strong point at Sayad Alma Kalay with complete success” while “outnumbered 50 to 1.”

Fort Huachuca renamed its academic complex Prosser Village in his honor.

A new spy-handler training site at the Army intelligence school will also be named for a fallen MI soldier, later this year.

Sgt. Nicholas Casey, a human intelligence collector, died on Oct, 28, 2008, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives while he and his team "were preparing to conduct operations in a police station in Baghlan, Afghanistan,” according to the base’s public affairs office.

“The suicide bomber, disguised as an Afghan police officer, walked unhindered into the police station and detonated himself, killing SGT Casey and SGT Kevin D. Grieco,” the announcement said. “SGT Casey was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”

Beside Casey, eight other MI personnel have died in Afghanistan, including an intelligence analyst and three others involved with communications.

The 33 Iraq fatalities included two women listed as cryptologic linguists, two as signals intelligence analysts, and one as a “HUMINT Collector,” or spy handler.

Figures for Vietnam War MI casualties could not be readily obtained and may not be available in one place, authorities said.

One official history said “casualties among Military Intelligence personnel were not restricted to members of the Army Security Agency,” which eavesdropped on enemy communications.

“During the [1968] Tet offensive, the Hue detachment of the 525th MI Group was overrun and its members killed or captured,” it said.

“The first Medal of Honor ever granted to a Military Intelligence officer," it added, "was awarded posthumously to 1st Lt. George Sisler, assistant intelligence officer of a Special Forces team.”

By Jeff Stein | June 15, 2010; 6:30 AM ET
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/06/military_intelligence_casualti.htmlSphere: Related Content

German Left-Wing Crime Increase Adds to Public Security Concerns
An increase in crime and attacks on police officers by German left-wing extremists in 2009 was centered in Berlin and Hamburg, cities which also have seen conflicts with immigrants. Despite initial preventative measures by federal and regional authorities, calls for stronger action continue. -- 27 April 2010

Left-Wing Crime Increase Compounds Concern About Right-Wing, Immigrant Groups
German security authorities reported a substantial increase in crime and attacks on police in 2009 related to left-wing political groups and individuals, whom German counterintelligence agencies number at approximately 6,600. This increase in left-wing crime represents an additional concern alongside Germany's perceived problems with right-wing extremist and immigrant crime (dw-world.de, 19 January).

• According to Germany's Interior Ministry, more extremist crimes and acts of violence occurred in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The ministry reported that in 2009, leftwing extremist crimes increased by almost 40% to 9,375. Violent crimes by these individuals and groups, meanwhile, increased by more than 50% to 1,822, and the number of leftist attacks on police officers increased by 120% to 1,3503 (Bild, 23 March; bild.de, 30 January).
• Interior Ministry statistics indicate that although violent crimes tied to right-wing groups decreased by 14% to 959, overall crime by these groups is still twice as frequent as that committed by their left-wing counterparts. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) also reported that rightist attacks on police officers increased by almost 75% to 5305 (Bild, 23 March; bild.de, 30 January).
• Germany lacks publicly available official data on immigrant crime, but media reports reflect increasing concern about integration problems.a For example, media have cited statistics -- probably drawn from a controversial lecture by Senior Public Prosecutor Roman Reusch, former head of the Berlin Department for Multiple Offenders -- indicating that 80% of young multiple offenders in Berlin have a migration background (meideu.de, 16 October 2009; Focus, 12 October 2009).

More: http://www.fas.org/irp/world/germany/crime.pdfSphere: Related Content

Main Wikileaks Source Outed - Politics - The Atlantic

Main Wikileaks Source Outed - Politics - The AtlanticSphere: Related Content

500 Top Secret CIA Documents on Interrogation Briefings to Congress

Top Secret Records Detailing Congressional Briefings of CIA Enhanced Interrogation Techniques -- Released Friday Afternoon (of course) -- June 4, 2010Sphere: Related Content

French Secret Service Fear Russian Cathedral a Spying Front
The French secret service has reportedly expressed alarm over plans for a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Paris, fearing it will be used by Moscow as a front for spies.


Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 12:58AM BST 28 May 2010

The go-ahead for the onion-domed cathedral – the first to be built in the French capital in more than a century – by the Eiffel Tower was considered a brilliant diplomatic coup in Russia as at least two other countries were vying for the prized property by the Seine.

But it sparked deep reservations at the Quai d'Orsay, France's foreign ministry, and the DCRI, its MI6, because the building is a stone's throw from a sensitive diplomatic compound.

As well as housing France's supreme magistrates' council, the Palais de l'Alma – Napoleon III's former stables – contains the Elysée postal service and above all, the 16 private apartments of top presidential aides. Chief among these is Jean-David Levitte, President Nicolas Sarkozy's top diplomatic adviser, who wields more power than the foreign minister, as well as his chief of staff.

French counterespionage was particularly concerned, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, the weekly magazine, as Vladimir Kozhin, the Russian in charge of trying to buy the 8,400 square metre (90,400 sq foot) plot, is a former KGB agent. Mr Kozhin is head of the hugely powerful Kremlin property department, which has 50,000 employees, an empire of hotels and manages all state property, including Russian churches overseas.

French intelligence concerns were compounded by the fact that it had detected a significant rise in Russian spy activity since the election of President Sarkozy in 2007, reaching heights not seen since the mid-1980s.

Mr Kozhin is a close associate of Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister and a former KGB officer, who was the property department's number two in the 1990s.

Mr Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev are said to have considered the construction of the Paris cathedral a key step in regaining control over the Russian Diaspora and legitimising their administration, as well as a spectacular display of Russian power in western Europe.

Such was the importance of the acquisition that it was reportedly the first subject President Medvedev broached with his French counterpart in December at the Copenhagen climate summit.

According to several sources, after the conversation Mr Sarkozy immediately phoned his budget minister who a few days later summoned Mr Kozhin to his office. Ten days later when the various tenders for the plot were examined, Russia's was top of the pile which included bids from Saudi Arabia and Canada – with an above-market offer of 70 million euros (£60 million).

The cathedral, which still needs final planning permission from Paris' town hall, stands to be the first Russian monument built in Paris since the Alexander III bridge in 1896, and is due to be built within the next three years.Sphere: Related Content