Posted on 01/30/2005 7:38:09 AM PST by Happy2BMe
Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005
At Los Angeles International Airport two weeks ago, FBI agents arrested an Irish businessman they had spent a week tailing all over California's Silicon Valley, from the offices of two electronics manufacturers in Sunnyvale to a hotel in Mountain View and down a quiet cul-de-sac to a suburban house in San Jose. The technology exporter, according to court papers, had purchased sophisticated computer components in the U.S. to send to Russia through Ireland. He now stands to be charged in mid-February with "unlawful export of 'defense articles.'" U.S. officials point to this little-noticed case as one manifestation of a troubling reality: although the cold war is long over, Russia is fielding an army of spooks in the U.S. that is at least equal in number to the one deployed by the old, much larger Soviet Union.
Russia runs more than 100 known spies under official cover in the U.S., senior U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials say. And those are just the more easily spotted spies working under the classic guise of diplomat. An unknown number of so-called nocs—who work under nonofficial cover as businessmen and -women, journalists or academics—undoubtedly expand the Russian spy force. "They're baaaaack," says a former senior U.S. intelligence official who worked against Moscow during the cold war. "They're busy as hell, but I don't think we've really got what it is that they're doing." The number of Russian spies in the U.S. is especially surprising, given that it was less than four years ago that the Bush Administration expelled 50 of them in retaliation for the humiliating discovery that FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen had been spying for Russia for 21 years.
In a high-level meeting late last year, officials tell TIME, the National Security Council instructed the FBI, CIA, State Department and other agencies to get a better handle on the Russian espionage threat. While the U.S. might like to eject suspect diplomats to force the Russians to send in their "rookies," as a U.S. official put it, Moscow would probably respond in kind, denting the CIA's corps in Russia.
As the FBI has remade itself in the wake of 9/11 into a counterterrorism agency, the bureau's long-standing counterintelligence mission has been bumped down a notch on the priority list. During this time, Russia has been among the U.S.'s rivals most aggressively exploiting the opening to build up its spying capabilities. Also, it has been using liberalized immigration rules for Russians, instituted after the cold war, to install nocs.
Officials say the Russians are after secrets about American military technology and hardware, dual-use technology such as the latest lasers, and the Administration's plans and intentions regarding the former Soviet states, China, the Middle East and U.S. energy policy, among other matters. Russia also wants to learn as much as possible about its biggest strategic worry: the U.S.'s ramped-up commitment to missile defense, which could eventually threaten Moscow's nuclear deterrent. Asked about the Russian spy surge, Russian embassy spokesman Yevgeniy Khorishko replied, "We do not comment on any of the issues concerning intelligence."
In addition to embassy-based spies, Russia—along with China, Pakistan, Iran and any number of other countries, including U.S. allies—relies on many hard-to-trace front companies, often run through third-party countries, to acquire secrets and dual-use technology. "We think there are thousands of these companies," a senior U.S. official said.
David Szady, the FBI's assistant director for counterintelligence, who is in charge of keeping tabs on foreign spies on U.S. soil, told TIME that in the next five years he wants to double the number of agents chasing spooks. Already, the FBI has placed counterespionage squads of at least seven agents in all 56 of its field division offices over the past year. What about the chance that damaging U.S. moles are helping Russia today? Says one U.S. senior intelligence official: "There's always evidence of another mole because there are always unexplained events. There are always unexplained losses. There are always enough dots that look strange."
He should have sent it through China, then it would have been a ok. Gads, we'll ban Russia (not necessarly a bad thing) but give everything to China..aka Pakistan aka the rest of the Islamics. Or to the EU which is now planning on transferring it to China too.
"Excellent stuff, I am reminded of Haiti."
Or any number of other countries where the Soviets (err...Russians) and the Red Chinese are arming our enemies and fomenting revolution.
But why should the Communists fake their own funeral? Two
reasons stand out: (1) the Soviet Union is now receiving tens of
billions of dollars in U.S. aid each year, money that is desperately
needed to finance the expensive military buildup,[38] and (2) as
terrorism heats up, the disbelieving West becomes paralyzed,
choosing to give in to terrorist demands rather than retaliate against,
and thereby risk undermining, the so-called "democracies" of the
Soviet Bloc. Anatoliy Golitsyn, the highest-level Soviet KGB official
ever to defect to the West, revealed that the Soviet high command
had planned this strategic deception many years earlier, in order to
confuse the West temporarily during a phase of rapid Communist
expansion. Golitsyn accurately predicted all of the changes in the
Soviet Bloc in his 1984 book, New Lies for Old--five years before the
events themselves.[39]
Since when is GB a foe?
Since 1776! and please don't think the Brits are so swell. They cling to the USA for survial just like in 1941.
Thank you, Lyndon LaRouche, for that interesting report from your own personal parallel universe.
-ccm
Lunev concurs with the extant thesis that the fall of Communism requires quotation marks [viz. "fall of Communism"].
Bill Gertz, Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies, Regnery, 2004, indicates Russia has actively aided Iran, Iraq, Syria et al.
David A. Vise, The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, The Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History, Atlantic, 2002, exposes the Bureau as ineffectual donut-eaters who blew repeated opportunities to catch this flaming a-hole.
It's nice to see the agency will now devote some attention to the shocking problem of gentlemen seeking to read other gentlemen's mail.
This is the gang who let Edward Lee Howard get away, although he wore a sign around his neck: I'm Here, I'm Disgruntled, I'm Turning.
The FBI has been very good at targeting innocent Americans: Richard Jewel, Stephen Hatfill, Colleen Rowley; less effective at actually closing cases.
It helped that Kaczynski's brother ratted him out, cutting a decade off that capture.
Awfully sporting of Nunn-Lugar to fund securing Russia's nuclear stockpile and recycling its obsolete reactors, thus freeing those fungible rubles for spanking-new Topol-M road-mobile and sub-launched weapons.
Memo to beltway airbags: stop providing the noose for Lenin to hang capitalists; use same to hang spies.
Do you think the day will ever come when we and Russia are no longer 'friends'?
BUmp
Oh dear! I've just shown your post to some of the US servicemen and women I work alongside with here in the UK. Two labelled you a Clown. The rest I can't repeat on here. Keep watchin' out for them pesky Red Coats!
I thought Bush looked into Putin's soul?
Ping, older but still true.
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