Notorious Russian arms dealer ‘refused US offer for lighter sentence’

August 10, 2016 by 1 Comment

Viktor BoutThe wife of Viktor Bout, the imprisoned Russian arms dealer dubbed ‘the merchant of death’, said he rejected an offer by his American captors who asked him to testify against a senior Russian government official. Born in Soviet Tajikistan, Bout was a former translator for the Soviet military. After the end of the Cold War, he set up several low-profile international air transport companies and used them to transfer large shipments of weapons that fueled wars in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. He made millions in the process and acquired international notoriety, which inspired the Hollywood blockbuster Lord of War. But his business ventures ceased in 2008, when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, with the cooperation of the Royal Thai Police. He was eventually extradited to the US and given a 25-year prison term for supplying weapons to the Afghan Taliban, and for trying to sell arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Bout is currently serving his sentence at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in New York.

In a newspaper interview on Tuesday, Bout’s wife, Alla Bout, said her husband could have gotten away with a considerably lighter sentence had he agreed to testify against a senior Russian government official. Speaking to Moscow-based daily Izvestia, Alla Bout said her husband had been approached by American authorities after being extradited to the United States from Thailand. He was told that US authorities wanted him to testify against Igor Sechin, a powerful Russian government official, whom American prosecutors believed was Bout’s boss. In return for his testimony, US prosecutors allegedly promised a jail sentence that would not exceed two years, as well as political asylum for him and his family following his release from prison. Alla Bout added that her husband’s American lawyers were told by the prosecution that the ‘merchant of death’ “would be able to live in the US comfortably, along with his wife and daughter”, and that his family could stay in America during his trial “under conditions”. Alla Bout claimed she was told this by Bout himself and by members of his American legal team.

From 2008 to 2012, Sechin, who has military background, served as Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister. Today he heads the Board of Directors of Rosneft, a government-owned oil extraction and refinement company, which is considered one of the world’s most powerful business ventures. Many observers see Sechin as the most formidable man in Russia after Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is also believed to be a senior member of the Siloviki, a secretive group of government officials in the Putin government who have prior careers in national security or intelligence. Although Bout and Sechin have never acknowledged having met each other, some investigators of Bout’s weapons-trading activities believe that the two were close allies. It is believed that the two men first met in Angola and Mozambique in the 1980s, where they were stationed while serving in the Soviet military. But the two men deny they knowing each other. According to Alla Bout, Viktor told his American captors that he “never worked for Sechin and did not know him in person”. He therefore turned down the prosecution’s offer and was handed a 25-year sentence. When asked by the Izvestia reporters whether Bout was simply protecting the powerful Russian government official, Alla Bout insisted that the two “have never even met, not once”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 10 August 2016 | Permalink

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Sophisticated spy malware found on Russian government computers

August 1, 2016 by 1 Comment

FSB - IAAccording to the predominant media narrative, the United States is constantly defending itself against cyber-attacks from countries like China and Russia. But, as intelNews has argued for years, this narrative is misleading. Recent intelligence disclosures clearly show that the US cyber-security posture is as offensive as that of its major adversaries. Additionally, China and Russia have to defend their computer networks as much as America does. Last weekend’s report from Moscow helps restore some of the balance that is missing from media reporting on cyber-security. According to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), a meticulously coded and sophisticated virus has been found on the computer networks of at least 20 major Russian agencies and organizations. The targets appear to have been carefully selected by the malware’s authors. They include government bodies, weapons laboratories and defense contractors located throughout Russia.

The FSB said that once installed, the virus gave its handler control of the infected computer system. It permitted an outside hacker to turn on a computer’s microphone or camera, and capture screenshots. It also stealthily installed keylogging software, thus allowing an outside party to monitor keyboard strokes on an infected system. Based on its functions, the malicious software seems to be designed to conduct deep surveillance on infected computers and their physical surroundings. The FSB would not attribute the malware to a specific hacking group or nation. But it said it believed that the malware attack was “coordinated”, “planned and planned professionally”. It also said that the coding of the virus “required considerable expertise”. In a brief statement released Saturday, the FSB said that aspects of the coding of the virus, as well as other identifying information, resembled those detected in preceding hacking attacks on computer servers in Russia and other countries. The statement did not elaborate, however.

The news about hacked Russian computers comes less than two weeks after it was claimed that Russian government-backed hackers stole electronic data belonging to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in the United States. The Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, publicly accused the Russian government of orchestrating the hacking of the DNC computer systems in an attempt to damage her campaign.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 01 August 2016 | Permalink

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Did Russian intelligence warn Turkish government of impending coup?

July 22, 2016 by 4 Comments

Turkey coupRussian and Turkish authorities will not confirm or deny reports that the Kremlin warned Turkey’s intelligence services about an impending coup on July 15, several hours before tanks appeared on the streets of major Turkish cities. On Wednesday, several Arab and Iranian news outlets claimed that Russian intelligence officials told the government in Ankara that the Turkish military was preparing a coup. The reports cited anonymous Turkish diplomats who said that Turkish intelligence was urgently alerted by the Russians “hours before [the military coup] was initiated on Friday”.

According to the unconfirmed reports, the secret preparations for the coup first came to the attention of Russian military intelligence. Its radio interceptors captured —and were subsequently able to read— a series of encoded radio messages exchanged between Turkish commanders in the early hours of July 15. There is no information about the precise circumstances of the alleged interception, though media reports note the significant presence of Russian military intelligence in the northern Syrian province of Latakia, a few miles south of the Turkish border. The reports state that the intercepted messages contained “highly sensitive army exchanges” involving a plan to send army helicopters to the Turkish resort port of Marmaris, where the Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan was holidaying, in order to kill or capture him. Russian intelligence officials reportedly shared the information with senior members of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT). The alleged exchange allegedly took place “several hours before the start of the coup” in Turkey.

However, government officials in Ankara will not comment on the possibility that Russian intelligence services may have warned the MİT about the coup. On Thursday, Russian government spokesman Dmitri Peskov was asked directly by journalists whether the Kremlin warned Turkish officials of an impending coup by the military. He responded saying “I have no information of that kind and I do not know which sources [the media reports] are citing in making these claims”. Russia’s TASS news agency interpreted Peskov’s comment as a denial. However, the wording in his response shows that he simply denies having personal knowledge of the incident. He does not deny it happened.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 22 July 2016 | Permalink

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Russian foreign intelligence headquarters has doubled in size since 2007

July 14, 2016 by 2 Comments

SVR hqRecent satellite images reveal that the headquarters of the Russian Federation’s external intelligence agency has doubled, and possibly tripled, in size in the past nine years. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR, is one of the successor agencies of the Soviet-era KGB. During the Soviet times, the present-day SVR was known as the First Chief Directorate or First Main Directorate of the KGB. Despite its name change, however, its mission remains the same, namely to collect secrets from targets outside the Russian Federation —often through the use of espionage— and to disseminate intelligence to the president. In the Soviet days, along with most of the KGB, the First Chief Directorate was headquartered in the imposing Lubyanka building, which is located in Moscow’s Meshchansky District. But in the early 1970s, the entire First Chief Directorate began a decade-long process of moving to a new, state-of-the-art complex in the southern suburbs of the Russian capital. The complex, which is located in Yasenevo, today houses the entire apparatus of the SVR, including its espionage wing, and is informally known as les (the forest) or kontora (the office).

Until 2007, the SVR’s Yasenevo headquarters consisted of a large Y-shaped office building that adjoins an imposing 21-story skyscraper, which is visible for several miles around. But an open-source collection of recent satellite images shows that the top-secret complex has doubled —and possibly tripled— in size in the past decade. Steven Aftergood, who edits the Federation ofMikhail Fradkov American Scientists’ Secrecy News blog, has published a collection of images that was compiled by Allen Thomson, an analyst who worked for the United States Central Intelligence Agency from 1972 to 1985. The images clearly show that at least three more large buildings have been erected alongside the landmark skyscraper and the adjoining Y-shaped office block. These additions, says Aftergood, appear to have increased the SVR headquarters’ floor space “by a factor of two or more”. Moreover, the nearby parking capacity at the complex “appears to have quadrupled”, he adds.

There is no information available about what may have prompted the sudden building expansion at the SVR complex, nor whether it reflects drastic changes in the organizational structure, budget or mission of the agency. Secrecy News quotes Russian intelligence observer Andrei Soldatov, who suggests that there may be a direct connection between the expansion of the SVR facility and the appointment of Mikhail Fradkov as the agency’s director, in 2007. Fradkov is a Soviet-era diplomat, who some suspect was secretly an officer of the KGB. He served as Russia’s prime minister from 2004 to 2007, when he was appointed director of the SVR —a position that he retains to this day. There have been suggestions in the Russian media that Fradkov could succeed Vladimir Putin when the latter retires from his post as president of the Russian Federation.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 14 July 2016 | Permalink

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Senior Russian intelligence defector to the US is allegedly dead

July 11, 2016 by Leave a comment

Aleksandr PoteyevA Russian former senior intelligence officer, who reportedly defected to the United States after helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrest 10 Russian spies in 2010, is believed to have died. The arrests, which revealed the so-called “Russian illegals program” in the US, were part of a counterintelligence operation codenamed GHOST STORIES by the FBI. The operation culminated in June 2010 with the dramatic arrests of 10 Russian ‘illegals’ in several US states. The Russian illegals, deep-cover intelligence operatives with no official connection to the country that employs them, had been operating in the US for over a decade prior to their arrest, using passports from third countries, including Britain, Canada and Uruguay. They were eventually exchanged with spies for the West that had been imprisoned in Russia.

Moscow blamed the arrests of the illegals on Colonel Aleksandr Poteyev, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, who rose through the ranks of the KGB and its successor agency, the SVR, to become second-in-command in the so-called Department S. The senior leaders of Department S are believed to be appointed directly by the president of Russia, and are tasked with directing the activities of all Russian illegals operating abroad. According to the Russian government, which tried Poteyev in absentia in 2011, he began working for the US Central Intelligence Agency in 1999, shortly before entering the senior echelons of Department S.

A panel of judges was told during Poteyev’s Moscow trial that he left Russia without permission on June 24, 2010, just days before the FBI arrested the 10 Russian illegals in the US. He initially went to Belarus, from where he notified his unsuspecting wife via a text sent from a mobile phone that he was leaving Russia for good. He then traveled to Ukraine and from there to Germany, where he was allegedly picked up by his American CIA handler. It is believed that was provided with a new identity and passport, which he used to enter the US. By the time the Russians sentenced him to 25 years in prison for treason, Poteyev was adjusting to his new life in America.

But on July 7, the Moscow-based Interfax news agency reported that Poteyev, had died in the US, aged 64. The brief report did not specify the cause of Poteyev’s alleged death, nor did it state how Interfax acquired the information. Since the report was issued, no confirmation of Poteyev’s purported death has appeared from any other news source, or from government agencies. Russia’s Sputnik News contacted the SVR last week, but the agency declined to comment. It is believed that Poteyev’s two children were working in the US at the time of his defection, and that they are still living in the country.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 11 July 2016 | Permalink

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Video footage shows alleged CIA spy tackled outside US Moscow embassy

July 8, 2016 by 1 Comment

US embassy scuffleA Russian television station has aired footage allegedly showing a Russian guard stationed outside the United States embassy in Moscow trying to stop an American diplomat from entering the embassy. The Kremlin claims that the alleged US diplomat was in fact a Central Intelligence Agency officer who was returning to the embassy in disguise following a spy operation. As intelNews reported on July 1, the incident took place in the early hours of Monday, June 6. The American diplomat was making his way to the front entrance of the US embassy complex, which is located in the Presnensky District in downtown Moscow.

According to American sources, the diplomat was approached by an employee of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, which regularly stations security personnel around the sizeable US embassy complex. The FSB claims that the guards are there to protect US diplomats, though it is common knowledge that the Russian agency, which is responsible for counterespionage, is primarily there to monitor activities in and around the US embassy. American sources claim that the diplomat presented the Russian guard with proof of identification when asked to do so. But he was then physically attacked and struck repeatedly by the FSB officer, which left him with several injuries, including a broken shoulder. The diplomat managed to enter the embassy grounds and had to be flown out of the country for urgent medical treatment. He has not returned to Russia.

On Thursday, Russian television channel NTV aired video footage purporting to show the altercation between the US diplomat and the FSB guard. The video aired on NTV shows a man exiting a taxi in a hurry and heading to what appears to be the US embassy’s front-perimeter entrance. However, as the man makes heads for the entrance, a uniformed individual jumps out of a guard station located nearby and tackles the man, throwing him on the ground. A scuffle ensues, during which the alleged diplomat is seen desperately trying to reach the entrance of the US embassy, which is American soil. He eventually manages to enter the embassy grounds, despite the effort of the uniformed guard to prevent him from entering. The same NTV report identified the American diplomat as Daniel Van Dyken and showed the photograph of a man said to be him. The report states that Van Dyken serves as third secretary of the US embassy’s Political Department.

Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged that the diplomat in question was an intelligence officer. “It is well known”, said Zakharova, “that this very diplomat was in fact an agent of the CIA and was returning [to the US embassy], in disguise, after conducting an intelligence operation the previous night”. She also said that the Russian government employee involved in the altercation was a “police officer” who was attacked by the alleged spy when he asked to be shown proof of identification. Instead of supplying identification documents, the American diplomat “struck the guard in the face with his elbow before disappearing into the embassy”, said Zakharova. The US State Department and the CIA have refused to comment on Zakharova’s allegations.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 08 July 2016 | Permalink

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Diplomat involved in fight with US embassy guard is CIA spy, says Russia

July 1, 2016 by 1 Comment

FSB - IAThe Russian government says that an American diplomat, who was allegedly beaten up by a Russian security guard outside the United States embassy compound in Moscow, is an undercover spy. The man, who has not been named, was stationed in the Russian capital by the State Department as an accredited diplomat with immunity from prosecution in Russia. However, The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the American diplomat was severely beaten by a Russian government employee while attempting to enter the US embassy compound.

The alleged incident is reported to have taken place in the early hours of Monday, June 6. The American diplomat was making his way to the front entrance of the US embassy complex, which is located in the Presnensky District in downtown Moscow. According to American sources, the diplomat was approached by an employee of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, which regularly stations security personnel around the sizeable US embassy complex. The FSB claims that the guards are there to protect US diplomats, though it is common knowledge that the Russian agency, which is responsible for counterespionage, is primarily there to monitor activities in and around the US embassy. American sources claim that the diplomat presented the Russian guard with proof of identification when asked to do so. But he was then physically attacked and struck repeatedly by the FSB officer, which left him with several injuries, including a broken shoulder. According to The Washington Post, the diplomat managed to enter the embassy grounds and had to be flown out of the country for urgent medical treatment. He has not returned to Russia.

The US government believes the attack was intentional. But what caused it? One theory entertained by The Washington Post is that the diplomat was in fact an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency working in Moscow under official cover, pretending to be a State Department employee. According to this theory, the FSB was chasing the American diplomat through the streets of Moscow after a spy operation that went awry. The Russians then tried unsuccessfully to prevent him from entering the US embassy, which constitutes American soil.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged that the diplomat in question was an intelligence officer. “It is well known”, said Zakharova, “that this very diplomat was in fact an agent of the CIA and was returning [to the US embassy], in disguise, after conducting an intelligence operation the previous night”. She also said that the Russian government employee involved in the altercation was a “police officer” who was attacked by the alleged spy when he asked to be shown proof of identification. Instead of supplying identification documents, the American diplomat “struck the guard in the face with his elbow before disappearing into the embassy”, said Zakharova. The US State Department and the CIA refused to comment on Zakharova’s allegations.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 01 July 2016 | Permalink

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Harassment of diplomats is part of escalating US-Russian ‘gray war’

June 28, 2016 by 3 Comments

US embassy in RussiaA notable increase in incidents of harassment of American diplomats stationed in Europe by Russian intelligence personnel appears to be part of what some officials describe as an escalating “gray war” between the US and Russia. For over a year now, American State Department personnel stationed in Europe have been complaining of a systematic campaign of “harassment and intimidation” against them and their families by Russian intelligence operatives. The campaign is allegedly being waged in Moscow and other European capitals, and has prompted one US diplomat to say that he and his colleagues were “feeling embattled out there in the embassy”. The Washington Post, which published the story on Monday, said that the diplomats’ concerns about the Russian campaign of intimidation were raised again at a recent meeting in Washington of US ambassadors serving in Europe and Russia.

According to The Post, some of the harassment can be characterized as routine, and involves Russian intelligence personnel conducting surveillance of American diplomats, taunting them at social events, or bribing local journalists to report negatively on their activities. But these pranks have allegedly become uglier and even criminal after 2014. The Post said that it had read “a series of secret memos” sent to the State Department by US embassies and consulates in Russia and Europe, which suggest that the increasing harassment of American diplomats is connected to the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia after its military intervention in Ukraine. In some instances, Russian intelligence operatives broke into the homes of American diplomats at night and rearranged the furniture, or turned on all the lights and electronic equipment before leaving. In another case, a US diplomat’s children were followed to school, while another’s car tires were slashed repeatedly, said the paper.

The State Department’s press secretary John Kirby told The Post that incidents of overt harassment of US diplomatic personnel by Russian government employees had indeed increased. Norm Eisen, America’s former ambassador to the Czech Republic, told the paper that the intimidation was part of “the gray war” between Washington and Moscow, which has escalated following Russia’s intervention in the Ukraine.

A statement from the Russian embassy in Washington denied that the Russian government was behind the alleged incidents. But it went on to state: “In diplomatic practice there is always the principle of reciprocity and, indeed, for the last couple of years our diplomatic staff in the United States has been facing certain problems”. This statement can be seen to imply that Russia is responding to instances of intimidation of its diplomats by US authorities. The statement added: “The deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations […] was not caused by us, but rather by the current [US] administration’s policy of sanctions and attempts to isolate Russia”. The Post said that US Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issued directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his visit to Moscow in March, but that the harassment has continued. US President Barack Obama is apparently aware of the situation, but has ordered US intelligence agencies “not to respond with similar measures against Russian diplomats”, said the paper.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 26 1 June 2016 | Permalink

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Islamic State’s online army is a Russian front, says German intelligence

June 20, 2016 by 1 Comment

Cyber CaliphateA German intelligence report alleges that the so-called ‘Cyber Caliphate’, the online hacker wing of the Islamic State, is in fact a Russian front, ingeniously conceived to permit Moscow to hack Western targets without retaliation. The group calling itself Cyber Caliphate first appeared in early 2014, purporting to operate as the online wing of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), later renamed Islamic State. Today the Cyber Caliphate boasts a virtual army of hackers from dozens of countries, who are ostensibly operating as the online arm of the Islamic State. Their known activities include a strong and often concentrated social media presence, and computer hacking, primarily in the form of cyber espionage and cyber sabotage.

Since its inception, the Cyber Caliphate has claimed responsibility for hacking a number of European government agencies and private media outlets. Its targets include the BBC and French television channel TV5 Monde, which was severely impacted by cyber sabotage in April of 2015. The Cyber Caliphate said it was also behind attacks on the servers of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, and the website of the Pentagon’s US Central Command. The US has since retaliated, both with cyber attacks and physical strikes. One such strike resulted in the killing of Junaid Hussain, a British hacker of Pakistani background, who was said to be among the Cyber Caliphate’s senior commanders. Hussain, 21, was reportedly killed in August 2015 in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria, reportedly after clicking on a compromised link in an email, which gave away his physical whereabouts.

Now, however, a German intelligence report claims that the Cyber Caliphate is not associated with the Islamic State, but is rather a fictitious front group created by Russia. According to German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which said it had seen the classified report, German authorities suggest that the Cyber Caliphate is in fact a project of APT28 (also known as ‘Pawn Storm’), a notorious Russian hacking collective with close ties to Russian intelligence. The German intelligence report echoes previous assessments by French authorities, which in 2015 stated that the TV5 Monde cyber attack was a false flag operation orchestrated by APT28. Also in 2015, a security report by the US State Department concluded that despite the Cyber Caliphate’s proclamations of connections to the Islamic State, there were “no indications —technical or otherwise— that the groups are tied”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 20 June 2016 | Permalink

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Russia ‘mobilizing for war’ warns Canadian intelligence report

June 16, 2016 by 8 Comments

CSIS Canada A report by Canada’s primary intelligence agency warns in stark language that Russia is “retooling its military for a fight” and appears to be “mobilizing for war”. The classified report was accessed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the country’s state-owned broadcaster. According to the CBC, the document was produced by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s primary national intelligence service. It is titled 2018 Security Outlook and is described by the CBC as a “distillation” of information from open sources and publicly available academic research, without input from internal CSIS assessments.

The 104-page report contends that, in the absence of any serious opposition inside Russia, the hardline nationalistic policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin are going unchallenged and becoming “more deeply entrenched”. When assessed collectively, Putin’s maneuvers in the area of national defense reveal that he is “retooling [the Russian] military for a fight”, claims the CSIS report. It goes on to add that Moscow “is not modernizing its military primarily to extend its capacity to pursue hybrid warfare”. The term ‘hybrid warfare’ is used by some experts to describe Russia’s utilization of irregular military tactics during its invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and many believe that it points to the future evolution of Russian military thinking. But the CSIS document argues that President Putin is primarily modernizing Russian “conventional military capability on a large scale” and argues that “the state is mobilizing for war”.

The CSIS report is believed to be among several reasons why Ottawa is considering contributing hundreds of troops to a new 4,000-strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) force that is expected to be stationed in the Baltic States in the coming months. The Canadian intelligence agency argues in favor of a more aggressive NATO policy vis-à-vis Russia in its report, stating that the economic sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow after the annexation of Crimea are not working. Instead of faltering due to outside economic pressures, the Kremlin “appears to be coherent, durable and united”, says CSIS. Consequently, “Western assessments that Russia is vulnerable to economic collapse and disruptive internal discontent are exaggerated”, according to the report. The document concludes that Russia is “adapting to diversity [by] deliberately tilting [its economy] to security, rather than economic freedom”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 16 June 2016 | Permalink

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Portuguese, Russian spies arrested in Rome may have accomplices

May 30, 2016 by Leave a comment

Frederico Carvalhão,A Portuguese intelligence officer arrested a week ago in Rome, allegedly while passing classified documents to his Russian handler, may have accomplices with access to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secrets. IntelNews reported last week on the capture of Frederico Carvalhão, a section chief for Portugal’s Security Information Service (SIS), which is tasked with domestic security and counterintelligence. Carvalhão was arrested on May 23 at a café in the Trastevere district of Rome while passing a folder with six classified documents to a Russian man. The man is believed to be an employee of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR, though notably he does not have diplomatic status or immunity, and was therefore arrested. As we noted last week, this is atypical for an intelligence officer, as most of them operate as registered diplomats.

According to Portuguese media reports, the classified information that Carvalhão appears to have been sharing with the SVR since at least 2014 relate to NATO and the European Union (EU), of which Portugal is a member. However, the London-based newspaper Daily Telegraph reports that there are suspicions in Lisbon that Carvalhão was not working alone for the Russians. In other words, Portuguese investigators are looking into the possibility that the arrested spy was what is known as a ‘principal agent’. The latter signifies a mole that acts as a middle person between his foreign handlers and a cell of other agents working for him or her. The possibility that Carvalhão may not have been working alone was commented on by Portugal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, who said last week that the judicial investigation into the spy case was “ongoing”.

It appears that Carvalhão somehow managed to access NATO- and EU-related documents from the SIS’ Ameixoeira Fort headquarters in the Portuguese capital, to which he had no need-to-know access. Moreover, SIS computers do not accept flash drives, while all printed documents contain a secret watermark that identifies them as having been printed on an SIS printer. But Carvalhão appears to have somehow managed to acquire non-watermarked documents without having extracted them from an SIS computer with the use of a flash drive. Does that mean that someone else from inside SIS provided him with the documents? The EU and NATO are eagerly waiting for an answer.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 30 May 2016 | Permalink

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Russian deep-cover spy sentenced in New York court

May 27, 2016 by Leave a comment

VnesheconombankA Russian intelligence officer, who posed as a banker in the United States, has been handed a prison sentence by a court in New York. Evgeny Buryakov, 41, posed as an employee of the New York branch of Vnesheconombank, a Russian state-owned bank headquartered in Moscow. However, in January 2015, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Buryakov along with Igor Sporyshev, 40, and Victor Podobnyy, 27, who were employees of the trade office of the Russian permanent mission to the United Nations in New York. According to their indictment, Sporyshev and Podobnyy were in fact employees of the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, one of the direct institutional descendants of the Soviet-era KGB. The FBI said the two were employed by the SVR’s ‘ER’ Directorate, which focuses on economics and finance. Operating under diplomatic guise, they regularly met with Buryakov, who the FBI said was the third member of the alleged spy ring.

However, unlike Sporyshev and Podobnyy, Buryakov was operating under non-official cover, posing as a bank employee. Non-official-cover operatives, or NOCs, as they are typically referred to in the US Intelligence Community, are usually high-level principal agents or officers of an intelligence agency, who operate without official connection to the diplomatic authorities of the country that employs them. They typically pose as business executives, students, academics, journalists, or non-profit agency workers, among other covers. Unlike official-cover officers, who are protected by diplomatic immunity, NOCs have no such protection. If arrested by authorities of their host country, they can be tried and convicted for conducting espionage.

The court documents also reveal that Sporyshev and Podobnyy broke basic rules of intelligence tradecraft by contacting Buryakov using an unencrypted telephone line and addressing him by his real name, rather than his cover name. These conversations, which occurred in April 2013, turned out to be monitored by the FBI’s counterintelligence division, which promptly recorded them. The three SVR officers were arrested following a successful FBI sting operation, which involved an undercover FBI agent posing as an American investor offering to provide Buryakov with classified documents from the US Treasury. In March of this year, Buryakov pleaded guilty to working in the US as unregistered agent of Russia’s SVR. He has been sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000. Sporyshev and Podobnyy, who held diplomatic immunity, were expelled from the US following their arrest.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 May 2016 | Permalink

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Russian, Portuguese intelligence officers arrested in Rome on espionage charges

May 26, 2016 by Leave a comment

Frederico CarvalhãoTwo intelligence officers, one Russian and one Portuguese, have been arrested by Italian authorities on charges of espionage. The arrests took place in Rome on Monday by Italian police, who were reportedly accompanied by Portuguese counterintelligence officers. It is suggested in Portuguese media that the two men were arrested in the act of exchanging classified documents and money. The Portuguese intelligence officer has been identified in news reports as Frederico Carvalhão, a section chief for Portugal’s Security Information Service, which is tasked with domestic security and counterintelligence. The Russian intelligence officer has not been identified, but is believed to be an employee of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR. Interestingly, the Russian officer does not have diplomatic status and was therefore arrested, since he holds no diplomatic immunity.

A press release by the Portuguese government prosecutor said that Carvalhão had been arrested “along with a foreign subject linked to an intelligence organization” after a lengthy investigation into “concerns that [classified] information was being exchanged for money”. It is believed that Portuguese authorities began investigating Carvalhão in 2015, and now believe that he frequently traveled abroad to meet his Russian handler. He is thought to have been recruited by the Russians in 2014. According to Portuguese media reports, the documents that Carvalhão appears to have been giving the SVR contain information about the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Portugal is a member.

Carvalhão is said to have flown from Lisbon to Rome on Friday of last week in order to meet his SVR handler. The two men were meeting in a café on Saturday when they were arrested. The Portuguese government prosecutor said that Saturday’s arrests resulted from “rigorous collaboration between Portuguese and Italian authorities”. He also thanked Eurojust, a European Union agency based in the Netherlands, which focuses on cross-national judicial cooperation between European Union member-states. Security officers also raided Carvalhão’s home in Portugal, where they allegedly seized “documents and cash”. Both he and his alleged Russian hander remain in detention in Rome, while Italy is preparing to extradite them to Portugal.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 May 2016 | Permalink | News tip: C.W.

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Interview with children of Russian deep-cover spies caught in the US

May 9, 2016 by Leave a comment

First Post HThe two sons of a Russian couple, who were among 10 deep-cover spies arrested in the United States, have given an interview about their experience for the first time. Tim and Alex Foley (now Vavilov) are the sons of Donald Heathfield and Tracey Foley, a married couple arrested in 2010 under Operation GHOST STORIES, a counterintelligence program run by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. Following their arrest, their sons, who had grown up thinking their parents were Canadian, were told that they were in fact Russian citizens and that their real names were Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. Their English-sounding names and Canadian passports had been forged in the late 1980s by the KGB, the Soviet Union’s primary external intelligence agency.

The two boys were at the family’s home in suburban Cambridge, MA, on Sunday, June 27, 2010, when FBI agents conducted coordinated raids across New England, arresting their parents and eight more Russian ‘illegals’. That term is used to signify Russian non-official-cover operatives, namely intelligence officers who operate abroad without diplomatic cover and typically without connection to the country they spy for. It is now believed that Bezrukov and Vavilova were recruited as a couple in the 1980s by the KGB’s Department S, which operated the agency’s ‘illegals’ program. They were trained for several years before being sent to Canada, where their mission was to blend into the society and establish a ‘legend’, a background story of their lives that could be supported by forged documentation supplied by the KGB. In 1995, the family moved to Paris, France, where Bezrukov, using the name Donald Heathfield, earned Master in Business Administration from the École des Ponts. Both their children had been born by 1999, when the family moved to Massachusetts so that Bezrukov could study at Harvard University. He then joined a consultancy firm, which he apparently planned to use as a vehicle in order to get close to influential American lawmakers.

Their two sons, who are now living in unspecified locations in Europe and Singapore, told British newspaper The Guardian that their childhood was “absolutely normal” and that they never suspected their parents of being spies. They told The Guardian’s Shaun Walker that their parents never discussed Russia or the Soviet Union, never ate Russian food, and never met Russian people while in Massachusetts. The sons, whose Russian names are Alexander and Timofei Vavilov, said they remember meeting their grandparents “somewhere in Europe” when they were very young, but that they later disappeared from their lives. Their parents told them that they lived in rural Alberta, Canada, and that they found it difficult to travel.

The two brothers said that, shortly after their parents were arrested by the FBI, they were put on a plane to Moscow. When they arrived there, a group of people appeared on the plane door and introduced themselves to them as “colleagues of their parents”. They were then placed in a van and taken to a Moscow apartment, where they were given information about their parents’ true backgrounds, including photographs of them from their teenage lives and military service in the USSR. It was then, they told The Guardian, that they finally believed that their parents were indeed Russian spies.

The family reunited a few days later in Moscow, after Bezrukov, Vavilova, and the other Russian ‘illegals’ were exchanged with four men held in Russian jails for spying for the West. The two brothers now want to regain their Canadian citizenship, which was taken from them by the government of Canada after their parents were found to have been using forged Canadian citizenship papers. They argue that they feel Canadian, not Russian, and that they are not responsible for their parents’ actions, which were hidden from them until their arrest in 2010.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 09 May 2016 | Permalink

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Russia claims arrest of alleged CIA-trained spy

April 1, 2016 by 1 Comment

Lubyanka SquareThe Russian government says it has arrested a senior Ukrainian intelligence officer, who was allegedly trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and tasked with infiltrating the Russian secret services. In a statement published on Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as FSB, said the alleged infiltrator is a “senior level employee” of the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine. The SBU is Ukraine’s primary counterterrorism and counterintelligence agency, with much of its output focused on the Russian Federation.

The FSB statement identified the Ukrainian man as Lieutenant Colonel Yuriy Ivanchenko, but did not release further information about his background and identity, nor did it specify the details of his activities in Russia. According to the Russians, Ivanchenko allegedly entered the country in recent weeks, ostensibly in order to visit family members who live in Russia. But his real goal, according to the FSB, was to make contact with Russian intelligence and infiltrate the country’s security structure. Moscow says that Ivanchenko had planned to pose as a willing spy, namely an employee of Ukrainian intelligence who was offering to provide information to Russia. He was not a genuine spy, however, but rather a ‘dangle’ —namely someone posing as a genuine spy, but who is in fact attempting to deceive a rival intelligence agency by knowingly giving it misleading or inaccurate information.

Moreover, the Russians claim that Ivanchenko was being jointly run by the SBU and the CIA, and that the American intelligence agency had trained him to pose as a ‘dangle’ in order to collect information about FSB activities in Ukraine. The goal of the CIA, said Moscow, was to “lure an FSB employee and capture him with incriminating information”. However, the FSB statement said that Ivanchenko’s SBU connection and CIA affiliation were known to Russia prior to his arrival in the country, as he had previously tried to offer his services to Moscow. He was therefore arrested and will be deported in the coming days with a persona non grata (unwelcome person) designation. The CIA and SBU have not commented on Russia’s allegations.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 01 April 2016 | Permalink

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