Read Deception Online

Authors: Edward Lucas

Deception (46 page)

3
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/247712
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/1/wikileaks-cable-spain-russian-mafia

4
A well-sourced account of this comes from the Jerusalem-based journalist Gil Yaron, writing (in German) in the Salzburger Nachrichten.
http://search.salzburg.com/articles/5847190
. A Finnish connection in the story remains to be investigated.

5
See for example this speech by Jonathan Evans, director of the Security Service (MI5) here
http://www.societyofeditors.co.uk/page-view.php?pagename= The Keynote Speech
and the German
Verfassungsschutz
(Office for Constitutional Protection) annual reports, for example (in German)
http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/download/SHOW/vsbericht_2009.pdf
‘
Putins Konjunkturprogramm: Russische Agenten spionieren deutsche Energie-Unternehmen aus'
(‘Putin's growth programme – Russian agents spy on German energy companies') by Dirk Banse, Welt am Sonntag, 21 June 2009.
http://www.welt.de/wams_print/article3965455/Putins-Konjunkturprogramm-Russische-Agenten-spionieren-deutsche-Energie-Unternehmen-aus.html

6
Chiefly in chapter 3.

7
Londongrad – From Russia with Cash; The Inside Story of the Oligarchs
by Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley (Fourth Estate, 2009).

8
The official Air Accidents Investigation Branch report can be found here
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Agusta_A109E,_G-PWER.pdf
with a small but interesting correction here
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Agusta%20A109E,%20G-PWER%20Correction%209–5.pdf

9
A comprehensive summary can be found here ‘Russia's intelligence attack: The Anna Chapman danger', by Peter Hennessy and Richard Knight, 17 August 2010.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10986334
A link on the site plays the programme.

10
In mid 2008 I became aware of this story and made persistent enquiries about it. Britain's Ministry of Defence press office repeatedly denied that any such incident had taken place. The story was then leaked. ‘Russian Nuke Jet Buzzes Hull' by Tom Newton-Dunn, Sun, 30 August 2008
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1749464.ece

11
‘Fighter jets intercept Russian bombers after flying into Dutch airspace' 8 June 2011
http://channel6newsonline.com/2011/6/fighter-jets-intercept-russian-bombers-after-flying-into-dutch-airspace/

12
This WikiLeaks cable gives a flavour of the subsequent discussion at NATO
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=9USNATO581

13
Rosja
ć
wiczy
ł
a atak atomowy na Polsk
ę
(‘Russia practises a nuclear attack on Poland') by Micha
ł
Krzymowski,
Wprost
(Warsaw), 31 October 2009
http://www.wprost.pl/ar/176722/Rosja-cwiczyla-atak-atomowy-na-Polske/
See also
Sõnad ja Teras
(‘Words and Steel') by Kaarel Kaas,
Postimees
(Tallinn), 19 September 2009
http://www.postimees.ee/165608/kaarel-kaas-sonad-ja-teras/
and ‘Russian Military Thinking and Threat Perception: A Finnish View', by Stefan Forss
http://www.ceri-sciencespo.com/ressources/n5_13112009.pdf

14
See for example ‘Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of US' by Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, New York Times, 4 August 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/8/5/world/5patrol.html
and ‘Russian subs stalk Trident in echo of Cold War' by Thomas Harding, Daily Telegraph, 27 August 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/7969017/Russian-subs-stalk-Trident-in-echo-of-Cold-War.html

15
No documentary evidence exists for the promise. If it was made (or understood) orally, it was to a state that no longer exists, under duress and without consultation with the other countries concerned. Moreover, Russia can hardly argue both that it is no threat to its neighbours, and that it has a right to veto their security choices. See
Opening NATO's Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era
by the late Ronald Asmus (Columbia University Press, 2002).

16
A
Washington Post
investigation in 2010 ‘Top Secret America' highlighted the unmanageable size and complexity of the nation's intelligence agencies.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

17
‘Polish FM in WikiLeaks: Germany is Russia's Trojan Horse', by Andrew Reitman,
EU Observer
, 16 September 2011
http://euobserver.com/24/113652

18
Welt am Sonntag, ibid.

19
‘Time to Shove Off',
The Economist
, 10 September 2011
http://www.economist.com/node/21528596

20
This is actually the wrong acronym, as FAPSI has been incorporated into the FSB.
http://www.fas.org/irp/world/russia/fapsi/index.html

21
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/38125772
by P. King.

22
As reported here: ‘Seen from on high', Europe.view column, The Economist 3 April, 2008
http://www.economist.com/node/10950261
. The Inmarsat satellite was repositioned in 2009. Russia could in theory have built the station in the Kaliningrad exclave – but any data sent back to the rest of Russia would have been vulnerable. Modern interception technology is able to obtain not only microwave and radio transmissions, but also data carried on seabed fibre-optic cables, by means of a ‘collar' placed at a point where the cable curves.

23
Russia is now a participant in the Wassenaar Arrangement, which restricts the export of sensitive equipment to so-called rogue states.
http://www.wassenaar.org/guidelines/

24
This is an archaic bit of legislation dating from 1974 intended to put pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Jewish would-be émigrés to leave the country freely. It is routinely waived by the Senate, but remains an irritant. See
http://www.cfr.org/trade/jackson-vanik-amendment/p18844

25
Discussion of this case is difficult for legal reasons. For some years Mr Deripaska, an aluminium tycoon, has had difficulty gaining an American visa because of what officials described as ‘concerns about his business practices and associates'. The FBI is believed to have an audio recording in which he discusses some business difficulties and a planned solution in robust terms. He recently received a visa in exchange for a lengthy interview with officials from the criminal-justice system who sought his help in areas of interest to the US government. Nothing concrete resulted. See ‘FBI Lets Barred Tycoon Visit US' by Evan Perez and Gregory White,
Wall St Journal
30 October 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125685578903317087.html
and also Mr Deripaska's response
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125687000832717809.html

26
http://valdaiclub.com/
gives a flavour of the lavish nature of this event.

27
Other papers which have swallowed this include
European Voice
(published by
the Economist
), where I write a weekly column;
Le Figaro
(France); the
Economic Times
and the
Times of India
(India); Duma (Bulgaria);
Folha de São Paulo
(Brazil); la
Repubblica
(Italy);
Clarín
(Argentina);
El País
(Spain);
Süddeutsche Zeitung
(Germany) and
Geopolitika
(Serbia).
http://russianow.washingtonpost.com/about/
and
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/

28
On 8 September 2007 it printed a commentary claiming that the Katy
ń
massacre of Polish officers in 1940 was not the work of the Soviet secret police, but of the Nazis. The original article is available here
http://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t147/apamyatnykh/GAZETA1s.jpg?t=1191101536
See also
http://katynfiles.com/content/pamyatnykh-sabov-strygin-shved.html

29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipGjIs3ovIc

30
Such as complaining about the language and citizenship laws in Estonia and Latvia: see for example ‘Latvia and Estonia discriminate against non-citizens' by Yevgeny Kryshkin,
The Voice of Russia
, 26 February 2010
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/2/26/4852056.html
Both countries have substantial, though declining, populations of Soviet-era migrants who have so far declined to learn the national languages or take the test that would entitle them to citizenship. Estonia's non-citizen population dropped below the symbolically important 100,00 mark in April 2011; in Latvia the Russian-speaking population is better integrated socially but more active politically (partly as a result of Latvian state weakness, and partly because of Russian state interference).

31
See
http://www.siac.tribunals.gov.uk/Documents/zatuliveter_substantive_29Nov11.pdf

4
Real Spies, Real Victims

1
‘Russian Spy Has Defected to Canada' by Jim Bronskill and Mike Trickey, National Post, 9 March 2001. Not available online directly but copied at
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/intelforum/2001-March/04354.html

2
Snapshots of the site are available at
http://www.domaintools.com/research/screenshot-history/
for subscribers, or via the Wayback internet archive.

3
AIA listed its contributors as follows: Michel Elbaz – general coordinator; Allister Maunk – administrator and editor; Can Karpat – Turkish and Balkan section; Simon Araloff – European section; Anders Asmus – regional and international politics of Baltic states; Pavel Simonov – Russian section; Ulugbek Djuraev – Central-Asian section; Asim Oku – Turkish section; Sami Rosen – Israeli section; Alexander Petrov – webmaster.

4
One oddity was that on 13 May 2009 the privacy-protection had slipped. The registrant's email was now listed, with an Israeli postal address: [email protected] Ha-Ela 16, Bene Ayish 79845. Whoever had been so keen to protect the site's identity was now either careless or carefree.

5
‘WikiLeaks cable: Russian leadership viewed Lieberman as “one of its own”: Message from US embassy to State Department shows FM was treated as an “old friend” during a 2009 visit to Moscow' by Barak Ravid, Haaretz, 29 November 2010
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/wikileaks-cable-russian-leadership-viewed-lieberman-as-one-of-its-own-1.327694

6
‘Intelligence war breaks out in Israel's Foreign Ministry' by Joseph Fitsanakis, 20 July 2009.
http://intelligencenews.wordpress.com/2009/7/20/1-188/

7
According to the German security service
http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/download/SHOW/vsbericht_2009.pdf
p. 331 (in German).

8
A prominent semi-retired officer, Anton Surikov, died mysteriously in late 2009. In his last interview with a Western journalist a few weeks earlier, he said that Russia was run by ‘bandits from St Petersburg'. They, he said, were trying to push the country towards an authoritarian, Chinese-style model of political and economic development. The GRU director Valentin Korabelnikov retired in 2009 to avoid sacking, amid semi-public disagreement with his bosses over Russia's military reforms. ‘Last Cake with a Russian Agent' by Ben Judah, Standpoint, January/February 2010
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/2580/full

9
Viewable at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFnsqivNW6A

10
‘
Polska bro
ń
w slu
ż
bie gruzi
ń
skiej armii'
(‘Polish weapons in the service of the Georgian Army') by Michael Majewski and Pawel Reszka; Dziennik, Warsaw, 10 August 2008.
http://wiadomosci.dziennik.pl/polityka/artykuly/156916,polska-bron-w-sluzbie-gruzinskiej-armii.html

11
An excellent account of the conflict is
A Little War That Shook The World
by the late Ron Asmus (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Another is
The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia
by Svante Cornell and Frederick Starr (eds.) (M. E. Sharpe, 2009).

12
Georgia's South Ossetia Conflict: Make Haste Slowly
, Crisis Group Europe Report No. 183, 7 June 2007, p. 16
http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/europe/183_georgia_s_south_ossetia_conflict_make_haste_slowly.ashx

13
My source for this is a Georgian government non-paper and interviews with senior Georgian and Western officials. See also ‘Tbilisi Says Evidence Links Russian Officer to Blasts',
Civil Georgia
, 8 December 2010.
http://www.civil.ge/eng/article.php?id=22940
and ‘Georgia accuses Russia of bombings, warns on talks' by Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters, 7 June 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/6/7/georgia-russia-talks-idUSLDE75622520110607

5
Spycraft: Fact and Fiction

1
They may have some self-defence training and will often be excellent drivers. Those who have joined after a previous career in the military, particularly in special forces, are different; so are the dodgy characters often recruited as auxiliaries. For gossipy details of CIA training, see Blowing My Cover:
My Life as a CIA Spy
by Lindsay Moran (Putnam, 2005).

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