Posted on 02/04/2008 7:00:05 AM PST by Ivan the Terrible
The new chief of the Hungarian secret services, who spent six years at the KGB's academy in Moscow during the 1980s, has become chairman of NATO's intelligence committee, a development that diplomats said could compromise the security of the alliance.
Sandor Laborc, 49, was personally chosen by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary as director of the country's counterintelligence National Security Office in December, after a bitter dispute between the governing coalition led by the Socialists - the former Communists - and the main opposition party, Fidesz.
Laborc, a former Communist who was trained at the KGB's Dzerzhinsky Academy from 1983 to 1989....
In practice, Laborc's appointment means that some NATO countries will be much more wary about sharing sensitive intelligence.
"Here we have a person who was trained by the KGB. I cannot assume that he has changed that much in his attitudes," said another NATO diplomat, predicting that several important NATO countries would hold back on sharing intelligence. "NATO, it must be said, is a very leaky organization," the diplomat added.
Indeed, NATO has been plagued with leaks. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined the alliance in 1999, and the rest of the former Warsaw Pact countries in 2004. After that expansion, military attachés from the Bulgarian delegation did not receive clearance to have access to a certain level of intelligence material.
"You could bet that anything we shared with Bulgaria inside NATO went straight to Moscow ," said another senior Western European diplomat.
....
Fidesz claims that Gyurcsany, a former Communist youth leader turned millionaire who has close ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has been politicizing the secret services for domestic reasons in order to keep track of the opposition, the media and trade unions.
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Could be a blessing just as well a curse.
hmmm...
Its an attempt to bring the eastern bloc nations of nato into the fold. We have the same basic aims I suppose, so this is going to do slightly more good than bad.
“predicting that several important NATO countries would hold back on sharing intelligence”
For that reason alone, it’s a strange appointment
You could be right. After all, it isn’t if the KGB was an incompetent organization.
It’s not like he went to Langley or some place full of people who hate the West.
Right. There’s a lot of history there. It’s not like the Russians did great things for the Hungarians under Soviet rule. And, now that the Soviet Union has fallen apart, why would Hungarians be carrying water for Russia? But, this guy got at least some KGB training, which could give him a very different point of view from the guys who went to the US or NATO schools.
MI Ping
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