Yuri Drozdov, handler of Soviet undercover spies during Cold War, dies at 91
June 26, 2017 Leave a comment
General Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, who held senior positions in the Soviet KGB for 35 years, and handled a global network of Soviet undercover officers from 1979 until 1991, has died at the age of 91. Drozdov was born in Minsk, Soviet Belarus, in 1925. His father, Ivan Dmitrievich Drozdov, was an officer in the tsarist army who sided with the communists in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. After serving in World War II, Yuri Drozdov joined the KGB in 1956. Following his training, he was appointed liaison officer between the KGB and East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi.
His knowledge of East German intelligence affairs prompted his involvement in the famous 1962 spy-swap between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets surrendered the American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who had been captured in May 1960, when the U-2 spy plane he was piloting was shot down over Soviet airspace. In return, they received Rudolf Abel (real name Vilyam Fisher) a Soviet undercover spy who was captured in New York in 1957, posing as an American citizen. From 1964 until 1968, Drozdov was stationed in Beijing, China, where he served as the KGB rezident, effectively the agency’s chief of station. He returned to Moscow and in 1975 was posted under diplomatic cover in the United States, where he commanded the KGB’s station in New York until 1979.
Upon his return to the USSR, Drozdov was promoted to chief of the KGB’s Directorate S, which handled the agency’s worldwide network of so-called illegals —intelligence officers serving abroad without official cover or formal connection to the Soviet Union. Shortly after his return to Moscow, Drozdov also headed Operation STORM-333, a daring attack on the presidential palace in Afghanistan, during which Soviet special forces killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and essentially fired the opening shots of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war. The experience prompted Drozdov to recommend to his superiors the establishment of a new KGB special-forces unit. It was created in 1981 under the name Vympel (Pennant) and headed by Drozdov himself. He commanded several Vympel missions in and out of the USSR before resigning from the KGB in 1991.
Little is known about the specifics of Drozdov’s death. It is believed that he died on June 21, surrounded by his family. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a successor agency of the KGB, issued a brief statement commemorating Drozdov’s service. It was followed by a statement issued by the office of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, which praised Drozdov as “a legendary spy, outstanding professional […], incredible person and true patriot”.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 June 2017 | Permalink
The foreign intelligence service of Germany spied on at least 4,000 targets in the United States from 1998 until 2006, according to a leaked document published yesterday by leading German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. The German investigative weekly said that the surveillance was carried out by the German Federal Intelligence Service, known as BND. The Hamburg-based magazine claimed to have in its possession a list of approximately 4,000 “selector keywords”, unique distinguishing terms, addresses or numbers that identify individual targets for surveillance. The list allegedly includes names, telephone or fax numbers, and email addresses of people that the BND had identified as worthy of individual attention between 1998 and 2006.
A British court has convicted a lone-wolf female dissident Irish republican, who plotted attacks against police officers after using Facebook to lure two men into joining a fictitious militant organization. Her two male accomplices took their own lives in recent months. The rare case centers on Christine Connor, a 31-year-old resident of Northern Ireland and self-described dissident republican.
The global reach of the Islamic State through the use of the internet remains “largely intact” despite relentless efforts by some of America’s most advanced cyber warfare experts to neutralize the group’s online presence. It is now over a year since the United States Department of Defense announced that it had launched a cyber war against the Islamic State —the militant Sunni Muslim group that today controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.
A former director of Qatar’s intelligence agency broke ranks with the government of Qatar and accused Doha of supporting terrorism. He also warned that the United States, which has a base in Qatar, would not allow the presence of foreign troops there.
Secret military assistance from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which violates United Nations sanctions, is helping Libya’s eastern-based rebels prevail in the civil war there, according to a new report. Libya has remained in a state of anarchy since 2011, when a popular uprising backed by the West and its allies led to the demise of the country’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Currently the strongest faction in the post-2011 Libyan Civil War is the eastern-based Tobruk-led Government, which is affiliated with the Libyan National Army (LNA). The commander of the LNA is Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an old adversary of Colonel Gaddafi, who lived in the US under Washington’s protection for several decades before returning to Libya in 2011.
New information about carefully targeted attempts by Russian operatives to compromise the November 2016 presidential elections in the United States have emerged in a newly published intelligence document. The document, which dates from May of this year, was produced by the US National Security Agency and 
The new president of South Korea has officially banned the country’s spy agency from engaging in domestic intelligence gathering, in a move that some say signals an era of sweeping security reforms in the country. South Korea’s intelligence agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) fell into disrepute in recent years, after many of its officers were found to have secretly sided with conservative political candidates for public office. In 2015, the NIS’ former director, Won Sei-hoon, was 
Russian espionage in the United States has become increasingly sophisticated and brazen, and American counterintelligence professionals are finding it difficult to contain it “after years’ worth of inattention” according to sources. 
Ukrainian security service personnel raided the offices of a Russia-based internet search engine firm in two cities on Tuesday, as part of a treason investigation. The probe is reportedly related to the ongoing dispute between Kiev and Moscow, which intensified after 2014, when Russia unilaterally annexed the Russian district of Crimea. The Ukrainian government also accuses the Kremlin of clandestinely supporting pro-Russian insurgents in southeastern Ukraine, something that Moscow denies.
In a further sign of worsening relations between Turkey and the West, Turkey’s foreign minister has accused Western countries of secretly employing journalists to spread “terrorist” propaganda against his country. His claims come just days after European leaders strongly criticized Ankara for imprisoning foreign journalists without trial. During a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders in Brussels last week, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel protested the arrest of Deniz Yücel, a reporter for German newspaper Die Welt, who was arrested in Turkey in February. Yücel, who is a German citizen, has remained imprisoned without trial for more than three months. Germany’s protests were 
The exiled half-brother of North Korea’s leader, who was assassinated in Malaysia in February, is thought to have met with a man believed to be an American intelligence officer shortly before he was killed, according to reports. Kim Jong-nam the grandson of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-Sung, 
Authorities in Israel have revised their intelligence-sharing protocols with the American government after it became known that United States President Donald Trump inadvertently exposed Israeli secrets to Russia. The alleged exposure of Israeli secrets came earlier this month, during a meeting between Mr. Trump and a delegation of Russian government officials, which included Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak, Moscow’s Ambassador to Washington.
Teams of United States Special Forces are carrying out “nearly 100 missions at any given time” in the continent of Africa, according to American military documents released to the media. Operating under the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), US Special Forces are trained to carry out missions using unconventional tactics. Much of their work is classified. However, a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York-based Vice News has 
American spies use US Federal Reserve to monitor foreign banks
June 27, 2017 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
As one would expect, the ‘custodial services’ provided to foreign state banks by the US Federal Reserve are subject to strict confidentiality rules. However, according to a report published yesterday by Reuters, US intelligence agencies have found ways to circumvent these rules and monitor the activities of foreign banks who use the US Federal Reserve’s services. The news agency said it interviewed “more than a dozen current and former senior [Federal Reserve] and [US] Treasury [Department] officials”, including executives and division heads. It concludes that the US Intelligence Community has “leveraged the [US Federal Reserve’s] position at the center of global finance” to gain insights into the financial activities of foreign governments.
Specifically, the report alleges that American spies have made regular use of a little-known “need to know” exception clause to the US Federal Reserve’s confidentiality rules, and have been able to monitor the financial activities of selected foreign governments. These include Libya, Yemen, Iraq, China, Russia and Turkey, among others, says Reuters. In its report, the news agency says that the exception clause has been used at least seven times in the past 15 years. In some of these instances, the intelligence gathered led to “specific US responses” in relation to the financing of terrorism, or large-scale money-laundering. In other cases, the intelligence gathered helped Washington closely monitor market activity in areas of interest around the world, says Reuters.
The news agency contacted the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and was told by a spokesperson that the exception to the Federal Reserve’s confidentiality rules “has been used on rare occasions and on a limited basis”. These instances related to “issues as compliance with sanctions requirements and anti-money laundering principles”, said the spokesperson. The US government did not respond to calls for comments.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 June 2017 | Permalink
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