Russian Spies in Britain

[cunobelin]

This is something I found in the Daily Telegraph:

Russian spies are trying to steal our secrets again, MI5 warns the Government
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 15/05/2005)

MI5 has warned government departments that Russia has resumed Cold War spying tactics in Britain, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The Security Service, which is responsible for counter-espionage within Britain, circulated the confidential document last month in response to an increase in the activities of Russian intelligence agents.

Ian Parr was jailed for attempting to pass military secrets

The document warns that Russian spies are travelling widely throughout Britain and pose a "substantial" espionage threat. The document also warns that any suspected spies should not be stopped, questioned or followed but that their activities should be reported to Special Branch officers and passed on to MI5.

The suspected spies - who include about 30 accredited Russian diplomats - are said to be attempting to obtain secret information about Britain's military capabilities and its defence industry. It is believed that they are also interested in the activities of Chechen asylum seekers and their associates.

The document, which is entitled Security Service Espionage Alert, states in its introduction: "Security Service espionage alerts draw attention to the potential threat posed by particular foreign intelligence officers, at the same time as soliciting help in the building up of understanding of their activities. The handling instructions provided with the distribution list reflect the fact that these reports are aimed at those most likely to come into contact with the intelligence officers concerned.

"The purpose of this Security Service espionage alert is to remind readers of the chance sighting scheme and to encourage reporting of any chance sighting of Russian diplomatic cars.

"We are aware that Russian intelligence officers travel widely throughout the UK and that some of the activity undertaken by these officers is intelligence related. The Russian Federation Intelligence Services are assessed to pose a SUBSTANTIAL espionage threat to the UK."

The memo explains that Russian diplomatic vehicles can be identified by their vehicle registration number, which includes 248D, plus a further three digits. It adds that if a vehicle is sighted the following should be noted: ''Full vehicle registration, date, time and place sighted, direction of travel, description and number of occupants, and a description of the vehicle."

It adds: "Russian diplomatic vehicles should not be stopped or followed, nor should their occupants be questioned for the purposes of additional information. Reports should be passed to Special Branch or the appropriate military security units for onward reporting to the Security Service."

The Russian spying network in Britain is run by the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which partly replaced the former KGB, and the GRU, the military intelligence organisation. The SVR is believed to have about 18 offices in Britain while the GRU is said to have 14 - all in the guise of official Russian organisations, with diplomatic status. The SVR is divided into three specialist fields: gaining intelligence on political issues, matters of security, and technology, such as military and commercial secrets. The GRU concentrates on running agents and focuses more on Britain's nuclear and military capabilities.

Russia has a vast military export industry and supplies weapons to China, India, parts of South America and many Arab countries in the Middle East.

According to Whitehall officials, Russia can hope to have a competitive defence industry only if it can stay ahead of the opposition and it is trying to achieve that position by exploiting the espionage skills developed during the Cold War.

In March 2003 Ian Parr, who worked for BAE Systems, was jailed for 10 years for attempting to pass military secrets to the Russians. Parr, 46, was a former soldier who hoped to make up to �130,000 for supplying secret material to the Russians on a new RAF weapon called Storm Shadow, a stealth cruise missile that was used for the first time in the Iraq war. Parr had earlier contacted the Russians and told them that he had information for sale but he was trapped in an undercover operation during which MI5 agents posed as Russian spies.

In 1971, at the height of the Cold War, 105 suspected KGB agents were expelled from Britain.

A Whitehall official said: "The simple truth is that the Russians never really stopped spying. In the diplomatic world everybody likes to know what everybody else is doing. They spy on us and we spy on them.

''Nobody makes any formal complaints, unless it is really serious, because the Russians could make it quite difficult for us in other parts of the world where we are quite active."

Is there a need now a days for so called Allies to have spies in each others countries ??

[Milteades]

Countries have been lying to each other since there were countries. Yes, one needs spies everywhere to keep tabs.

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer...

[hannibal89]

Russia having spies in britain is not controversial. I am certain its real.
Big nations will have spies in most other nations.

It gets controversial when a nation has spies that undoubtedly exist, discovered in an allied nation's capital city, red handed.
(Israeli Spy caught in DC last year. You guys remember that?)

Hannibal89

[Lord Agelmar]

Well, just because there allies doesnt mean they are friends. All countries are still rivals and spying seems to be the way to keep track of them.

[danzig]

Spies are a fact of life, Im sure US and Brits spy on each other to a degree as well. Israel spying on the US is more then a bit annoying since basically Israel owes assurences of its existences to the US so its kinda of a slap in the face and we pay a rather heavy price in being an ally with them especially when their spying seems to go beyond spying and attempt to influence American policy.

[cunobelin]

Originally posted by hannibal89@May 15 2005, 07:31 PM
Russia having spies in britain is not controversial. I am certain its real.
Big nations will have spies in most other nations.

It gets controversial when a nation has spies that undoubtedly exist, discovered in an allied nation's capital city, red handed.
(Israeli Spy caught in DC last year. You guys remember that?)

Hannibal89

I hadnt heard that ! What happened ?

[Zuwxiv]

The Israeli spy was downplayed... nobody wanted to agitate another country. I'm sure we have spies in Israel, so complaining about them having spies here wouldn't do anything.

I also read in a Popular Science (or it might have been Popular Mechanics) that Russia has as many spies (if not more) in the US right now than they did during the cold war.

[Garbarsardar]

Probably off topic, but I post forthose of you who like spy stories....

In the 1930s the Soviet Union recruited almost 40 Cambridge University students as spies during a time when many British and American intellectuals were challenging the politics and economics of the West. Many disillusioned students joined the so-called Communist International, or Comintern, an organization that billed itself as a means to unite Communists of all stripes from around the world but was actually a mechanism to promote a purely Soviet brand of Communism.

Though many of the Cambridge recruitees engaged extensively in espionage for years after they left Cambridge, only Harold "Kim" Philby, Donald Maclean, and Guy Burgess -- the so-called "Cambridge Three" -- succeeded in securing both British and American secrets at the highest levels of government. They gained access to information about U.S. counterespionage efforts, plans for atomic bomb production, and military strategies during the Korean War and were able to pass this information on to the Soviets.

Of the tales of the Cambridge Three, that of Kim Philby is the most shocking, perhaps because Philby rose higher than the other two professionally, lasted longer wihout being discovered, and seemed to take more seriously the specific aim of betraying his country, the U.S., their secrets, and their operations.

Philby, nicknamed "Kim" after a spy character in a Kipling story, attended Cambridge University from 1929 to 1933, majoring first in history and then switching to economics. At Cambridge, Philby became friends with Maclean and Burgess, and the three of them shared a mutual interest in Marxism. After all three were recruited into espionage for the Soviets, their handlers directed them to discover all they could about counterespionage practices in the U.S. and Britain.

After graduation, Philby married Alice "Litzi" Friedman, a communist, in her native Vienna. The newlyweds traveled to Spain, where Philby took a reporting job covering the Spanish Civil War for the London Times. He posed as a Fascist there, and by 1939 he was forced to separate from Litzi lest her communist reputation be discovered. (Philby later divorced Litzi, was widowed by his second wife, divorced by his third wife, and remarried a fourth time.)

At the end of the Spanish Civil War Philby took a job in the British Secret Intelligence Service's counterintelligence division, "the heart of the secret world," as he called it in his memoir. Philby swiftly rose through the ranks of the SIS, becoming one of its most trusted agents, and for almost eight years acted as a mole for the Soviets. Though twice during his SIS career in Britain Philby came dangerously close to being discovered -- on both occasions, Soviet intelligence officers defecting to Britain hinted that a high-ranking Foreign Office official had been a Soviet agent since the 1930s -- he managed to avoid detection for more than 30 years. In 1945 he received the Order of the British Empire for his intelligence work during the war.

In 1949 Philby was given a position in Washington, D.C. as the British intelligence liaison to the CIA and FBI, a highly sensitive position in which he would have access to information about most U.S. intelligence operations. Burgess and Maclean also held top positions in the U.S., both of them at the British Embassy.

Not long after Philby was installed in his new post, a Washington codebreaker briefed him on the results emerging from his work decrypting a collection of cables, the so-called Venona decrypt operation. One decrypt, Philby learned, mentioned Homer, a Soviet agent who worked in the British Embassy in Washington from 1944 to 1945.

Philby knew that his crony Maclean was Homer. He warned the KGB that Maclean would probably soon be exposed. He also warned Burgess and Maclean and urged them to defect. Then, in a move to protect himself, Philby cabled the SIS in London, reminding officials that two Soviet defectors had described a mole in the Foreign Office who had been working for the Soviets since the 1930s. This reminder, he thought, would almost certainly intensify suspicions about Maclean and deflect them from himself, especially once SIS and U.S. officials learned that Maclean had recently fled.

Philby was wrong. Though Burgess and Maclean did escape successfully to the Soviet Union in May of 1951, Philby immediately came under suspicion by the SIS and U.S. intelligence. Amazingly, however, for ten more years he evaded full-scale incrimination, largely because many officials, both in the Foreign Office and in the British Parliament, simply refused to believe the spiraling evidence against him. If the evidence were true, they reasoned, it would prove an outrageous embarrassment to both the United States and British governments.

Finally, in January 1962, more than 30 years after his recruitment by the Soviets, British agents confronted Philby with enough evidence to convict him of espionage. He was offered immunity from prosecution if he would cooperate and divulge what he knew about the Soviet spy network. Philby agreed and allowed SIS officials to record his admissions for three long days, though he was never taken into custody. After the third day, Philby escaped to Russia aboard a Soviet ship arranged by the KGB.

Philby became a Russian citizen, married a Russian woman 20 years younger, and after his death on May 11, 1988, was buried with the honors of a KGB general.

from:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_philby.html

[Stalins Ghost]

You can't trust us dirty brits, what with all the James Bond types runing about hehehe

[Marshal Qin]

Several Israeli spies have been exposed in Australia and New Zealand over the years, and then there was the rainbow warrior that the french sank. Some say that one of Australia's prime ministers was a Chinese spy, though thats just an urban legend afaik.

[cunobelin]

The Daily telegraph also reported that Sadam Hussain's spy network short listed French political figures to bribe them by giving money to re-election campaign of Jaques Chirac., they picked these poloticians because they could put pressure in the UN to veto any US proposals in the UN, and ease the sanctions on Iraq.

The document discovered in Iraq says that these people refused, not because it was wrong but because they didnt need the money !!!
These politicians obviously deny these claims saying that they have never met with Iraqi agents, duh !!! They are agents they find out this information without being found out.

Found the article:

:

Saddam spies 'offered to help Chirac get re-elected'
By Francis Harris in Washington, Henry Samuel in Paris and David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 14/05/2005)

Saddam Hussein's spies planned a wide-ranging scheme to bribe members of the French political elite in the run-up to the Anglo-American invasion, including an offer to help fund President Jacques Chirac's 2002 re-election campaign.

That bid failed, according to Iraqi secret service papers seen by The Daily Telegraph, when Mr Chirac's aides allegedly said they did not need the cash.

Jacques Delors
Former EC president Jacques Delors

According to the series of Iraqi intelligence service memorandums uncovered by investigators working for the energy committee of the US House of Representatives, the Iraqis identified a group of politicians and businessmen close to Mr Chirac.

A memo from the head of the 2nd Department of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, purported to report on conversations between its representative in Paris and Roselyne Bachelot, then a member of the National Assembly and the spokesman for Mr Chirac's re-election campaign. The Mukhabarat described Mrs Bachelot as "a friend of Iraq".

The spies claimed that Mrs Bachelot offered an assurance that France would veto any American proposal to invade Iraq at the UN Security Council and would work to have UN-approved sanctions against Saddam lifted.

Iraq factfile

But the memo also claimed that Mr Chirac's team had turned down the cash. The Mukhabarat had conveyed the message that "Iraq is prepared to offer financial support to Chirac, for his election campaign. [Mrs Bachelot] replied joyfully that she will deliver this offer to the financial official of the election campaign." The Chirac campaign had expressed the "gratitude and appreciation of France" but turned the offer down because the money was not required, the document says.

Mrs Bachelot, 58, who later became French environment minister and is now an MEP, said yesterday that she had not received such an offer.

Though she had met many Iraqis in the course of her duties and was a campaigner against UN sanctions, she had not met any intelligence agents. The allegations in the files were "deplorable insinuations", she said.

The documents state that the plot to buy influence in France began in early 2002 on the direct orders of Saddam Hussein, just as America was issuing ever more bellicose statements about Iraq's flouting of UN security council resolutions.

A paper dated Feb 5, 2002, headed "Iraqi-French relations" and written by the assistant director of the Mukhabarat, suggested that Iraq should offer inducements to whoever seemed best placed to win the presidential race, which Mr Chirac ultimately won three months later.

Iraq should "study the possibility to support one of the candidates in the French political elections, after it becomes clear who is going to win the elections, through the offer of oil contracts . . ." the paper says.

As the plot developed, other sections of the Mukhabarat were drawn in. A memo from the head of department M4 dated March 11, 2002 identified politicians and businessmen with close ties to Mr Chirac. Among them was Mrs Bachelot.

The planned campaign included a long list of potential targets that read like a who's who of the country's senior statesmen.

It included former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, former interior minister Charles Pasqua, former defence and interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, former defence and interior minister Pierre Joxe and former European Commission president Jacques Delors.

Mr Delors said yesterday: "I was at the [European] Commission at the time. I had a lot of contact with European heads of state, but none with Iraqi officials." Mr Joxe, former Socialist defence and interior minister, called any allegation that he had taken money "false and absurd".

The new material does not state that any of those named were in fact approached or offered inducements. But it relates in great detail the planning behind the scheme and those who it should approach.

The uncovering of the material by the House energy committee came during its inquiry into the misuse of the UN's $64 billion oil-for-food scheme.

The committee is one of five in Congress examining the scandal. On Thursday another committee in the Senate said that Iraq earmarked oil allocations for George Galloway MP and Mr Pasqua. Both men deny the charges.

[Richard]

the french pm at the time has admitted french agents sank the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior, killing an innocent hippie in Auckland...

[Carsomyr]

Russia having spies in britain is not controversial. I am certain its real.
Big nations will have spies in most other nations.

It gets controversial when a nation has spies that undoubtedly exist, discovered in an allied nation's capital city, red handed.
(Israeli Spy caught in DC last year. You guys remember that?)

Hannibal89

Yeah, I remember that. I live a stone's throw from DC and go there all the time. It's the most spied upon city in the world, or so I've heard. They say you walk by at least one spy, sometimes more, for every block or street you pass. I always think of that everytime I go to DC.


As for spying allies: It's nothing new. Everybody spies on each other. One would be foolish not to.

[Essayons]

the french pm at the time has admitted french agents sank the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior, killing an innocent hippie in Auckland...

Ah, for the days of la gloire. Blowing up that hippie was one of France's last acts of national manhood. "Vive le Rainbow Warrior!' Besides, you can never kill too many hippies.

[Casanova]

As an American i think we need to severely reconsider our close ties with Israel. Especially in the amount of aid we give them every year ( in the billions). First an israeli spy was discovered here. Now there is also proof that they sold patriot missle technology we gave them for their defense to the Chinese. ( Sorry i dont have a link for the story but it is a fact) It seems to me that israel is biting the hand that feeds it.

[DarthJames]

Um...since when have we been Allied with Russia?

We're at peace, certainly, but last time I checked Russia is not is any of the Alliances (NATO etc) that Britain is in.

[fallingstar]

As an American i think we need to severely reconsider our close ties with Israel. Especially in the amount of aid we give them every year ( in the billions). First an israeli spy was discovered here. Now there is also proof that they sold patriot missle technology we gave them for their defense to the Chinese. ( Sorry i dont have a link for the story but it is a fact) It seems to me that israel is biting the hand that feeds it.

Unfortunately china requested upgrades of these technology and due to pressure from America, israel refuses.

[Elu Barcino]

I think that the Telegraph is just trying to stir up trouble. It hates foreigners, and it always has (as do the Mail, Express, and the Sun, along with many others). If it can get Britain to sever ties with Russia, I think it will try as hard as it can. Think how many spies we have in Russia. I wouldn't say that MI6 do nothing all day, do they?

[Casanova]

Unfortunately china requested upgrades of these technology and due to pressure from America, israel refuses.

Ohh israel did sell them patriot missle technology trust me, they are on very thin ice with the US state dept over it. In fact the US opted not to let them share in our new Joint Strike Fighter due to them selling China these weapons that the US gave them. Personally I think we ought to sever all ties with Israel, it is wrong the US gave them so many billions in aid every year, and then they repay us by selling the chinese our technology. Technology which the US would never want Communist Red China to have.

[fallingstar]

Ohh israel did sell them patriot missle technology trust me, they are on very thin ice with the US state dept over it. In fact the US opted not to let them share in our new Joint Strike Fighter due to them selling China these weapons that the US gave them. Personally I think we ought to sever all ties with Israel, it is wrong the US gave them so many billions in aid every year, and then they repay us by selling the chinese our technology. Technology which the US would never want Communist Red China to have.

Strange why was it sold to Israel, Israel can make their own?