The subtle difference between a "spy" and an "intelligence agent"

Q: "What exactly were you doing in the U.S.? What is it called? Spying?"

A: "It’s the same thing the American special services are doing in Russia. The English word “spy” may refer to what the Russians call “spy” or “intelligence agent.” It depends on how you look at it. It’s no accident that, in the Soviet Union, the good guys were called “intelligence agents” and the enemies were called “spies.” ...

"intelligence does not work against specific people. It’s not permanent and assignments can change. As a secret agent, you work for the good of your country. Crimes may be committed against specific people, but intelligence is a patriotic business."

More: http://indrus.in/articles/2012/10/19/russian_spy_reveals_his_secrets_18485.html

Amir, the legendary Soviet spy

"One of the legendary Soviet agents of World War II who infiltrated a British spy school and assisted in the Tehran conference has died aged 87 ...

Gevork Vartanyan, working under the codename Amir, famously in 1942 managed to attend an entire course at a British training course for spies in Tehran who Britain then wanted to send all over the Soviet Union.

According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) - the successor to the Soviet KGB - his work helped expose the British network which existed despite London's wartime alliance with Moscow."

More: http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/World/Legendary-Soviet-WWII-spy-dies-at-87-Official/Article1-795558.aspx



### END OF POST ###
www.SPYWRITER.com

Swallows and Ravens

"The first honeytrap in recorded history come in the Bible where the two honeypots in chief were Delilah and Judith. The latter seduced the enemy commander Holofernes and assassinated him, and famously Delilah seduced Samson and got him to reveal the secret of his enormous strength (his hair), before she went on to be immortalised in song by Tom Jones.

In the modern era honeypots (of both sexes) were used by both sides in the Cold War but perhaps because they were ultimately defeated, we know a lot more about the honeypot techniques of the KGB and Stasi (the East German secret police) than we do of the techniques employed by the Americans and British. In the Soviet Union, for instance, “swallow” was the KGB codename for women honeypots, and “raven” the term for men. An ex-CIA officer has claimed that the West “found that offers of money and freedom worked better.”

Cases of female honeypots entrapping men are so common that even very recent history is littered with them."

Source and more: http://www.sabotagetimes.com/people/the-spy-who-fucked-me/

Espionage terms

Cold War Foe Rebranded

"Back in the Cold War days, the US propaganda ignited fears of Soviet expansionism and espionage in Latin America to frighten the continent's governments into cooperating with Washington in the fight against the fictitious threat posed by the USSR and the Eastern bloc. Under the resulting arrangement, the CIA, FBI, and the US Defense Intelligence Agency used to impose their own long-term agendas on the police and counterespionage agencies of Latin American countries (with the obvious exception of Cuba) and generally kept them on a short leash, while the Soviet missions the countries hosted and individuals deemed to be suspicious faced constant close surveillance.

Washington continues to sell Cold War-era stereotypes - the images of Russia as an evil country and a nuclear-armed monster - to Latin American countries. US-made computer games and movies supplied in quantities to Latin America employ the story line by which the Russian mafia grabs Russia's nuclear arsenal and puts it to work for global blackmail. The message the Empire thus sends to the continent reads that Russians are disreputable and treacherous partners to be be avoided at all costs."

Source and more: http://www.tiwy.com/news.phtml?id=199

Anatomy of CIA recruitment techniques

How Marja-Liisa Linkoaho, a Finnish consular employee, was recruitted by CIA to smuggle agents out of East Berlin:

“When I was going to work in the morning, before nine in the morning, the car was not on Prenzlauer Allee, where I had left it. I was quite desperate. I owed much money, and the money had been invested in the car that was now stolen.”

It was as if someone had been waiting for this determined woman to have a weak moment.

A few days later Linkoaho was contacted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, which offered her an opportunity to work for the CIA. In return she would get some monetary compensation, as well as a Western car of her own.

“The CIA had contacted me a few times before. I always said that I felt that I had enough to do already. I did not want more responsibility, so no thank you.”

Now the situation was different, and Linkoaho agreed to the proposal. Her mission was to be an assistant and a rescuer in case things go wrong. If a CIA agent in East Germany were to need to flee quickly to the West, it would be the task of the Finnish woman to bring the agent across the border hidden in her car.

Now Linkoaho got a 1959 model Opel Rekord beige-coloured car with the registration number IA 61-15.
It was an ordinary Opel, but its twin included American espionage technology. The CIA vehicle had a mechanism installed, which made it possible to hide a person in the back seat. The CIA even had to put a dent in the sister vehicle in the same location where Linkoaho’s car was also dented."

Recapping:

1) CIA tries to recruit the woman several times, but she refuses each time.

2) She borrows money to buy a car.

3) The car gets "stolen", but the debt must be repaid.

4) CIA offers to pay off her debt, if she agrees to spy...

More: http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Finnish%2Bconsular%2Bemployee%2Brecruited%2Bby%2BCIA%2Bto%2Bsmuggle%2Bagents%2Bout%2Bof%2BEast%2BBerlin/1135268587387

Five Popular Espionage Techniques

Nr 2:

"Live Drops

Live Drops are very similar to brush passes and dead drops. In a live drop, two agents make an exchange, but the exchange is hidden in plain sight.

This is because one of the agents is disguised as someone who commonly exchanges items with the general public.

For example, a man walks up to a hot dog vendor and purchases a hot dog. The man pays for the concession and leaves. However, the man is an agent and has just passed the hot dog vendor, his co-conspirator, a note mixed-in with his money or written on the actual bills.

Transactions such as these took place on city streets across the globe. There is nothing suspicious about someone buying food from a street vendor."

Source: http://www.topsecretwriters.com/2011/07/five-popular-espionage-techniques-of-the-former-soviet-union/

Albert Camus vs. KGB

Albert "Camus, a philosopher, novelist and journalist, who won the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature, died on January 4, 1960, during a road trip from Provence to Paris. Camus had initially planned to accompany his wife and children on a train ride to Paris, but changed his mind at the last minute, after his trusted friend and publisher, Michel Gallimard, offered him a ride in his car to the French capital. That evening, as Gallimard and Camus were driving through the small town of Villeblevin, Gallimard’s Facel Vega FV3B rammed into a tree at high speed. Camus was killed instantly, while Gallimard died in hospital several days later. But an article published last week in one of Italy’s oldest newspapers, Corriere della Sera, claims that the two men may have been killed after Soviet intelligence agents sabotaged Gallimard’s car."

More: http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/01-783/

The Lost Russian Tsar, one of the CIA's greatest ass[ets]

"Colonel-General Michael Goleniewski is widely credited as being one of the most important Western agents ever to have operated within the Soviet KGB and its satellite agencies. He was the vice chairman of Communist Poland's military intelligence when he escaped to the West in 1960, bringing thousands of Top Secret Soviet documents as well as information identifying hundreds of highly placed Soviet agents in western governments and intelligence agencies. Among the important communist agents Goleniewski exposed were Kim Philby, George Blake, Gordon Lonsdale, Morris and Lona Cohen, Henry Houghton, Ethel Gee, and Stig Wennerström. So strategic, timely, and reliable were his revelations that the House of Representatives of the 88th Congress passed House Resolution 5507 to honor Goleniewski's exceptional contributions to American security."

"Goleniewski later made the claim that he was Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, who, by most accounts, was killed with his family by Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg, Russia on 17 July 1918. Goleniewski claimed that Yakov Yurovsky, one of the assassins, saved the family and helped them to escape. The whole family supposedly traveled to Poland via Turkey, Greece, and Austria. According to his story, the family lived in hiding in Poland. As author Guy Richards (one of Goleniewski's supporters) has pointed out, he was not the first Tsarevich Alexei cliamant to emerge from Poland; several decades earlier, in 1927, a pretender named Eugene Nicolaievich Ivanoff had appeared from the same part of that country and generated a brief flurry of publicity in Europe and North America.

Tsarevich Alexei, who was born in August 1904, was a haemophiliac. Goleniewski, whose identity card gave his date of birth as 1922, making him eighteen years younger than the Tsarevich, claimed that the haemophilia made him appear younger than he really was and he had been "twice a child." He claimed that his haemophilia had been confirmed by Dr. Alexander S. Wiener, who had co-discovered the Rh factor in human blood. This claim was never confirmed.

He met one of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia claimants, Eugenia Smith, in 1963. The meeting was covered by Life magazine. Goleniewski claimed that Smith was his sister Anastasia. Smith also recognized Goleniewski as her brother Alexei, even though she had claimed in her book that she had been the sole survivor at Ekaterinburg.

Goleniewski's claim was an embarrassment to the CIA. He was put on a pension and his employment with the agency was ended in 1964.

In 1942 Wehrmacht soldiers transiting through Lemberg were told that near the town of Radom an old Polish landowner named Goleniewski lived on a large estate guarded by the SS and that he was in fact Tsar Nicholas II..."

sources: 1, 2.

How the KGB recruited the Spanish Ambassador

"Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky and former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Popov claim in a new book, The KGB Plays Chess, that former IOC President [and Spain's ambassador to USSR], Juan Antonio Samaranch, was hired by the KGB in the late 1970s [...]

[...] Samaranch grew fond of Russian antiques, which he collected and shipped to his home in Spain. All antiques were closely monitored by the KGB; so the Spanish ambassador, a frequent buyer of valuable rarities, was taken note of. An agent from the KGB’s Second Main Directorate, which monitored the Spanish embassy, met with Samaranch and gently explained to him that his actions were subject to prosecution in accordance with the Russian Federation’s Criminal Code and were classified by Soviet law as the smuggling of contraband goods. According to Felshtinsky, Samaranch was offered a choice: he could either be compromised through the Soviet and foreign press detailing his activities, which would undoubtedly have put an end to his diplomatic career, or he could collaborate with the KGB as a secret agent." SOURCE

Media Concentration

As Russian oligarchs (tied to KGB) continue to buy out Western media (newspapers, TV, Radio, etc), it is timely to quote these words:

[...] the question of buying news concerns abroad. I believe we should continue to do so, for the greater the number of news outlets , especially newspapers, we own abroad, the better will this be for our future role of leadership in Europe.

Diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda

Priests implicated in JPII assassination plot

Priests implicated in John Paul II assassination attempt:

Polish priests working for the Soviet KGB could be informants for the plotters, according to John Koehler, a former US intelligence agent and adviser to US President Reagan. The Vatican hid the names of the spies, Koehler alleges. In an interview with Italian newspaper La Stampa, Koehler said that "we can not exclude the possibility that some Polish priests, Moscow's spies, were kind of informers utilized to carry out the assassination attempt on John Paul II”.

The former US intelligence officer relies on the findings of Jesuit Robert Graham, who has spent more than 50 years in the Vatican and since 1945 has collected data on the clergy-spies. Those were mostly Polish priests who worked for Moscow," says Koehler.

"All the names of the revealed agents have been discovered among 25,000 private documents which after Graham's death in 1997 at the age of 84 were packed in 200 boxes hidden in the Vatican according to the Pope's personal request," Koehler marks in the interview with La Stampa. The problem is that Benedict XVI upheld the decision of Pope John Paul II on the classification of the archive of Robert Graham, the researcher points out.

"The information gathered by the Jesuit, could be useful in clarifying the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II," says Koehler. "There were no arrests or processes in many cases, these spies are still living quietly in their places of origin in Poland," he has added.

La Stampa article (in Italian), interview with John Koehler.

Plan to destabilize America

There is no surprise in the fact that the Soviets hoped to destabilize and discredit the United States. What does surprise is the subtlety and audacity of their effort. The opening salvo of the KGB’s plan was financial.

Seductive advertising was placed in our media through dummy corporations. The intent was to encourage Americans to spend and borrow. From the KGB’s point of view the way to ruin capitalism was for our citizens to run up record levels of debt, preferably with escalating interest rates, and for the national savings rate to plunge into negative territory.

It would be an added plus for them if we would use the borrowed funds to buy non-durables instead of investing in infrastructure.

Should these conditions develop the KGB felt that our country would encounter economic difficulties that could weaken the dollar, undermine our global leadership, and raise the cost of imports heralding inflation. If by some stroke of luck these conditions should be accompanied by reckless use of energy with no thought to conservation, this country might lose control of its own economic destiny.

The final piece of the KGB’s financial strategy involved benefits. The agency employed all of its influence, which was greater than we had suspected, to lull us into potentially lethal complacency. Its aim was to get our government to grant generous social benefits. Then it would persuade our citizens to take those obligations for granted, but not fund them. If it worked, this strategy would create a time bomb, softly ticking until an explosive wave of retirements hit the system. SOURCE

This sure comes out at just the right time to prove that no KGB input was required to destabilize America... America did it all by itself.

Couple of issues with this article:

In reality KGB's influence in this matter was never as great as the writers' suggest and, there was never any chance for social benefits, generous of otherwise, and none will come even though more and more people will desperately need them.

In fiction - similar "plan" to bring down America in the post- Cold War era is described in my novel THE FIFTH INTERNATIONALE

More than one Kim Philby

Soviets had assets at the top of the Western security apparatus, such as:

[...] Kurt, one of the most valuable agents of the Soviet inteligence, who might be compared with legendary Kim Philby. Kurt was the nickname of the ex-SS Haupsturmfuerer Heinz Felfe [...] the head of the department of "counterespionage against the USSR and the Soviet missions". [...]

Only in 1969, Russians managed to exchange Felfe for 18 agents of the West German and 3 agents of the American intelligence. The exchange took place at the point of entry at Heerleshausen on the border of the two German states. After the release Felfe found his domicile in the German Democratic Republic. In March, 2008, Felfe is to celebrate his 90th birthday [...]

SOURCE

The bodies of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun

Russian security service comes clean on the whereabouts of Hitler's remains:

On May 4, «in a shell-hole nearby the bunker of the Fuehrer, two more – female and male - corpses were discovered. Both were strongly scorched and it was impossible to identify them without corresponding examination. Corpses had been delivered to the counterespionage department of the 3rd assault army. After forensic examination they were buried in the outskirts of the city of Buch. Due to relocation of department of counterespionage “the corpses were withdrawn and transported to the area of Finow, and then on June 3, 1945, to the area of Rathenow, where they finally were inhumed”. It was only on March 20, 1970, when on the initiative of then the KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a plan that received the code name Operation Archive. In 15 days an operative group of five agents under Colonel Kovalenko arrived to Westend Strasse 36 in the city of Magdeburg. Remains of Hitler and Eva Braun had been delivered there. Colonel Kovalenko handwrote a report on re-exhumation of the remains that they were put into a box in the night and morning on April 4, 1970. Then in the morning of April 5, 1970, the remains were cremated. Ashes together with coal «was mixed up to condition of homogeneous volume, collected and spilled out in the waters of the nearest river».  SOURCE

90 years of KGB

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the formation of what would become the KGB.

Cheka, headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, at first had only 23 employees [...]

In 1921 it numbered over 30,000 officers, agents and even border guards [...]

At the height of the Cold War, the organisation, which changed its name again to the KGB, the organisation serving as the Soviet Union's premier security agency, secret police and intelligence agency, maintained thousands of agents in foreign countries. At home its web of millions of informers permeated every sphere of public life [...]

More.

British double-agent honored in Moscow

Yesterday, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR, honored one of Moscow's most important Soviet-era spies. The former British spy George Blake, who was recruited by the KGB in the 1950s, and went on to play a key role in Soviet intelligence gathering during the Cold War, is celebrating his 85th birthday. Blake revealed the names of more than 400 Western agents to his Soviet handlers, at least forty were captured as a result many were executed, according to Russia Today TV channel.
"The information provided by Blake was always acute, precise and extremely important," Sergei Ivanov, the Foreign Intelligence Service spokesman, told The Associated Press. He refused to say how many Western spies Blake exposed. READ MORE from SOURCE